When James O. McKinsey founded McKinsey in 1926, he could not have imagined the reach his small firm would eventually have.  More than 75 years later, the firm has grown into a global partnership serving three of the world's five largest companies and two-thirds of the Fortune 1000.

McKinsey already had an established practice in budgeting and finance when he decided to test his theory that so-called "management engineers" could go beyond rescuing sick companies to helping healthy companies thrive and grow. His vision opened the door to others who shaped a new profession as they built one of the world's best-known professional services firms.

And through the years, his original mission has remained the same (with a little rewording from decade to decade): to help clients make distinctive, lasting, and substantial improvements in their performance and to build a great firm that is able to attract, develop, excite, and retain exceptional people.