Lilli: McKinsey's Generative AI Platform That’s Transforming Consulting
Unlocking McKinsey’s Century-Old Knowledge with AI
McKinsey & Company has introduced a generative AI platform, "Lilli," designed to empower its consultants by providing instant access to nearly 100 years of curated insights. Unlike generic AI tools, Lilli leverages McKinsey's proprietary data and expertise, acting as a transformative resource for consultants to deliver sharper, faster, and more impactful solutions.
How Lilli Enhances Consulting Practices
The platform is not just another retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) system. It combines advanced AI models and proprietary algorithms to function as an "orchestration layer" that synthesizes refines, and contextualizes knowledge for McKinsey consultants. Here’s how Lilli is reshaping the consulting process:
On-Demand Expertise: Lilli enables consultants to query McKinsey’s historical case studies, frameworks, and research findings to generate client-ready insights in real-time.
Enhanced Communication: With its McKinsey Tone of Voice agent, the platform ensures all outputs meet the firm’s high standards for clarity, professionalism, and precision.
Streamlined Workflows: Routine analytical tasks are minimized, allowing consultants to focus more on interpreting and activating client insights.
Why Lilli Matters to Consulting
A Leap in Productivity
Traditionally, consulting has been a time-intensive process involving deep research and laborious synthesis. Lilli accelerates this by instantly providing consultants with the best possible answer derived from McKinsey's vast knowledge repository.
Maintaining Competitive Edge
In a world where generative AI is increasingly commoditized, McKinsey's ability to tailor Lilli for its proprietary data and client-centric use cases ensures the firm remains a leader in providing strategic advice.
Driving Better Client Outcomes
By minimizing time spent on lower-value tasks like report formatting or basic data crunching, consultants can spend more time working directly with clients to solve their most pressing challenges.
The Future McKinsey Consultant: More Empathy, Less Analysis
Erik Roth, a senior partner at McKinsey, envisions a future where consultants spend less time on manual analytics and more on building relationships and delivering actionable insights. Tools like Lilli are reshaping the hiring criteria for consultants, emphasizing empathy, problem-solving, and creativity over technical data analysis skills. More than 70% of firm members are already active on Lilli.
Industry Use Cases
Healthcare
A consultant working on a hospital efficiency project could use Lilli to instantly pull global benchmarks, historical success stories, and actionable frameworks tailored to healthcare. This allows for immediate strategy formation and a faster path to implementation.
Financial Services
When advising banks on regulatory changes, consultants can use Lilli to generate tailored scenarios that combine McKinsey's extensive regulatory knowledge with real-time industry trends.
Consumer Goods
For brands launching new products, Lilli can synthesize insights from successful campaigns across regions, helping consultants deliver bespoke strategies to clients.
Lessons for Other Organizations
McKinsey’s journey with Lilli offers valuable lessons for businesses exploring generative AI:
Data Readiness is Crucial: High-quality, well-organized data underpins the success of any AI platform. Companies must invest in curating and tagging their knowledge repositories.
Iterative Development Works: McKinsey’s user-centric, phased rollout ensured Lilli was optimized based on honest feedback.
Education is Key: Training employees on how to use AI tools effectively ensures adoption and maximizes ROI.
Curiosity and Optimism for the AI Era
Lilli exemplifies how generative AI can empower human creativity rather than replace it. Reducing time spent on repetitive tasks and elevating the quality of deliverables allows consultants to focus on what matters most: creating value for clients. As generative AI evolves, tools like Lilli will play a central role in shaping the future of consulting and beyond.
With Lilli, McKinsey isn’t just embracing AI—it’s setting the standard for how organizations can use these technologies to remain competitive, innovative, and impactful. This marks the beginning of a new era of more innovative, faster, and more effective problem-solving for consultants.