Book review: "The lords of strategy"

Kiechel published The Lords of Strategy in 2010. This is a fun reading if you would like to know more about the history of management consulting. My last book review was about a book published in 1994 (here). I argued that one should consider that book as management consulting history too. The current book is actually taking a historical focus and roughly covers the formative years from 1965 to 1985.

The book is well-written and I give it four out of five stars.

Having praised the book, here are three things I do not like with the book.

Boston, Boston, Boston. The focus of the book is limited to McKinsey, BCG, Bain, and Harvard Business School. They were indeed very important organisation, but the book would have been stronger if the author would have acknowledged that everything does not evolve around Boston. Peter Drucker, the all time bestseller of management books, comes to mind. His ideas from the 1950s clearly influenced both McKinsey and BCG.

Very little industry gossip. Since the story is told by an insider, I wish he would have told more about the behind-the-scenes activities. Still we get a little, like how Michael Porter created the value chain and pissed McKinsey off for not acknowledging the fact that the value chain was similar to McKinsey's business system model. More of this kind of gossip would have been fun, but also relevant for understanding how the ideas developed.

Positive spin. The book takes a positive spin on everything and does not deal with conflicts on interests and the more sinister role the management consultants have played in some well published cases.

With these limitations, the book is not going to be a five star book. Still, if you are interested in the history of strategy and management consulting, you should definitely pick up this book. Four stars.