What a nice air in Bain’s Middle East office right now...

Thank you for sharing this! Appreciate the transparency, and best of luck with whatever comes next :)

Thanks for sharing! We’ve done our best to destroy our firm culture here at PwC over the last few years, but you listed some new methods of reducing employee morale until the soul fades away that we hadn’t thought of yet! We’ll be stealing those from you (just like we copy all MBB ideas) and implementing them in our next semi-annual firmwide reorganization and rebranding!

-PwC Leadership Team

Dear all,

My journey with Bain Middle East has come to an end and I wanted to take this opportunity to reflect upon that. My almost 3 years with Bain Middle East have been an incredible learning opportunity, both on a professional and personal level, within and outside the board room. One of the first and most important lessons I’ve learned at Bain is that building relationships is about building trust. Only later did I learn how to build that trust.

Despite being a great opportunity, the learning at Bain Middle East is unfortunately overshadowed by a plethora of complications and difficulties. Let me be clear at the outset: the purpose of this email is neither to grumble nor to disparage, but simply to ensure the most accurate picture is presented to the right audience to enable effective discussion. Apologies in advance for this long email, but please bear with me.

It is easy to leave and write a thank you email that does nothing to highlight the systemic issues one faces – and don’t get me wrong, I’ve sent countless individual thank you emails to all those I’ve encountered and worked with during my time here. But I cannot leave Bain Middle East without raising flags about some of the issues I’ve personally experienced or seen and have that on my conscience. I cannot know that there is an opportunity to make something heard and let it go.

What follows are examples of issues I’ve personally experienced or have seen others experience that I deem not befitting of a place like Bain Middle East. These are without a doubt non-exhaustive and are for the most part probably exceptional, but they are issues nonetheless and should be raised and discussed as such:

· Senior principle asking a junior AC, in the role of ombudsman, to specifically name other consultants who wrote comments through the CTSU – traditionally understood and accepted to be an anonymous survey – and when the AC fought back to respect their privacy and not break their confidence, the senior principle vehemently and aggressively responds that they, the AC, are wrong, that everything is shareable and that they want to know right now
· Consultant promoted to CTL and then to manager who frequently resulted in consultants facing nervous breakdowns and crying, and also leading to a fair number of competent, dedicated consultants leaving the firm. The vast majority of these consultants are females and I personally know of 5 who experienced this
· Senior principal asking a consultant who is in hospital for work to be delivered with a repulsive degree of disdain for their well-being
· Manager embarrassing junior team members in front of the client by deriding and disrespecting them; some might say even insulting them
· Manager telling their team that upward feedback will have zero impact on them and that they can write whatever they want as it does not matter
· Manager telling their team that if they do not improve CTSU scores and hours in the coming weeks, the current week they’re in will seem like heaven
· Senior principal aggressively trying to make the point that team members should be grateful there is no weekend work in contrast to the majority of other cases in the office – great application of benchmarking skills and team motivation
· An hour before a SteerCo with a C-level client, newly-joined junior manager decides to hand over their laptop to a client project manager to make adjustments to a Bain deck (given how the manager is poorly versed in PPT and excel) while the manager decides to go to the bathroom for a good 15 minutes

I’d like to digress for a second and discuss one thing near and dear to my heart: Bain’s review system. I was unfairly and unjustly assessed on a recent project after my case manager took many liberties in writing the review. Given the lack of standardization in writing reviews, this individual was able to write one that presented a picture that is in stark difference to reality, betraying Bain’s trust in managers to present the most accurate account of case team members’ performance. Moreover, the way the process works, unfortunately, leaves little room for someone like me to defend or represent their point of view, and the representative who is supposed to present your point of view and defend you in the review meeting, your PD advisor, is at times conflicted and not necessarily allowed to freely convey the truth. Nonetheless, the biggest issue lies in the so-called calibration committee, whose members, purpose, processes and output is a black box leaving one wondering if it even exists in the first place. And once again, even then, there is no formal or standardized process on how they go about “calibrating” reviews. This lack of transparency and clarity not only serves to create an environment free of trust, but it also leads to frustrations and demotivation.

Now, I’m not naive, and I realize that these issues probably occur everywhere, in every kind of institution, organization and entity across the globe. But the problem lies not in these issues occurring, but in the lack of procedures to deal with them when they do occur. As I mentioned above, some of the examples raised are probably exceptional, but when they’re left untouched and undealt with, they snowball, grow, gain scale and become undesired, unofficial norms. So what happens when a manager decides to flout acceptable operating procedures and working principals? What happens when a manager betrays Bain’s trust in writing a review because they might have it in for someone? What happens when the systems of checks and balances, such as the calibration committee, are out-of-balance or malfunctioned? What happens when a principal threatens to retaliate against you for writing upward feedback or raising an issue to HR or staffing by saying something along the lines of: “remember your place as I’m a principal and you’re just a consultant.”? What happens when you’re told not to dispute the results of the review as it “may create a negative impression of you being combative and unreceptive to feedback in the office”?” Or that it won’t lead to any results as you’re up against a senior principal, which essentially means your word carries almost no weight? As a quick note on the review process, It astonishes me that we are able to benchmark results for our clients pretty well but we rarely apply the same to ourselves: in several other firms in the region, consultants are given the opportunity to self-asses themselves and present their point of view on their own case performance which then leads to a discussion between them and the manager prior to the final review. I’m sure Bain has thought of that, at least I hope so, or perhaps something similar, and perhaps it was concluded that the disadvantages of that system outweigh the advantages, but the way the system works right now is without a doubt ineffective, inefficient and imperfect.

But perhaps it’s best not to listen to an outgoing AC’s rambles who might simply come off as a disgruntled employee (though in their best interest, those employees would simply leave in silence), but rather, to some examples from other employees, some or all of which are probably also nothing new. When transfers from global Bain offices ask about Bain Middle East prior to transferring, they are warned that “This is not Bain.” Glassdoor is a great resource for people to express their points of view freely and as I’m sure most of you are aware, these are some of the comments you can find (and yes I am indeed cherry-picking the ones that require attention, because, well, they require attention and they provide direction on what needs to be improved):

· “A firm like Bain should not allow a situation like in the Middle East to persist’ the problem has existed for years but no real action has been taken.”
· “Atrocious culture: management doesn’t give a damn.”
· “Management care very little about your development or work-life balance…highly political, hard to get ahead if you don’t play the game… if global is reading this, please help this sinking ship. I cannot recommend Bain Dubai to job seekers or potential clients right now! I wish I could, but I’d be lying.”
· “The worst of Bain, globally…”

There is no doubt that the status quo is always more comfortable and that change is not easy and is always quite time-consuming. One of the key differentiators that attracted me to Bain was its True North principle, that we are always guided by a single point that is “unchanging, constant, singular.” It seems to me that this point at Bain Middle East has actually moved a bit and could now be pointing towards magnetic north or grid north, and so change and development are needed to get back on track. And true development, both on a personal and professional level, only occurs when we hold ourselves to a higher standard than we do others and it’s definitely not easy. Perhaps this is not Bain Middle East’s goal, but sometimes these goals are misaligned with what people are expecting of Bain, or perhaps it’s the other way around. In any case, I know that Bain Middle East is not unaware of the issues I raised above, but what truly kills me, what truly baffles me is why nothing seems to be happening. Yes, I do understand and appreciate the efforts we are frequently reminded of and told about to improve the way things work, but unfortunately, the reality on the ground is that nothing seems to be happening. If anything, it seems that things are becoming worse rather than improving. When I first joined Bain Middle East (Dubai back then), when someone was considering an offer between Bain and our green friends, Bain was the obvious and clear choice by a wide margin. I’m sorry to say, but nowadays, that decision is not so clear-cut and requires more considerable thought.

When young juniors and seniors from my alma mater, Harvard College, reach out to ask for advice about working at Bain Middle East, I always give them a realistic assessment of how things are. I also always say that it is critical they speak with other people in the office to get as varied an understanding of the different experiences at Bain and to ideally get a better sense of a “typical” Bain experience. Yes, I’m acutely aware that my experience may not have been typical or that the environment may not have been the best for me, but the reality that experiences can deviate so severely and for reasons that are not only typical deviation levers but are also easily fixable is not something to be ignored. The last time I entered my hometown of Cairo, Egypt, there was an old man sitting on a chair next to the passport control. All of a sudden, the man stood up, and screamed at the edge of his voice, “God have mercy on this country and what it’s doing to me.” When a police officer approached him and urged him to remain calm, wondering why he was yelling and making the point that “yelling does nothing to help the situation,” the man replied saying, “I have nothing but my voice. I can only yell and scream.” I reiterate that one of the key lessons I learned at Bain is that relationships are built on trust, but the most important lesson I’ve learned is that trust is built by listening. If we fail to listen to each other and to give others the opportunity to express themselves, we lose trust. If we lose trust, we lost relationships and we become dysfunctional and feeble.

I leave you with the words of Doug Conant, CEO of Campbell’s Soup, who once said: “To win in the marketplace you must first win in the workplace.”

It’s a sad day when a consultant has to face some or all of the issues I’ve noted above. It’s an even sadder day when they have to resort to this on their last day because of a broken feedback system that is riddled with issues of its own, chief among them potential retaliation. But the saddest thing is knowing that much or all of this will fall on deaf ears and nothing will become of it.

I wish you all the best in making Bain Middle East the best place to work in the region.

And now my watch is ended.

This is a fantastic, well written and well reasoned email. It’s clear the person who wrote it (is it OP?) cares a tremendous amount and has the courage to stand up and say it. I hope your leadership team listens and this is a good wake up call.

Amazing, hopefully you sent this to the entire bain email list. Somebody in power will give a shit.

Wot in tarnation

Executive Summary? Pls fix.

OP - did u write this or are u sharing someone else’s post? If it’s the former, this is quite an abomination of an email. I read this novel 5 times and still can’t figure out what happened to u apart from a bad review. All the best man

This email was sent to the internal mail list earlier this summer. It initiated a major office transformation. We are in the midst of it right now, and I can safely say that it’s all thanks to that email which is being taken very seriously.

Regardless of whether or not this is a rant (and/or true or not), it must have taken courage to post this in a public forum, and I respect that. I have friends from business school at Bain (all North America based), and what the OP mentions is clearly not reflective of the Bain culture. Hopefully someone in the MEA leadership team initiates an honest investigation.
What I am wondering is if this systemic to Middle East consulting in general. I haven’t heard anything internally like this but will keep in mind to ask next time I meet my colleagues from there.

Well written. Takes balls to pull this off

OP, post in Bain bowl

The Middle East is a shit show when it comes to consulting firms. A few years ago BCG Dubai imploded and then attempted to pay its employees to remain silent. If you google you can probably still find the blog one of the BCGers wrote who refused to take the money. My friends at Mck US also say that they view McK Middle East folk weak performers compared to folk from western offices and wouldn't staff them on engagements unless absolutely necessary.

Hard to read but somewhat consistent with what I’ve heard about our ME offices. Clear exception in the network but should not be enabled...

Very elegantly written. You should become a composition professor.

Holy fck. A Middle East office that does not value individual liberties?

Cheers to that kid for putting it all out there! Hopefully it drives some positive change.

TL;DR?