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Market conditions create “right-sizing” situations inside our teams. If a perceived “great” performer doesn’t have strong sponsorship during that head-cutting exercise required by market conditions, he/she is exposed. And unfortunately (@ least @ EY), we have promoted mediocre leaders into roles like “people lead” who wouldn’t know “great” talent if we’re wearing a name badge. So as she is making cuts, they are sadly just numbers on a spreadsheet. Last point is: facts and quantitive metrics can be manipulated (re: be discounted) for the sake of qualitative. As an example from recent banding call - this sr mgr shouldn’t get credit for this sale b/c she really didn’t ‘lead’ the effort. This comment was refuted by deal lead but in the end bc the individual had ‘weak’ sponsorship, her metrics took a hit. That kind of game happens all the time in process (particularly when the conversation is led by a leader w a Machiavellian agenda - like EY people lead)
I’m not aware of any instances when we let top performers go unless there was an HR issue or they really weren’t top performers.
In the bad years, we sometimes have to make cuts, but those do not start with top performers.
OP, you sound like the OP of the other thread that was let go in a milestone year despite "great utilization and snapshots."
Perhaps the impression of you internally was not the best despite good on paper metrics
To build on D1s point - EY just went thru a leadership change in Advisory from a “former ACN” leadership team to an “former IBM” leadership team - and guess what happened. Former IBMers suddenly became smarter and for met ACNers got dumber. To put a final point on it - the new management style is the ‘burn & slash’ headcount game IBM is famous for. Sadly, at the country club known at EY, no one has ever been that ruthless so many were caught off-guard. So adaptability to new management kills good talent too
Nope this is just business 😂 to give you an example, if I joined an organization (as new leadership) that expected me to show results in a short period of time with finite resources , but gave me the flexibility to adjust and reorganize my resources, I would reorganize for efficiency and in a way that I trust and have a base of familiarity.
Without hesitation I would choose to replace 200 existing people resources with 100 people whose credibility I buy, being managed by 10 people I trust versus wasting my limited time trying to win the trust of the 200 people, learning their strengths/weaknesses and how to manage them.
At the end of the day, consulting firms are like mercenary organizations. You either grow and get a lot of work and results or everybody starves. Therefore reorganization’s at even a whole practice level is really a small sacrifice in the grand scheme of the business and survival.
2nd what P1 said, it also can be a growth issue. Someone can be an awesome consultant, but not progressing to be a manager. With firms that have up or out cultures, even the best consultant would get cut if they can't move up toward management.
Being a good individual contributor doesn't necessarily mean you're a good manager or leader.
I find your reply refreshing, however I will say there are countless partners and principals I know who are GREAT consultants and terrible people leaders. I find this actually to be a bigger problem in consulting than in industry as in our space, being brilliant can often be enough to get you to the top!
Then why do people give them great snapshots and performance ratings?
I feel there is another layer to the story.
Sometimes there’s a lot of politics. And people giving you snapshots might not be the strongest people in the team driving decisions. I say only fair bet in this game is don’t be on anyone’s bad books, and suck all the way. At least all successful directors in my group are that way.
It’s a little bit of being good at work and managing the crowd. Knowing the true players at the top and appearing non threatening to their team.
P2 so nice to hear the truth for a change from a partner! Kudos to you on realizing the truth and sharing with us. It’s just not EY the so-called upcoming leads in my team are similar in terms of agenda.
No worries, but yeah sometimes people aren't as good as they think they are
Agree with #4
No that was not me OP, I was just a reader of that post and it sparked my curiosity.
They are saying it's great when maybe it was really just "great"
@OP - Just my observation. There are also cases where the talent pool in a particular firm can shrink - mostly because of reasons whose consequences result in poor compensation, and other times for reasons around politics, unexpected events, etc.
Arguably, if you were to graphically plot the people in any organization’s talent pool based on intelligence/capabilities, you generally produce a Bell Curve. When the highly capable people suddenly start to leave (because they’re also the ones whose opportunities keep increasing over time), the bell curve shifts and leadership has no choice but to promote/support/reward the people that are left to act as “fillers” until they rebalance the Talent Bell curve. Most of the time, those people that are left are the useless coasters or the people that are take more time to perform/deliver.
But finding good talent takes time so invariably the less capable people start to crowd the top ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Totally agree with Partner 2. That’s how it works and how it happens. Internal eminence is important
I am not Partner so you can choose to ignore my advice
1.Top performers are the one who got supported by Strong people
2. Performances are always relative
3. Logically next level on Snapshot is the max you get , what matters is by whom( person who did snapshot)
4.Relationships matter more than we think. It’s a ship so you need more than one person to run(except the autonomous one :))
5. Take advice and think about it . Don’t overthink , sometimes people who give, they don’t
6. It’s Saturday enjoy
7. Remember Advice given on weekends are better than given on weekdays