Inspiration for this post comes from the aspiration expressed by Bob Sternfels, McKinsey and Company's Global Managing partner since 2021. Five years into this role, in an interview released in the Harvard Business Review at the beginning of the month dedicated to the worship of the Roman god, Janus, Sternfels said, "We want to make ourselves better." This is his eighth sentence in a paragraph where the fourth sentence follows a list of regrets confessing, "We got those wrong?"
Aspiration is the partnership of hope and ambition. It's dreaming dreams and asking, "Why not? and "What if." This is the forward looking face of Janus.
At the same time, aspiration also means, literally in its Latin root, to suck it up. When my daughter spent a year in China, her host parents taught her a similar expression, 吃苦, meaning "eat bitter." As a now old man, I'm more familiar with the teaching of T.S. Eliot -- American, English, banker, poet, Christian, Nobel Prize recipient -- in his line from the Four Quartets describing among the gifts reserved for age: "the rending pain of reenactment, of things done and done to other's harm which once you took for exercise of virtue." Janus looking backward.
Maturity is neither moving fast and breaking things; nor hiding in the nostalgia of the greatness of a mythical past. I don't personally know Bob Sternfels. I know that he's not an outsider coming in saying, "you got this wrong." He's leading from the position of having spent the last 32 years inside a 100-year-old organization. Sternfels is deeply identified with McKinsey. He's leading with "We" . . . "got it wrong." As someone who started as a junior associate and rose to the highest level of partnership, he further acknowledges "We" had biases in the way people like him were selected -- initially -- and then selected up along the way.
To move forward, to learn, to change, all require an acknowledgment that the place you are isn't sufficient. When Janus looks backward, Janus sees these powerful identities: ethnicity, banker, poet, religious, Nobel Prize recipient. And Janus sees the harm I'm blind to because I identify myself, and perhaps am identified, as virtuous.
Identities are more tools our brains use for efficiency. I'm righteous. We're Number One. Nothing to learn here folks. Nothing to suck up. No bitter to eat. No blood, toil, tears, or sweat to spend getting better. We especially don't need to confront the shame and pain of having gone so wrong when we knew we were so right.
Aspiration is holding opposites. Our brains don't like opposites. They likes yes, no; friend; foe; good, bad. Our brains like, "That's the way we've always done it."
I can't argue that my brain is wrong to embrace efficiency. Since up until about 1840, half the people born were dead by aged 35. Maybe locking in good enough early on, and celebrating that, was, well, good enough. Janus looking forward saw pretty much the same old; same old, just with new people.
At the start of 2026, in the month honoring Janus, Bob and I are still engaging in careers that are longer than half the people in the world had for entire lifetimes. And we have a good shot at still being at it for a few more years.
Here's why, "That's the way we've always done it." won't get us better.
1955 -- The year I was born
2.74 billion people -- world population
2025 -- The year my grandson was born
8.2 billion people -- world population
1951
88 -- number of McKinsey employees
2026
60,000 -- number of McKinsey employees -- 40,000 humans and 20,000 AI agents
Janus couldn't see this far the year I was born. What's 2095 looking like for my grandson?
References:
Interview: https://hbr.org/2026/01/we-want-to-make-ourselves-better?deliveryName=NL_BestOfTheIssue_20251223 Janus: https://www.kairoscognition.com/blog/2ec1b30704ba2db T.S. Eliot: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/t-s-eliot