McKinsey stripped a partner of his director role after he got into an online fight with a feminist author and exec, suggesting women leaders are prone to play the victim at struggling companies.
The consulting giant took away Chris Bradley’s coveted title at the McKinsey Global Institute in the wake of the LinkedIn spat with Julia Carreon, as Bloomberg first reported Monday.
The fight centered on a post Carreon made referencing “the glass cliff,” an academic term denoting the idea that women and minorities are most likely to be appointed CEO to companies that are struggling.
“This theory is a very convenient way to always be a victim in the rain and empowered in the sunshine,” Bradley, who’s based in Australia, scoffed on Carreon’s timeline, according to a screenshot of the exchange viewed by The Post.
Carreon, co-author of the book “Walking on Broken Glass: Navigating the Aftermath of the Glass Ceiling,” shot back that the term was “coined by esteemed psychologists from Exeter 21 years ago.”
She added that the McKinsey big could “simply enter this into [the] tool that is commonly known as AI” to find out more, instead of sniping at her.
Carreon – a former Citigroup exec who founded advocacy group Fifth Wave Feminists – told The Post that Bradley’s comments undermined her and her co-author’s work.
“It shows the McKinsey partners don’t live their values,” she said in a brief interview.
Earlier in the LinkedIn exchange, Bradley wrote: “it sounds like you are saying that we once had a problem of female advancement to ceo, but now we have a new problem that the jobs they get are too hard? Is this actually a thing?”
“It’s not my job to educate you on what a Glass Cliff is,” Carreon replied. “Again, you work for McKinsley & Company — if you have the will you will be able to find the answer yourself.”
“It’s funnier to go back and forth with you than talk to a bot,” Bradley told Carreon.
The flareup prompted a review from McKinsley, which took the rare step of removing Bradley from his director role at its prestigious business and economic research unit. He was also reportedly nixed from leadership positions on a few internal committees, though he maintained his senior partner job. McKinsey did not state whether Bradley’s pay was affected.
“Following our conduct review process, we have removed the partner from his leadership roles, including at the McKinsey Global Institute. His public comments fell well short of the standards we expect at our firm,” McKinsey spokesman Taylor Burns told Bloomberg.
McKinsey is known for its efforts to address challenges women face at work, Bloomberg noted. For years, it’s published on annual survey on just that subject in partnership with ex-Facebook bigshot Sheryl Sandberg’s LeanIn group.
The 2020 edition of the survey explicitly references the “glass cliff” – which itself alludes to the idea of the “glass ceiling” limiting the heights women can achieve – in the context of challenges women face working in healthcare, Bloomberg noted
Carreon nodded to the survey in her back-and-forth with Bradley.
“It’s called Glass Cliff precisely because it describes a phenomenon that impacts women,” she wrote. “I’m sorry but aren’t people from McKinsley & Company supposed to know these things?”
Carreon and co-author Shannon Nutter’s “Walking on Broken Glass,” published just last month, set out to explain how female leaders are set up to fail and how to identify bad behavior in companies.
Responding to Bradley’s demotion on LinkedIn, Carreon said, “His own public words harmed him.
“And let’s face it: He lost a corporate title, not his job.”
Bradley declined a Post request for comment.