Ron Daniel

D. Ronald Daniel (February 26, 1930 – December 16, 2023) was a longtime top senior partner and director at management consultancy McKinsey & Company, serving as managing director (chief executive) from 1976 to 1988. Biography Ronald Daniel graduated from Wesleyan University with a B.A. in mathematics in 1952 and received an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School in 1954.

Business career After graduating in 1954, Daniel served as an officer of the U.S. Navy Supply corps, where he worked with early IBM mainframes. He joined McKinsey & Company, Inc. in 1957 and was a senior partner from 1968 to 1990. He served as managing director for twelve years (1976-1988) preceding Fred Gluck, and was senior partner emeritus of the firm.

At McKinsey, Daniel developed the concept of "success factors", which led to the emergence of critical success factors, those "areas of [business] activity that should receive constant and careful attention from management". He hired and mentored future managing director Rajat Gupta. He was Jeffrey Skilling's former boss before Skilling became CEO of Enron.

In 2004, he described himself as "the bridge between McKinsey's founding generation and the present".

Outside McKinsey, he was a director of Yum! Brands and chairman of New York-based private equity firm Ripplewood Holdings.