Good news for McKinsey. International Power, the electricity generator, said last week that it was bringing the consultancy in to offer advice as part of its annual strategy review. IP has to decide whether to proceed with a merger, perhaps with GDF Suez of France, or to continue going it alone.
Why bother repeating this seemingly unexceptional piece of news? Because it is an example of something that, according to the current conventional wisdom, happens fairly infrequently nowadays: corporate leadership teams committing to extended strategic analysis, with or without the help of consultants.
"Strategy is dead" has become a popular cry. In this fast-moving world, who has time to ruminate and plan? "Decisiveness is about timeliness," the outgoing chairman of Xerox, Anne Mulcahy , says, funnily enough in an interview with the McKinsey Quarterly. "And timeliness trumps perfection. The most damaging decisions are the missed opportunities, the decisions that didn't get made in time."