Along with Kieran Little, David McGee leads the Irish operation of Strategy&, PwC’s strategy consulting arm. Their fast-growing team isn’t responsible for implementing narrow solutions. Instead, they’re the people that C-Suite leaders call when they need clear, decisive answers to complex, knotty problems, quickly.

McGee, a longstanding PwC partner, admits that this can create unpredictability, but argues that is what gives his team its edge.  “Clients come out of a Board meeting and say, we need answers before the next Board meeting,” he says. “They’re not looking for a year-long project — they want sharp, incisive thinking, fast. That is where we come in.” 

Bringing Strategy& to Ireland

Strategy& was launched in Ireland partly to serve an existing Irish client base and also to expand PwC’s offering in Ireland. It is the only at-scale strategy business that’s part of a professional services network with broad and deep capabilities.  There is a really interesting client rollcall of private companies, publicly listed companies, semi-state companies, and government departments.

“Our work got noticed by the Strategy& teams in the network,” McGee says.  Now, he says, we can tap into proprietary economic and social research and we have access to over 4,000 international experts which facilitates insight at speed.”

By way of example, he says the Irish team have just finished a piece of work for an international bank with an Irish office. As the project began, the Dublin office pulled in expertise from teams in Frankfurt, New York and London.

“What we do is not a large-scale consulting assignment. It is small teams and surgical work. It is about bringing in the right people that counts,” he says. “Strategy& is unique – short, sharp exercises where the outcome is our team’s practical insight and experience, alongside a considered report offering a path forward.”

“You are trying to get to the heart of something and do some of the heavy lifting on the thinking,” he says.

Answering the hard questions

Strategy& is already gaining traction. Since it was launched in Ireland, McGee says it has worked with several PLCs – both financial services and non-financial services, as well as large privately held businesses. It has also worked for a number of government agencies.

McGee breaks the service down into two main areas: corporate strategy and deals-related strategy. “Around 40 per cent of what we do is tied to deals — commercial due diligence for private equity firms, assessing the forward potential of a business they’re looking to buy or sell,” he says.

He describes the rest as corporate strategy, helping companies figure out how to “grow, enter new markets, or streamline their operations.”

McGee explains that their market-leading deals-related work often involves helping private equity firms understand not just the financial health of a potential acquisition but its future potential. “When you get financial due diligence work done on a business you’re looking to buy, this type of work usually looks back at the historical numbers and says ‘Do we think these stack up?  Is there any evidence of anything unexpected or unusual?” he says.

However, with Strategy&, it is about the future: “We are asking and answering questions about a wide variety of issues including competition,  markets and risk mitigation.  If you bought this business, what is its future potential in this sector? Where might you take it? Where are the untapped opportunities?”

On the corporate strategy side, the team works closely with clients on growth strategies, market entry plans, and operational overhauls.

He recalls one client who was eager to expand into four markets. “They were emotionally invested in one particular market, but we had to tell them: ‘That market wouldn’t be the  answer,’” McGee says. “We backed it up with competitive analysis, consumer data, and economic forecasts.”

One of the firm’s “backbone” services is its Fit for Growth methodology. Rather than applying blanket cost-cutting measures, Strategy& works with companies to strategically trim certain areas so they can reinvest in others.

“It’s about pruning back in some areas so you can invest in others,” McGee says. About half of Strategy&’s corporate strategy work is on helping companies explore new growth and market opportunities, while the other half is around costs. McGee says it is about taking a holistic approach.

“If you’re trying to build more muscle, you have to ensure that your resources are allocated in the right places,” he says.

The local advantage

Despite its global reach, McGee says Strategy& prides itself on local presence. We have a great team with a great culture who support one another.

He points to a recent project with a global business in Cork. During the pitch, he told the prospective client that they could either recruit a team from New York or London or they could opt for Dublin. McGee explained that the Strategy& team could be with the client in Cork every day, sitting in their offices. “The company’s brain trust was all sitting in Cork. It made sense for us to sit with them,” McGee says. 

The ability to blend global expertise with local context is what McGee sees as its biggest advantage.  He adds that Strategy& understands the issues facing companies in Ireland – competitors, regulators, and compliance.

He pointed to another client, an Irish PLC with a UK subsidiary. His team was spending the week on the ground with the company, immersing themselves in the nuances of the business. “There is nothing like looking at a whiteboard and going ‘Can we just think about that again?’ There is something about rolling up your sleeves and getting into a room with people,” McGee says.

Client experience is saying that this boots-on-the-ground approach, combined with access to Strategy&’s global insights, seems to be resonating. 

Testing hypotheses, building narratives

McGee is the first to accept that there are many misconceptions about strategy consulting – and those misconceptions can often be held by potential clients and potential employees.

One of the biggest is that strategy is focused on what he describes as “blue-sky thinking”.

“When we say to people that we write strategies for companies, some people think that we do blue-sky thinking and dream up big ideas,” he says.

McGee says that the real job is more impactful. “A client might have a hypothesis. They might think they can grow in the Middle East, for example. Our job is to prove or disprove that for them,” he says.

Likewise, he says a client might ask if there is a market for their product outside of their existing locations or if they can reduce the cost base without hitting customer service.

“We have to prove or disprove that hypothesis,” he says.  

“It’s ‘I know enough about the sector to ask an interesting couple of questions’. Now let me go and build a fact base to prove it and then come back with a compelling narrative,” he says.

For McGee, narrative matters. The way he sees it, a successful strategy isn’t just about being right – it’s about being persuasive. “You can have the smartest analysis in the world, but if you can’t weave it into a story that grabs the attention of the Board, it won’t land,” he says.

He adds: “Storytelling is important because when you gather all the facts and figures together and you’ve done all the qualitative research and you’ve run a financial model on the problem, you still need to be able to come back and tell a compelling story. And you need to be able to persuade people that the argument you’re making is actually the right one.”

McGee points to a current project where the client had an urgent problem with, at the outset, an impossible deadline. 3The team rallied with late nights and some weekends to deliver the work. That happens at times and is part and parcel of living with the decision cycle of senior executives. They are trying to make a decision on something and they want validation in a short space of time and whether it is the right decision or not.”

Looking ahead, McGee is focused on growing Strategy&’s presence in Ireland.  But growth won’t come at the cost of quality: “It has to match the standards we’ve set.”

Ultimately, McGee sees Strategy& filling a crucial gap in the Irish market. “It’s not just PwC with a new badge,” he insists. “It’s a different offering. And it’s something we think will help a lot of Irish businesses.”

This article is partner content and has been produced in association with PwC.