Innosight Reviews

- Forget work life balance. The old review saying this is a company that allows for work-life balance is outdated and absolutely no longer true. Employees are told not to say that we are 9-5 anymore during interviews because this is not the case. It is consulting hours, 60++ a week if not a whole lot more, with lots of travel (although probably still less than traditional consulting firms). - Company is performance obsessed, and as one Innosighter so well put it "It takes some of the most brilliant, talented people, and then beats them up and makes them feel like crap about themselves." Morale and self-esteem can take a very deep dive here, as your weaknesses and "areas of improvement" are put under a magnifying glass and sometimes exploded to disproportionate lengths. People will notice and criticize even the smallest of things (e.g. whether you wait for the entire team after you get off the plane at the home airport, or just head off to go home, whether you help clients/partners with their bags, whether you used the preferred color scheme of the partner in your powerpoint deck, etc - in fact, even using "etc" is criticized as a form of laziness). And even after you improve on your so-called "areas of improvement," you are rewarded with another set of "areas of improvement" to work on because of the "need to show progress." As a result, there is a lot of performance anxiety, stress, and dare I say, general unhappiness amongst the ranks (although the unhappiness also stems from other factors like over-work). - One case or one person can make or break your career. The company is small, and getting on a "bad" case and/or working under someone whom you just don't gel with, can completely break your career here. That said, if you get in good with the right person, your upward progression can be very quick. People with a long tenure here are given some slack, but the newer comers are "only as good as your last case." - Culture has definitely shifted from feeling like a small family doing innovative work that people are passionate about, with people who genuinely like and respect one another, to a mini-McKinsey (but without the resources and prestige). The former Managing partner Matt Eyring left, and what we call the "McKinsey camp" has been winning out ever since. Making us colder, and much more rigid and process oriented. The new Managing Partner Scott Anthony is all the way out in Asia, and so doesn't have as good a pulse on the goings-on in the mothership. He is also a former McKinsey person, another reason for the move towards being more of a McKinsey. And as another reviewer wrote, "If I wanted to work at McKinsey, I would work at McKinsey."

Innosight as a firm is largely out of touch with its employees in a way that is surprising given who the firm is. We have an effort focused on developing or redefining the employee value proposition (a good thing), but it is being led by the most out of touch Senior Partner at the firm. The result is that there is a filter on communications where they only hear what they chose to hear and ignore anything that challenges their beliefs. Communication becomes very frustrating. Salaries at Innosight start close to on par with other consulting firms (maybe 15% less of around $120K vs. $135K at other firms), but this gap widens as you move up. A promotion at Innosight is typically an additional $10K per level. Bases for promotion are unclear and random - with decisions often in contrast to our espoused values - and a chaos or randomness to the process despite the 50 or so dimensions of performance we are evaluated on. Tradeoffs used to make sense given better lifestyle, but that has now gone away. Recently, we've undergone a brain drain with a number of people departing Innosight for Red Star Ventures, and more of us likely on our way in January. Other folks have left too at a pace far exceeding industry norms (as in the denominator is # of consultants, not # of personnel total) Unfortunately, we are not particularly good at recruiting to replace this talent. For example, we frequently promise new talent rapid promotions (6 months) only to conveniently forget at the time and most people will be asked to take a step backwards in their career to join. Best career advice for outsiders - become a partner somewhere else, then lateral into Innosight since that seems to be the best way to accelerate your career. The firm is built around the partners in a way that is unlike any other consulting firm. We have a consultant to professional staff ratio somewhere around 2 consultants (from all levels) to 1 professional staff. We also have two planes and two pilots on staff. Collectively, this creates an outsized overhead that cramps upward opportunities. We are asked to all be leaders, but the firm doesn't really understand what leadership means. At Innosight, leadership means conformity; there is an Innosight Way that is rightly or wrongly not up for debate. The funny thing about Innosight is that when you are here, you surprisingly won't find a company that feels like it is going to double in four years - but more like a firm that is plodding along - it sucks the energy and creativity out of you.