Fellow Slalomers, have any of you, esp those in larger offices, noticed a huge loss of culture and/or leadership transparency over the years? Seattle xm here and noticing things

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One thing I love about Slalom, is that is still small enough for any one to drive change. You have very easy access to leadership. Make a case with actions to improve!

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Am from LA office & totally agree with this. Leadership's lack of direction, short sightedness & in some cases total lack of respect for subordinates bordering on bullying caused a lot of folks to leave in recent months.

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Definitely have felt that in NYC lately. I'm 3.5 years in and there has been a major culture shift especially with some particular hires in the past year or so. I think most people have realized this and there's an effort to focus back on the important stuff

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The question was asking to compare slalom now against slalom in previous years, not against Big 4. Yes, it is still a huge improvement culturally against Big 4, but there are differences from Slalom only 3 years ago. I'm not sure about the staffing firm you worked for 5 years ago, but 3 years ago, I saw more project-based work, and now I'm seeing more staff aug. I used to hear things like "we rejected that project because we 'do what's right, always,' and now I hear partners regularly tell consultants to suck it up or "take one for the team." Little things like that which make it clear that people aren't the number one priority anymore.

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Agreed with most sentiment here (2+ years at Slalom). Still a welcomed change to Big 4 life, but it is definitely become a lot of staff aug. due to the focus on bottom line. While I think slalom is still small enough to drive change, I find that most leaders are so busy wearing 10 different hats (sales, counselor, project manager, relationship builder etc) that the "sponsorship" of ideas/change falls through the crack. Just was talking to a leader the other day who mentioned they tried focusing on something like this (long term strategy change) and didn't hit one of their (6) goals as a result. Ended up killing their quarterly bonus.

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Our biggest problem is that we dont build leaders. There is very little incentive to work hard here. I could bust my ass and work on 1-2 bd efforts every week. Build an offering and hit my chargeability metrics and my bonus will only be 1% more than a person that didnt work a second over 40 hours.

I asked leadership about this and they said the only way to be rewarded is just get promoted cause they really dont want to differentiate people at the lower levels.

But anyway - basically what this does is that it means leaders cant really push stuff downwards because normal staff doesn't get rewarded for taking it on. Which means that our senior leads will get stuck wearing multiple hats

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It's consulting in general not slalom. Our market is taking a dive like a double black diamond at Vail.

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Yeah I figured with any company growing and whatnot, there's going to be some adversity, but what Slalom once was about 4-5 years ago is definitely not what it is these days

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Growth has slowed and XM and all markets for that matter need to show results. I think the culture is fine, but everyone is under a lot of pressure to grow the bottom line.

A couple years back when we were growing 30% there was a lot less attention on strategy and costs. I think the recent focus is a great thing for us in the long term.

No new offices, hiring freeze for x-market and a focus on getting all markets profitable, building offerings and strengthening our capabilities.

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OP, Slalom was just emerging from its staffing firm roots 5 years ago. Hard to compare it to the almost $1B consulting firm it's become..

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Curious about what the differences are that you're noticing more specifically. I'm in NYC and it's def a breath of fresh air from big 4 life - but feel you on some political bs.

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I must be drinking the cool aid because I still love it. ACN over a decade and now 2.5 yrs at Slalom. :)

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@A1: XM = Cross Market. More travel, focus on tech delivery/dev

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@S2: I've only been with Slalom for 6mo but I've heard those phrases a lot. It's been hard to gauge if this is just how Slalom operates or if it's a shift, but I've been a bit underwhelmed with lackluster staffing. Leadership doesn't seem to care that projects are under delivering or need stronger staffing as long as the checks keep getting signed by the client.

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Agree w S9. What would happen if you started to challenge leaders based on the values?

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It seems Tobin is pretty active on Glassdoor. Not sure if that's just lip service but he does seem to encourage direct feedback to leadership

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A variety of reasons. Disagreement with decisions made by leadership and lack of career growth seem to be the biggest.

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I'm relatively young in terms of tenure and overall age, 3 yrs @ 26 but have not been happy with overall direction lately

I felt the same way when my previous company expanded.

What have you see change culture wise?

Can you explain further?

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