Summary
Highlights
The meeting begins with welcomes and introductions, with attendees sharing their names, locations, and fun facts. Team members from PSG Global Solutions, including Dina, Florence, Lauri, Rodlin, Vanessa, Julian, and Dean, introduce themselves, highlighting their roles and experience. Christina and Cara, the co-founders of C Squared, also introduce themselves and invite others to share a fun fact.
Christina outlines the day's checklist, including meeting team members, providing a C Squared overview, checking on McKinsey laptop distribution, and joining training sessions. She also discusses operational basics such as professional email tone, timely call attendance, diligent note-taking, shared inbox awareness, and communicating blockers promptly.
Attendees participate in an icebreaker, sharing their preferred mobile app if they could only use one for the rest of their lives. Responses include YouTube, Safari (as a 'cheat code' for web access), TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and Spotify, revealing a mix of entertainment, utility, and social media preferences.
Cara recounts the founding story of C Squared, from meeting Christina at the beach to their professional collaborations at Impelum Group and AGS, eventually leading them to start their own consulting firm. She emphasizes the company's culture, focusing on curiosity, collaboration, urgency, and pride in their impactful work, particularly in solving complex global workforce issues.
Christina provides an overview of the external workforce industry, defining it as the modern practice of engaging, tracking, and paying non-full-time employees. She explains different categories like independent contractors, flexible staffing, and project-based outsourcing, and details the full life cycle of talent management from identifying needs to offboarding.
The team discusses their specific role in the McKinsey project, which involves providing Business Process Outsourcing for McKinsey's external workforce center of excellence. They will manage the pre-boarding, onboarding, utilization support, renewals, and offboarding for various 'advisor archetypes,' such as former heads of state or CEOs, ensuring a seamless experience and compliance.
The organizational structure for the McKinsey project is outlined, with Cara and Christina as co-founders, Mila as the lead manager supported by Nancy, and separate teams for US-based and Manila-based operations. Each team will work 8 AM to 5 PM in their respective local time zones, supporting different regions (US/AMIA and APAC) and handling advisor life cycle tasks, due diligence, and stakeholder communication.
Guidelines are provided for issue resolution, directing team members to their agencies for HR-related issues, Nancy or pod leads for day-to-day execution, and Cara and Christina for high-level escalations. The 'Hypercare' phase for the first few weeks will involve daily standups, frequent communication, and extensive documentation due to the critical nature of the outsourcing initiative.
The training schedule is detailed, with an initial two-hour session followed by structured daily training for two weeks, emphasizing bite-sized learning and progressing to dual-run shadowing and readiness checks. The team will eventually transition to a steady state after 90 days. Confidentiality regarding the McKinsey project is also stressed as a key operational consideration.