McKinsey: Ferry, can you tell us about your background?
Ferry Grijpink: I’m the first member of my wider family to attend university. My parents were both hairdressers and met in a salon. Later, my mum got some part-time administrative work, and my dad became a carpenter. After he got laid off, he worked as a mailman.
I came from a family that really believed in education as a force to lift yourself up. So my parents invested a lot in our education and really deprived themselves of a lot of luxuries to make sure we could go to good schools. At primary school, I did very well but wasn’t really recognized by teachers because of my background. But when I got to high school, teachers saw my potential, for which I was very grateful.
I studied electrical engineering at university and had quite a lot of opportunities. My parents really encouraged me to try to go abroad even though it cost a lot of money, so I borrowed money to go there. When I was done with my studies, I picked a large company, and know my father was really proud I joined Shell, which is a well-known corporation in the Netherlands.
I’d never heard of McKinsey, and only found out what consulting was when I worked at Shell and then co-founded a start-up. And then I applied to McKinsey, and to my surprise, they actually let me in, which was a very exciting moment.
McKinsey: How has your background influenced your work?
Ferry Grijpink: I bring three things from my background. The first is a deep appreciation of how work is actually done. My parents would always tell us how they did their jobs, and quite often, it was not aligned with what management thought. For example, my mum would say, “This is the way you’re supposed to do administration, but it’s not possible, so we do it in a different way.” So every time I go into a client setting, I want to understand how people on the shop floor really do their work, which is typically very different than we often believe.
I think the second thing is the feeling of being an outsider, which I felt at university, during my first job at Shell, and even partly at McKinsey. Many people have reasons to feel like outsiders, and when you can connect with them over that, it makes it easier to work together. For example, when I lived Asia, it was very useful to know what it feels like to be an outsider, and how to relate with others who felt the same thing.
Lastly, it’s I’d say recognizing the importance of luck. I was very lucky my parents pushed me so hard to get a good education that they were willing to invest in for my future. A lot of people from the neighbourhood where I grew up with didn’t have that experience. And I know that in a different life, I would’ve probably ended up somewhere else.
McKinsey: What steps can be made to make lasting change in the representation of individuals?
Ferry Grijpink: Maybe two things. First, I remember the coming to McKinsey for the first time. It’s incredibly intimidating, a big building full of very highly educated people I wasn’t used to interacting with. Now that I’m leading Prism in Europe, I get lots of emails from people from similar socioeconomic backgrounds who are also very intimidated by the interview process. So how can we make that process easier?
Second, I think it’s quite important to make sure we make people feel at home here at McKinsey. How do we make sure that we discuss things that everybody understands and can relate to? I remember my first McKinsey dinner, and the conversation was all about wine and poetry, things I could not discuss. So how do we make people feel less intimidated? I think that’s the first step.