1. The culture is acidic; people are becoming more and more political by the day; and the dissonance between what's being communicated by the leadership (e.g., that they care about people development, the firm is doing great) and what's actually being done is shocking - this is ironic because we have a “Center of Excellence” on organizational culture
2. Loss of good people. Strategy& is hemorrhaging talent, primarily via two channels: a) Voluntary: since the merger, top talents have jumped ship to MBB, industry or startups. b) Layoffs: Due to poor performance, a lot of strong legacy Booz staff (from juniors to Partners) were laid off over the past few years.
3. The hard functional AND industry alignment is an asinine concept, especially for junior staff. Although advertised as 'generalist with a home,' there is nothing 'generalist' about this model. Staffing is still primarily done at your alignment point and junior resources get pigeon-holed very early on.
4. The Booz & Company integration was a huge mess. I don't know how we can say we are qualified to support M&A integrations for our clients when we can't even do our own effectively.
5. Free fall in brand and prestige. Our Vault ranking has dropped from a solid #4 back in the Booz days to #10 this year. There was an expensive 'brand reboot' project that did nothing to boost our recognition. Even though leadership has communicated that name is only one part of the brand, but it is a big part. No matter how much money is poured into building the other brand elements, the “Strategy-and” name is still a tough sell, not to mention completely ludicrous.
6. The bureaucracy of PwC is suffocating - nothing is easy.
7. Corporate functions (i.e.,IT, HR, finance, etc.) are completely useless - no one takes ownership over anything and, I’d like to reiterate, doing anything is a pain.
