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  Thinking differently
Among the industry’s high-level strategy set, Monitor’s main competitors are
McKinsey, BCG and Bain – considered by most insiders to be the top three
firms in the business. To stay competitive, the firm emphasizes its
differences: its academic roots and atmosphere, and its penchant for closeknit,
unabrasive relationships with clients that produce superior results.
Monitor has a business casual dress code every day of the week, and has been
compared to a university in its relatively relaxed atmosphere. The firm has no
stringent up-or-out promotion policy, and in fact allows its employees, after a
certain period of employment, considerable flexibility in their schedules.
Many employees can choose particular types of client assignments. The firm
is also flexible in allowing its consultants to transfer between offices.

Free-flowing ideas and terminology
Monitor’s academic atmosphere stretches beyond its legions of young, khakiclad
consultants. The company is “choked with ideas and jargon alike,”
including its emphasis on diagnostic techniques such as “Action Learning,”
its intervention technique for dealing with client employees that are
somewhat hesitant to hand the future of their company over to a consulting
firm. Monitor feels that many cases of failed implementation are due to
defensive, dysfunctional interpersonal and group dynamics. Action Learning,
meant to counteract these problems, is based on years of research by
Professor Chris Argyris of Harvard Business School and the Harvard
Graduate School of Education. (Argyris is now a member of Monitor.)
To handle even more cutting-edge strategic analytic theory, Monitor has
fostered a handful of small affiliate companies like tiny think tanks, including
software firms, organizational strategy firms, teaching firms and the Monitor
Institute, which handles the pro bono work Monitor prides itself on undertaking.
Something different
Despite its perennial spot among the top 10 consulting firms, Monitor’s
employees like to emphasize how their firm rejects the cutthroat attitude of
the Bains and McKinseys of the world. “Monitor does not have an ‘up or out’
policy like many of its competitors,” one insider says. The firm is close knit
and casual, they tell us, and it likes to keep it that way: “Monitor regularly
turns away extremely qualified candidates whom Monitor considers better
suited to work at McKinsey, Bain, BCG and other large consulting firms,”
we’re told.
While the Monitor culture “tends to vary from office to office,” those who
stick with the firm do so because of “a combination of people who are
incredibly smart but low-key and lots of interesting things always going on.”
And despite its avowedly intellectual flair, the staff is “cooperative rather than
competitive and really likes to socialize outside of work.”
On the road
Monitorites report that they are very happy with the firm''s approach to travel.
While it doesn''t back off on the need to send consultants to where the action
is, employees are able to work with the firm''s allocator to find optimal
assignments, and Monitor is very accommodating toward families: "I asked
to be kept off of travel-intensive cases for personal reasons and I ended up
being away for two days over the course of over a year."
When fully staffed, consultants usually work on two cases at a time, and
seemed resigned to the fact that the job can entail long hours. "Hours are
pretty standard for a strategy consulting firm," says a source. "50 to 60 hours
in a typical week, up to 90 in a bad one, which may occur once every few
months." Others put the upper end of a typical week closer to the 75-hour
range.
Workers of Monitor, unite!
One downside to life at Monitor is what insiders characterize as an imperfect
level of communication between junior and senior staff. “The leadership
tends to be secretive and evasive,” one consultant says, “the result of which
is an ‘us against them’ mentality for some junior consultants.” Another says,
“There tends to be a lot of unspoken bureaucracy and it’s difficult to figure
out how to navigate the system. Things tend to be more ad hoc here than
systematized.” One consultant attributes this to the firm’s recent, rapid
growth: “The firm has grown quickly, and upper management isn’t used to
having a lot of people. It has a ways to go.”
And while insiders tell us that “Immediate supervisors tend to treat [us] with
a great deal of respect,” they say that some problems result from the firm’s
“Mr. Nice Guy” image: “Monitor doesn’t always know how to deliver tough
messages. For example, the 2001 end-of-the-year compensation and bonus
messages were extremely vague, contradictory and confusing. I attribute this
to Monitor’s inexperience with delivering unpleasant messages to its
employees.” And while senior staff may seem less than forthcoming at times,
junior staff have a check: an upward review system in which managers who
“continuously receive poor evaluations from the junior members on the team
have to address their performance.”
That said, most respondents praised the level of communication and cohesion
on the case teams. One consultant says, “Communication on case teams is
great. You end up getting close with people, building a good camaraderie.”
Monitor encourages its case teams to foster discussion and constructive
criticism, and it looks for applicants who are comfortable with the frank
sharing of ideas. “One thing that makes us different,” one respondent tells
Vault, “is that we look at the character of the people and get a sense of a
required fit for the culture. Monitor is a place where straight-forward
feedback is encouraged. We look for people who are comfortable giving and
receiving that type of information.”