| Firm: The Boston Consulting Group Location: Boston Billable consultants: 3,300 Who knew? BCG was founded by former Bible salesman Bruce D. Henderson as the Management and Consulting Division of the Boston Safe Deposit and Trust Company. |
At The Boston Consulting Group, how they work is as important, perhaps, as the work they do. That's why Hans-Paul Buerkner, CEO of the firm, makes his best effort to fly to all 64 of BCG's worldwide offices annually to personally meet with the firm's leaders. "I think it's very important that we have a high-interaction culture. How we interact with one another will be key to our success," Buerkner says. "If we really want to continue to make progress, then we have to give clear signals from the top. It all starts with me."
That high-interaction culture is one of the central keys to BCG's success. It plays a central role in BCG's biggest strategic philosophy – working together to better serve clients.
"Teaming among the partners is key to the overall success of this business," Buerkner says. "Everybody is a team, from the youngest associate to the most senior partner. Everybody has not only the right, but also the duty, to contribute. We take everyone's ideas and contributions very seriously. It's not a question of who has the most experience, but it's really about thinking as a team about the issues and challenges we face and how best to get the work done."
And, make no mistake about it – BCG is getting the work done. From a revenue perspective, the firm grew more than 20 percent last year. And Buerkner says there's no reason to believe that it can't see double-digit growth over the next five years. Often, though, such expansion leads to growing pains. But that's not the case at BCG. The firm moved all the way up to No. 2 (from No. 4 in 2006) on our Best Firms to Work For ranking, leapfrogging rival McKinsey & Company along the way.
The consultants who took our survey pointed out that BCG excels in several areas, including having a team-oriented culture, as well as exceptional management and diversity initiatives. BCG, in fact, consistently scored near the top on questions around diversity issues.
"Having people with very diverse backgrounds is essential to success," Buerkner says. "It allows you to have different ideas and come up with better solutions. I truly believe that. When you take people from similar backgrounds, a lot of time they come up with similar solutions. If you take people with different sets of experiences and put them in a room together, great ideas begin to emerge."
 | "Having people with diverse backgrounds is essential to success. I truly believe that. If you take people with different sets of experiences and put them in a room together, great ideas begin to emerge." – Hans-Paul Buerkner CEO, The Boston Consulting Group |
And Buerkner isn't just talking about the traditional ideas of diversity – culture, race and gender – but people from diverse professional backgrounds as well. "I'm talking about engineers, doctors, lawyers, scientists – people who don't necessarily have a business background, but people who have an interest in finding solutions to problems. Put them in a room together, and they'll come up with something maybe no one expected."
That's why the team-oriented culture is so important at BCG, Buerkner says. "Making sure everybody contributes is taken very seriously, so people have to be very open in their attitude toward others. For this to work, it's really crucial that people value people who are different and may take a different approach," he says. "That also means that we have to accept failure from time to time. It's a strong support culture, not a culture where you're in competition with each other. People coming from other firms always seem to notice that difference here."
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