...but the application of the Bain Manufacturing process varies from office to office, case type to case type and manager to manager.
...but there are some people the idealize how they want to be without reconciling it with how they come across or treat their case teams.
...but it comes with a cost around your health and wellness outside the firm.
The firm has developed its own language and uses it liberally. The issue is that it leads to a form of laziness: the consulting staff - particularly managers and case leadership - rely on the language for direction and it becomes a form of leadership shorthand. It's the equivalent of an MD's scrawl: fast and expedient, but highly susceptible to misinterpretation. This can lead to a high degree of frustration with case staff. It's compounded by the fact that manager to manager, partner to partner, etc., use terms like "answer" and "80/20" differently. They use it similar enough that you know the general idea of what a manager wants, but the portion that is different can lead to high yield loss, or worse, feeling like you're not being leveraged to best affect the team. The company relies on terms like "process driven" or "answer driven" to communicate messages, but those terms mean different things for different managers. The result is a highly frustrated team.
There is also something that occurs between Consultant level and Manager level. A slow evolution begins where managers and above start to lose touch with the volume of work required to deliver against requests. Partners will make a request and managers will promise delivery by the EOD when it actually requires four times as much work. The issue is that the work WILL get done. Even if it means working until 3:00, 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning. Because additional requests don't bump out the timelines for the work you already have on your plate, they just add to it. This is a function of being in a client services business. This is the function of having partners that are unwilling to have backbone and push back against clients when they change the scope of work. This is a function of an industry that is willing to churn through high volume of bright, intelligent people, because they know they can replace the cog. That's not an indictment on the industry or Bain; it's just the way it is. What is an indictment on Bain is the fact that they market themselves as not bowing to this kind of systemic pressure, that they're different. They're not. It's a competitive environment for clients and Bain is continually trading consulting staff well-being for winning a bake-off: as long as that continues to persist, the sustainability will suffer.
There is also a bit of arrogance within the firm, and while understandable, it has turned me off to some of the brighter aspects. I've seen people reach a certain point around the five year mark, where they fall in love with the Bain way and lose track of the always learning mentality most had early in their careers. They assume an attitude of "I've arrived" and "I know all there is to know." Having gone into my Bain career with the idea that I was going to be a sponge and soak up as much knowledge, expertise and skill-building as possible, this has started to be the biggest detractor to my experience. It's more pronounced in some that others; however, it's generally systemic.
