McKinsey Day-in-the-Life
What would a typical day in the life of a McK consultant entail? What are the tasks that you would be doing as a BA? Thanks!
Mar 30, 2025
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It changes quite significantly every 6 months to be honest. Example below based on a relatively intense engagement from when I was a 1 year BA.
0700: wake up, check emails and reply to the high priority ones
0830: get into the office, clear my inbox before check in and review pages sent back by the visual graphics team overnight
0900: team check in alignment with EM and the other associate
0915: check in with one of the business unit heads and their team. The EM is checking in with the Group head and the other associate checks in with their workstream team.
0930-1130: B2B ENS calls I’d arranged to understand market best practice for this BU
1130-1230: heads down time to put together a skeleton doc on growth opportunities for my workstream BU. Structured as 1) market context, 2) competitive landscape, 3) BU context and 4) growth opportunities.
1230-1300: Intro call with a McKinsey internal expert to help work on the market context and competitive landscape piece. She intros me to a 3 other internal experts and I quickly send them emails to outline what is needed.
1300-1330:working lunch and quickly continue fleshing out the document with a) pages built on the expert calls from this morning and b) any docs I can find from KNOW - the McKinsey internal knowledge system
1330-1400: problem solving session with my EM and Partner to discuss the skeleton doc - in particular the growth potential. Get an update from the Partner on senior client discussions. We have a Board meeting end of next week and a Steerco with the CEO end of this week. I think some of the growth levers / targets need to be digested by the BU so I want to send out an initial version of the doc today.
1400-1430: some time to start implementing feedback. Follow up with the experts who haven’t responded and also list out a data request from the client team to inform the growth model.
1430-1530: discussion with the working team of the BU. I ask the EM to join as well to share an update with the team on how the client Group is approaching the overall growth strategy topic. The team will review the initial doc tomorrow morning, but we’ve got to keep the circle close since this is market moving. We go over the growth levers we’ve been putting together and I walk through the additional levers suggested by the internal experts. Some of these are controversial so good to have the EM for backup.
1530-1540: grab a Diet Coke, quick break.
1540-1700: heads down time. Put together the model structure and logic, leaving the input sheet blank pending data from client. I send this over to the transformation SVP to double check the model logic.
1700-1800: finish most of section 2 of the doc and send out to visual graphics in India. Start closing out section 3
1800-1815: check out with the team. It shouldn’t be a late night (we hope)
1815-1845: get dinner with the team. Wednesday is sushi night
1845-2000: heads down time. Finish section 3. The internal experts share some pages for sections 1 and 2 which I can put in with some minor tweaks. There’s a couple of additional pages I think we need so I leave some placeholders for now and ask them if they can prioritize those tomorrow. Share the doc with the EM and Partner while I continue sharpening the language
2000-2030: the Transformation SVP calls me out of the blue to discuss the model. He had a few questions to pressure test some of the uplift assumptions. We talk it through and I make some edits.
2030-2130: I want to tighten up the model and doc a bit more while I wait for comments
2130-2300: EM has some minor easy to implement comments, Partner wants to understand why we aren’t being more ambitious. Jump on a call with him and explain the full client context - it can’t be done because of XYZ, instead the BU and internal experts agree that ABC has a lot of potential so the uplift there is greater.
2300: send out the preliminary doc to the BU head and leadership team for their review
2300-0030: reply to low prio emails, send out other pages to visual graphics in India. I find a few other interesting internal experts to help us pressure test the model assumptions- this will be the big priority tomorrow once the data comes through.
0030- 0100: taxi back home. I’m also helping plan a practice event so make a few quick pages / share these out to get thoughts quickly on the way.
Ended up a bit longer than expected, but hope this helps give some indication. It’s heavily dependent on the engagement type- but the role of the BA is to make sure the question gets answered (by leveraging internal and external experts, pushing the thinking forward and pulling in leadership when needed.
Wow - thanks so much! Really appreciate it!!
Thanks for this - super helpful. I assume this schedule wouldn't be that different for ASCs?
No, almost identical. It would be slightly different for ASCs who are ‘Junior EMs’ - I.e. managing a new joiner
This schedules sounds as if coming from someone who very much drank the consulting kool-aid. Most obvious after reading "0030- 0100: taxi back home. I’m also helping plan a practice event so make a few quick pages / share these out to get thoughts quickly on the way."
Very much on the hardo-side of the spectrum. Also worked at MBB and never did any study where I came in at 8.30 to align pages before the check-in or would work on some internal practice thing past midnight. Granted, sweatiness is region dependent so even more surprised seing from your post history that this is LDN office, which I always have observed as one of the much more laid-back and friendly regions.
Even more hilarious if this was done while still being a BA (as opposed to e.g., an EM who guns for AP promotion).
Don’t think you read my comment properly. It’s my schedule as a BA when I started owning workstreams end to end (I.e. 1 year in).
Quite common in my area to do practice work in the taxi home - especially if it is a priority for your sponsors and you don’t have time during the day. This is less important at BB - McK is entirely sponsorship driven.
I find it surprising that you have never checked on your workstream before check-in. How do you talk about what your priorities are that day if you don’t know what progress has been made??
Here's a more consolidated perspective:
7a-9p: scan emails, address high priority things and mentally timebox to dos during the day while heading to client site
daily team check in
9a-6p: meetings, and consolidating takeaways following those meetings based on how they impact long term workplanning, iterating to have deliverables for meetings the following day
Checkout; Light days end around here
6p-9p: order dinner, at some point head to the hotel to continue working on decks and feedback consolidated during the days meetings
Medium/heavier workdays end here
9p-12am+: call my friend in banking while iterating over slides with hotkeys so we can both complain about how clients won't look at these models/slides anyway. Wonder why I did this to myself and go full existential crisis. Briefly consider moving to Tahiti to be a surf instructor (other fantasies include farmer in Switzerland, fitness instructor in NYC, and college football analyst)
As you can see, I did not decide to be a lifer at my MBB. But was definitely a fun (albeit torturous at times) ride!
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