In the early days of professional services, knowledge was simply the collective expertise of the people in the room. As organizations grew, that knowledge was codified into playbooks, white papers, and structured processes. Eventually, the digital age introduced specialized databases, custom applications, and regional repositories.
But as these layers of information multiplied, they created a silent, productivity-sapping challenge: Organizational knowledge became highly fragmented. Valuable insights were trapped in regional silos, specific practice groups, or individual minds. Even with all that intelligence, the friction of finding it was a major blocker.
To address this challenge, global organizations are rethinking how they democratize their organizational intelligence. At McKinsey & Company, this effort led to the creation of Lilli, a custom AI platform built by Kitti Lakner and her team to connect the firm’s fragmented knowledge base.
Not just a search engine, Lilli is:
- An AI-driven sounding board and thought partner that helps consultants access, navigate, and amplify the firm’s collective intelligence
- A cognitive multiplier that both accelerates onboarding for junior staff and increases the productivity and reach of experienced experts
- A federated solution that connects McKinsey’s complex, multi-dimensional knowledge base, including practice assets, expert directories, and proprietary data, making it easily discoverable and consumable within a consultant’s daily workflow
McKinsey’s approach offers a grounded perspective on what it actually takes to unlock collective intelligence at scale within a single organization.
Moving from information silos to a sounding board
Before the introduction of generative AI, navigating a massive firm’s collective intelligence was a complex, multi-dimensional challenge. Valuable assets, expert directories, and proprietary data sources existed, but they lived in separate, disconnected spaces. Even if an organization attempted the monumental task of centralizing this data, making it easily searchable and consumable for an employee in the middle of their daily workflow was nearly impossible.
Lilli frees up valuable time, allowing professionals to focus on deep, creative client interactions that technology can’t replicate.
“Everybody at McKinsey is a grade-A problem solver and has the fortitude to do whatever is needed to get the job done,” says Lakner. “But you wouldn’t know where certain things existed, or where to go and look for them — or even that they existed, in some cases.”
She goes on, “It had been a problem we had tried to solve many, many different ways, but it didn’t really seem approachable or solvable until large language models took flight.”
As a tool, Lilli has transformed how teams prepare for client engagements. Instead of spending days manually hunting down internal experts or searching through fragmented databases to build a starting hypothesis, consultants can query the system to identify the best minds and relevant historical work within minutes.
Lilli frees up valuable time, allowing professionals to focus on deep, creative client interactions that technology can’t replicate.
Why the strongest professionals benefit the most
One of the most common debates surrounding workplace AI is whether tools like Lilli level the playing field or widen the gap between junior and senior staff. The reality is more nuanced. While AI significantly accelerates onboarding for new hires, helping them quickly learn organizational frameworks and navigate company standards, its true power acts as a multiplier for experienced professionals.
Deep expertise, built over years of hands-on experience, remains irreplaceable when it comes to evaluating the accuracy and relevance of AI-generated outputs. But when an expert utilizes these tools, their productivity and reach expand exponentially.
“The stronger the person is, the more they know, the more of an expert they are, the more it multiplies them,” Lakner observes.
The stronger the person is, the more they know, the more of an expert they are, the more it multiplies them.
At McKinsey, this plays out in how senior leaders spend their time. Rather than spending hours building slide decks, structuring spreadsheets, or manually formatting data, senior leaders can leverage next-generation capabilities to synthesize information and bring solutions to clients much faster. The focus shifts from the administrative mechanics of work to high-level strategic direction.
Preserving the art of problem solving
When organizations begin automating parts of their core workflows, a natural concern arises: Will reliance on technology cause essential skills to decline?
Within professional services, the ability to dissect a complex problem and build a structured solution is the ultimate value proposition. But if an AI can draft a presentation or outline a strategy, how do junior professionals develop the critical thinking skills required to become the leaders of tomorrow? This concern was top of mind for McKinsey’s leadership during the development of Lilli.
The solution lies in distinguishing between the mechanical tasks of a job and the intellectual rigor of problem-solving. Lakner uses the example of presentation creation to illustrate this distinction. Historically, building a deck has been a necessary headache for those leading conversations. First comes the tedious presentation-building, then the valuable discussions.
The problem-solving in the team room needs to remain, but the moving the boxes around doesn’t.
“The problem-solving in the team room needs to remain,” Lakner explains. “But the moving the boxes around doesn’t." While the manual effort of formatting slide layouts can now be automated, the intellectual debate stays.
And by automating this sort of administrative overhead in all kinds of ways, teams can spend more time in active discussion and less on administrative minutiae.
Investing in people over platforms
Many organizations allocate the bulk of their budgets to software licenses and technical infrastructure, assuming that superior tools will naturally drive adoption. In practice, technology is often the easiest part of the equation.
Lakner emphasizes the importance of investing in change management just as much as in tools. “Not everybody likes change,” she says, “and not everyone knows how to change. People have to feel like there’s something in it for them.”
For every dollar spent on technology, an organization should expect to invest four dollars in change management
True digital transformation requires an organization to rewire its habits, incentives, and culture. Lakner references a powerful rule of thumb she’s learned: For every dollar spent on technology, an organization should expect to invest four dollars in change management.
When McKinsey first rolled out Lilli, the initial training focused on teaching employees how to write prompts. But this technical approach failed to drive enough adoption. The breakthrough came when they shifted the focus to real-world business uses and human incentives.
To make change stick, leadership must also lead by example. Top-down commitment, combined with the enthusiasm of younger, digitally native employees, creates a powerful cultural alignment.
How to build a Lilli
Building a bespoke “Lilli” for your organization might feel out of reach. But Box AI Studio, Box MCP server, Box Platform, and Box Automate are the tools that make it achievable.
Box is the file system for your AI efforts, giving AI a consistent, reliable interface to your enterprise content at any scale, across any model. You can connect your organization’s existing content (documents, presentations, spreadsheets, and more) into a single governed file system.
Because Box enforces your existing permissions and compliance controls automatically, your organization’s sensitive content stays governed without requiring a new security model.
Rather than embarking on a multi-year infrastructure overhaul, your teams can begin surfacing collective intelligence from the content they already have. The result is a smarter, more connected workforce where the right knowledge reaches the right person at exactly the right moment.
