Pros
First, a little about us. We are more than 3 and fewer than 10 current and recent Slalom employees, each with at least five years of tenure. Some of us are/have been in leadership positions. We’re writing this collectively to bundle our thoughts and provide some shared concerns about the state and direction of the company. We’re also using AI to help with phrasing, primarily to mask our identities. In our experience, Slalom has gradually (and then more swiftly) shifted from a consultant-oriented, relationship and quality-driven company to one that increasingly feels like it takes “Global Domination” (a phrase used by senior leaders in the past) far too seriously. We were so, so proud to not be just a baby Accenture, but with each passing year, this becomes less and less true. We have all been “true believers” in what Slalom was about: the culture, the high quality of the consultants, the desire to truly do the right things for our clients and ourselves, and our roles in making Slalom great. But one by one, we’ve lost that lovin’ feeling. In the past, when top leaders said “Global Domination” was their vision, we chuckled and admired the ambition for growth, assuming it would always be tempered by a preference for the special culture and small town feel of the company. It turns out the joke was on us. We also chuckled at Brad’s increasingly grandiose visions and aspirations, which used to seem cute and mildly inspiring, but have come to seem more and more ego-centric.
Cons
Here are a few of the things that have changed how we feel about Slalom (we worked really hard to pare down our original list): 1. Putting profits first – over people and over values. The first value on Slalom’s list is “Do what is right, always”, but there’s a little caveat: “unless it puts revenue at risk.” We have experienced so many instances of senior leaders NOT doing the right thing because they don’t want to risk not hitting their numbers. It makes this value completely hollow. 2. Over-indexing on sales. Obviously, this complements #1. Consultants in delivery roles used to be free to focus on authentic delivery, on doing the right things for their clients and feeling really proud of their work. Sure, they helped with proposals/shaping the work and often managed to get themselves extended because they were so awesome at delivery. Now, however, consultants aren’t valued unless they sell, sell, sell! This creates an awkward dynamic with clients and devalues people who just aren’t cut out for sales (and now have no hope of getting promoted). Conversely, many biz dev/sales people lack a delivery background, making them far less effective than they should be and burdening consultants with a lot of what should be their work—and also requiring consultants to be more and more careful about what they sign on to because they can’t trust a lot of the sales work. 3. Creating two classes of employees (three if we include support staff). Increasing stock incentives for senior leaders to ensure they are ‘on the same page’ is just one part of this, but it’s important for a couple reasons: A) the “page” is all about revenue numbers, which drives short-term decision-making that prioritizes revenue at the expense, again, of people and values; and B). The rich get richer, expanding the divide between senior executives and the people actually doing delivery. We used to feel we were pretty much all in the same boat, but now it feels like leaders are so revenue driven and rewarded that they push hard on their people to take roles that aren’t a good fit or preference. And with layoffs, Slalom has made it dangerous to be on the bench. 4. Hiring an increasing number of young, inexperienced ‘consultants.’ These people are often pushed on to projects where they aren’t needed because they have better margins than experienced consultants, which isn’t fair to clients and burdens experienced consultants with people who can’t do much and need a lot of oversight and rework. 5. Being so very late to act on internal feedback – such as tying vacation to utilization and ignoring for YEARS how this impacts willingness to use accrued vacation time, while at the same time preaching work-life balance. The lightbulb took . . . um, decades . . . to go off on this issue and has yet to go off on others. 6. Promoting self-promoters. The promotion process at Slalom has always been broken and cumbersome; now, more than ever, it seems set up to discourage many capable people. And don’t expect anyone at Slalom to help you find your niche and move up. For one, they don’t have time because they’re stretched too thin. For two, the system is only set up for people who want to give Slalom gobs of their personal time above and beyond client work just to be then told that there’s no place on the ladder for them (especially after over-promoting a number of very mediocre people), but perhaps you’d like to manage some people anyway? Also, Slalom tends to promote a certain ‘type’ of person, while claiming to value all personality types. And hey, you better show up to every company event you can for visibility! 7. Leaders take the best roles and things trickle down to favorites from there. It’s very hard for anyone below Director to get staffed on the really cool projects. If a senior consultant or principal doesn’t pursue promotion (because they like having a life or don’t enjoy sales), it doesn’t matter if they are actually more talented at delivery, they will get lots of crap projects.