The 2019 Best Firms to Work For: West Monroe Partners

"It is not hard to start a consulting firm, but it is hard to become a world-class consulting firm—and become recognized as such," he says. "As an organization without the scale and tenure of the global firms, this type of recognition is very valuable, particularly in the war for talent."

As a result, people considering a career in consulting may well have West Monroe on their radar, McCarty says. But there is a good chance that a company looking for the right consultancy to address its business issue may not yet have heard of us. To this point, I think our employment brand has been out in front of our service brand, but that is changing fast."

There are many contributing factors to the firm's success, McCarty says, among them is "our pipeline of interesting and challenging work, our financial performance, and our values-driven, people-first culture." 

Business is strong, he says, and West Monroe is forecasting 30-percent growth for the full year. "Our 100-percent employee ownership principle is extremely important and motivating to our people and one of the things that truly differentiates our organization from most other consultancies," McCarty says. "It establishes a shared purpose that compels us to work together to create mutual value—our employee ownership share value grew 41 percent last year." 

West Monroe continues to enjoy high engagement, McCarty says. For example, the firm scored in the 99th percentile in a Mercer study of employee engagement. "That speaks to many things, not the least of which is the opportunities to grow and do interesting work," he says. 

For the past few years, West Monroe has been executing a strategy that brought the firm to an important and symbolic milestone of surpassing 1,000 people, which it did in 2018. Now, McCarty says it's embarking on the next stage of growth, backed by a new multi-year strategy that it's calling Strategy 2020, designed to double the firm's headcount and triple its revenue by 2025. 

"Like our previous strategy, it will involve a mix of acquisitions, increased hiring, innovation and potentially new offices and practices," he says. "It is designed to deliver similar results: rapid growth, high profitability, and creation of enterprise value to be shared with our people."

When you look at the rest of this year and 2020, what excites you? 

McCarty: Notwithstanding concerns about a potential recession or geo-political issues, the market continues to be hot, particularly in healthcare and mergers and acquisitions. As stated, we are projecting growth of 30 percent or more for 2019. We remain excited about opportunities that we have to help clients address issues central to their transformation, including digitizing business models and operations, protecting their businesses through proactive cybersecurity strategies, and optimizing their workforces to accomplish more with the same. This is relevant in today's high-growth environment, where some organizations are grappling with the ability to expand due to a shortage of skilled talent. It is also equally relevant should the economy turn down.