!m Willemstyn Week 2

!m is one of the most value-driven companies I’ve ever worked for. They are entirely founded on the principle of giving back all their net profits to the community over the course of the company’s lifetime. They are so committed that all of their stakeholders are actually charity partners in the city of Richmond; chiefly, Peter Paul Development Center, Family Lifeline, and Rx Partnership. Even the rooms throughout the office are named for their values, and I’ve already given presentations in “Make a Difference,” “Maximize Integrity,” and “Insist on Quality”. Those ideals seep into an incredible company culture, where everyone is expected to be an available resource for everyone else, especially for the interns. I have never had anyone, even a senior VP, decline to meet with me, and we have been made to feel valuable and included in efforts to drive the company towards its revenue targets. We’ve dived into our group project work this week, and the deliverables I’ll be building were the same things that the interim-CEO just announced as priority one in moving the company forward. Knowing the CEO considers our work that valuable has created a sense of excitement in the first few interviews I’ve conducted, as everyone is scrambling to give their input on our series of playbooks, sales decks, and battle cards for the Data Practice.

In terms of understanding company norms, I think Outlook has been a really important tool I wish I understood before coming into this internship (as Dan considers it the “gold standard” of the business world). Every employee expects you to schedule through the Outlook calendar, whether you use the scheduling assistant to find a time and room that works, or insert a Skype for Business link into the calendar invite. Skype for Business also confuses me still, and I know that’s something I’m expected to get a handle on by myself. In other areas, my mentors have insisted on sitting down and running through the career-specific processes we could never be expected to understand otherwise. This week, we sat down with the Marketing department to understand how sales and delivery teams can sometimes act independently, but actually work together, and Marketing often acts as a middle man to facilitate the storytelling of the particular service they are both ultimately trying to sell and deliver to a client.

I believe !m would benefit from expanding its mission statement beyond the community focused promise to something more focused on the talent and services they offer. Everyone here is a top-tier consultant from a company like Deloitte or McKinsey with an average 11 years of experience – very uncommon in the consulting world. Although it’s an expensive long-term model to run (and I’m hopeful they’l be opening up associate positions before I graduate to address that top-heaviness), they should make their services and capabilities a cornerstone of their brand and culture.