News Article: James Dolan hires "consultants" to analyze Rangers

[JESSEWENEEDTOCOOK]

http://nypost.com/2013/11/30/can-the-mba-crowd-save-the-knicks-rangers/

A curiosity emerged from James Dolan’s wide-ranging interview with The Post’s Mike Vaccaro last week: He hired McKinsey & Company, the world’s premier management consulting firm, to help him with the ongoing problems known as the Rangers and the Knicks.
This is big news, not only because the famous control freak Dolan is willing to take someone else’s advice. It shows that his sports teams are joining the corporation-like, data-driven model of the future.
So, who is McKinsey? They’re managerial experts, the businessman’s businessmen. They’re the ones who get called in to help a company’s CEO figure out just what the heck he or she should do, whether its cutting costs, changing strategies or redrawing the entire organizational chart.

Not exactly sure what this entails, but it's interesting nonetheless.

Click to read more...

 

[Crease]

I have to imagine the consultation was about growth, sponsorship, business strategy, pricing, etc.

 

[Levitate]

What are the "ongoing problems"?

That article is pretty poorly written

 

[Emptyvoid]

I have to imagine the consultation was about growth, sponsorship, business strategy, pricing, etc.

Exactly, these are businessmen not hockey gurus.

 

[azrok22]

What are the "ongoing problems"?

That article is pretty poorly written

Profits can always be higher. Prepare to be bled drier.

 

[nikonsniper*]

Profits can always be higher. Prepare to be bled drier.

Pay Toilets, ticket scanning fees, 'premium' pricing for non-obstructed seats, PSLs, and BYO-TP.

 

[RangersHank*]

Ticket prices arent expensive enough? What problems? Knicks have problems, Rangers are still fighting

 

[PrincetonRanger]

I have to imagine the consultation was about growth, sponsorship, business strategy, pricing, etc.

I think this is it. I doubt that business consultants would be brought in to help out with team strategy.

I have a few classmates that ended up at McKinsey (and other big name consulting firms like Bain and BCG). Consulting is a somewhat imprecise term, basically used for outsourced analysis for virtually any facet of business management and operations.

 

[Hunter Gathers]

But can they come up with something better than "Hockey's different here?"

 

[RangersFan]

What an *******. Hey Dolan, you know what would help your franchises the most? How about winning...

 

[Hunter Gathers]

What an *******. Hey Dolan, you know what would help your franchises the most? How about winning...

Maybe the consultants will let him know.

 

[mike14]

What an *******. Hey Dolan, you know what would help your franchises the most? How about winning...

worked for the devils.....

 

[Hunter Gathers]

worked for the devils.....

Hah!

 

[ColonialsHockey10]

Well at least he hired the right company.

McKinsey is the big leagues.

 

[Hunter Gathers]

Well at least he hired the right company.

McKinsey is the big leagues.

Are you in consulting? I know next to nothing about it. What would you think Dolan is trying to accomplish here?

 

[Ail]

So Sather retiring?

 

[Hunter Gathers]

So Sather retiring?

In all honesty, that actually was a thought of mine. Maybe Dolan is getting ready to move on from Sather (he'll retire and this ends up being his way of searching for a GM).

 

[Trxjw]

Yeah that's all business related. My old employer hired the same firm to do an audit. Made a lot of strategic adjustments and then laid off about 500 people, lol.

 

[SnowblindNYR]

Are you in consulting? I know next to nothing about it. What would you think Dolan is trying to accomplish here?

I'm not in consulting but I read business books and am applying to business school. The big 3 are McKinsey, Boston Consulting Group, and Bain. In fact, I think McKinsey is #1. It's like the Goldman Sachs of Management Consulting from what I know.

 

[Trxjw]

McKinsey specializes in "focusing" large corporations. They evaluate what entities are useful, and which ones are "expendable" or aren't generating enough ROI to be worthwhile. Like I said, my last employer hired them and they did a very in depth analysis of where the company stood in the E-Commerce space, and informed the high-level management of what areas they could refocus, and what areas they could axe completely.

It's highly unlikely that this has anything to do with Rangers management, or the players involved. It likely has more to do with MSG not operating at a large enough margin, and with the new renovation, Dolan likely wants to cut costs where he's not seeing a quality ROI.

 

[OverTheCap]

The decision to hire McKinsey played a role in the firing of Grunwald:

Dolan explained Grunwald wasn’t the right man to move forward with the Knicks’ new approach to analytics and the hiring of the global management firm, McKinsey & Company. Dolan called Grunwald “a classic GM†and said he felt the club needed a more progressive administrator as they “reprocessed’’ their strategic planning. That Grunwald is a lawyer, former head of the Board of Trade in Toronto and has the respect of agents and other general managers apparently didn’t factor into the decision.

http://nypost.com/2013/11/24/clock-ticking-as-dolan-sets-high-goal-for-woodson-knicks/

MV: So in evaluating these business solutions you came to the conclusion Glen Grunwald was lacking and Steve Mills a better fit?

JD: I hired McKinsey in the summer, and Glen is more of a “classic†GM, and he just wasn’t the guy to lead this initiative for the team, and it had to be someone in that position who could do it because I wasn’t going to do it. It needed someone behind it, someone who understood it, and that just wasn’t Glen’s forte. I think he was a good general manager, he’s got a great eye for talent, he knows basketball well, but the job description changed.

http://nypost.com/2013/11/22/james-dolan-dishes-on-isiah-his-garden-teams/

It appears that Dolan has two separate standards for the Knicks GM and Rangers GM - Sather is certainly "a classic GM" and he is far from progressive.

 

[BlueshirtBlitz]

Even though this sounds like it won't really impact the Rangers, just picturing Dolan weaselly hiring a firm to maximize his profits makes me vomit.

 

[gmerger37]

Dolan is a ****ing *******. He clearly views the rangers and knicks as mere business entities and could care less about winning. I think so long as the $$$ pours in dolan could care less if the teams are 3-12 or 12-3.

 

[Baby Punisher]

I dunno how much more money ol' Jimbo can expect to get from average Joe. Since I started buying season tix in 96'. I've gone from splitting a full season with two tix to just spliting a half season of two tickets 3 ways, & it cost more money now than it did than!

 

[ColonialsHockey10]

Are you in consulting? I know next to nothing about it. What would you think Dolan is trying to accomplish here?

I work in Sustainability Consutling (entry level, I just graduated college with an environmental degree). I work in a small firm though, and a lot of the major management consulting companies, McKinsey included, have dedicated sustainability teams, so I've spoken with many employees at these companies (Mckinsey included).

Goldman Sachs hires the smartest people with finance backgrounds, McKinsey hires the smartest thinkers worldwide, it doesn't matter their background. They're put on a tier with BCG and Bain, but from the people I've spoken with McKinsey gets the first pick of the litter at every school. They're truly on their own tier. They are also unanimously the hardest company to get a job at (in any industry, on the planet). Most management consulting companies work mainly with strategy, but McKinsey also works with implementation (as in coming up with a solution for a company, and working with them to make it happen).

For MSG, I think Crease's post is spot on for what they'll be doing. I doubt they'll be personally evaluating the Rangers. My post was more in relation to the fact that Dolan hired the smartest people in the area to figure this out. Management Consulting is an intelligent industry, but McKinsey takes the cake. If hiring someone to do his work is his plan, he can't do any better.