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How McKinsey Plans to Win with 20,000 AI Agents

The consulting giant's CEO reveals how they're rebuilding their workforce and business model around AI—and why liberal arts majors are suddenly in demand.

December 5, 2025

4 Min Read

Human insight and AI capability - reshaping how work gets done.

Photo by Chirayu Trivedi on Unsplash

Why it Matters

McKinsey & Co., the world's most influential consulting firm, is betting its future on AI agents. Their transformation offers a blueprint for how professional services firms can stay relevant when their core work becomes automatable.


The Big Picture

McKinsey now employs 60,000 workers—40,000 humans and 20,000 AI agents. Eighteen months ago, they had just 3,000 agents. Global Managing Partner Bob Sternfels predicts every human employee will work alongside one or more AI agents within 18 months.


How it's Changing Their Business

  • Shifting to outcomes-based work: Moving away from traditional hourly consulting toward guaranteeing specific results.

  • Redefining client value: Focusing on complex challenges like "doubling market cap" rather than basic analytics.

  • Building hybrid teams: Managing both human consultants and AI agents as integrated workforce units.


The Hiring Revolution

McKinsey is completely rethinking talent acquisition after analyzing 20 years of partner promotion data. They're de-emphasizing perfect academic records and prioritizing:

  • Learning agility: Ability to master new skills quickly

  • Collaboration: Working effectively in human-AI teams

  • Resilience: Bouncing back from setbacks and uncertainty


The Liberal Arts Comeback

Surprisingly, McKinsey is now actively recruiting liberal arts majors they previously overlooked. Sternfels explains: "AI models are great at linear problem-solving, but not at discontinuous leaps." Art history and philosophy majors offer the creative, non-linear thinking AI can't replicate.


What Humans Still Do Best

  1. Setting ambitious goals: Inspiring teams to stretch beyond obvious targets

  2. Exercising judgement: Making nuanced decisions in ambiguous situations

  3. Creating novel solutions:  Making breakthrough connections AI misses


The Bottom Line

McKinsey's transformation shows that even the most analytical, data-driven firms need human creativity and judgment. The winners won't be those who replace humans with AI, but those who design the most effective human-AI partnerships.


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