150,000 Pages of McKinsey Documents Online
Allstate this weekend made approximately 150,000 pages of project documents that McKinsey & Co. helped produce for them in the late 1990s. McKinsey was apparently hired to help them review their claims processes and reduce total claims expenses. You can view these documents at: http://media.allstate.com/categories/53/releases/4391
Allstate faced criticism for using these new claims practices and litigators have tried to force public disclosure of these documents for the last several years. Allstate, correctly, resisted these efforts as the intellectual property within them was partly or wholly owned by McKinsey. In other words, Allstate may not have had the right to disclose them.
Be forewarned, 150,000 pages of PowerPoint slides is a lot to review. Certainly, I like to look over the work of consultants to see new ideas, new approaches, etc. but 150,000 pages is clearly overkill. Years ago, I met a Big 8 partner who billed based on how thick the executive presentation was. Back then, he thought $100,000 per inch was appropriate. The mind boggles to think of what McKinsey billed Allstate for this. Moreover, I've never seen a project that produced 150,000 pages of original content.
This event creates a new precedent in professional services. The bigger issues for service providers in this are:
- Are your working papers, proposals, reports, etc. really yours?
- Would you let your work products be posted by a client on the Internet?
- Could you prevent public disclosure of these products online by a client? Could you keep these products from becoming legal documents in litigation? Can they be kept from public records or court filings?
- Would competitors benefit from seeing your work products?
- Can your firm charge a client more (substantially more?) if they disclose these products publicly?
- Are all of your documents trademarked, copyrighted or otherwise protected?
- Do you need to separate your work products into distinct groupings so that only the least differentiating documents could be released publicly?
Ideas are the currency of consultants (well, maybe the perfect currency is airline miles but I digress). When others take advantage of your ideas, they devalue your intellectual assets. If competitors steal your ideas, it's theft. If you let them gain access to these ideas willingly, it's stupidity.
Your ideas and intellectual property should remain yours. Protect them.
