Corporate Executive Board Reviews

Pros

- smart colleagues
- opportunities for quick advancement
- access to senior client execs early on in your career
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Cons

- inexperienced mgmt
- specific skill set that is not easily transferrable (outside of sales team)
- compensation lower than consulting

Advice to Senior Management

- Communicate company vision and strategy clearly to employees across the organization - particularly in times of change or economic turbulence

Pros

Great access to clients (all Fortune 500 execs)
Ability to work on different kinds of projects at a young age
Very smart co-workers

Cons

Too much political drama
Micromanaging culture - they forget that they employ professionals to make decisions
Poor work/life balance
No P&L ownership until very, very senior

Advice to Senior Management

Empower your employees to make judgment-based decisions
Find out what is going on down at the business level; be less removed from the operations behind business transactions
Set realistic targets, as opposed to lofty goals that can be unattainable

Pros

If your manager is a good salesperson you get fantastic training on how to sell and develop other skills, you get to sell to/work with C-level executives which is valuable when looking for other jobs, if you do very well there are other perks like going on all expenses paid for vacations, it's a small enough company that you feel like you can make a direct impact on the bottom line of the business, lots of great people to interact with.

Cons

they put a lot of stress on you to hit unrealistic numbers, so much of your success depends on what product you sell and what your territory looks like, both of which you can't control, you only get better territory when someone else leaves, the base salaries are below average and the bonus potential is terrible since bonuses are paid on % to goal rather than on every deal you close, if you have a crappy product and or territory there is no way you can over achieve so you end up not making a bonus, i actually took a massive pay decrease when i moved from being an individual contributor to managing a lead generator because they are all young kids and quit after a few months so you're stuck not having enough volume to hit your number, the turnover is out of control. the business is tapped out because there are no new customers to sell to

Advice to Senior Management

take the company private, stop trying to be a growth company and beat earnings estimates, innovate to make services people actually want, retain your current customers because once they drop you'll never get them back, try to retain good talent instead of having everyone quit.

Pros

smart people
valuable product
great place to start a career

Cons

grew too quickly
Tom Monahan - CEO - has officially ruined the place
lost majority of top talent

Advice to Senior Management

the pride of working at this company has been lost--- take a look back at the glory days and find a way to replicate the culture

Pros

The best reason to work for CEB is the hard-working employee base. Kids right of college and other professionals that have been unemployed for a while have a lot they want to prove to their managers. That zeal really drives revenue, but is short-lived when those performers are not rewarded. I lost my best employees because I was not given the latitude to reward those that showed creativity and were eager to grow within the company.

Cons

Poor communication from the Board down. In terms of firm values, CEB has eroded them since I started with the firm many years ago to the point that nobody really knows where the firm is going.

CEB's corporate culture is demoralizing. Don't rock the boat. Don't think outside the box. This is how we have always done things. This is how it will be. No exceptions.

Web & technology staff is underutilized to the point they are obsolete. Everyone seems to be sitting on their hands waiting for the new online brand that was supposed to be done end of Q3 2009.

Despite what they said in their interviews, CEB does not effectively train anyone with "manager" or "director" in their job title. They'll give you outdated, internal research to read at your convenience. There's zero follow-up. If you ask for more guidance, they'll tell you to "figure it out" or more simply "just get it done". I gladly took a pay cut for a job that provided real training and believed in creating leaders.

Advice to Senior Management

Corporate Leadership Team should be renamed Zero Leadership Team. They are all like bobblehead figures just going along for the ride. Fire the CEO. Take the company private. Re-engage your employee base. And for heaven's sake, read your own best practice research.

Pros

Great place for young professionals to develop a solid set of professional skills, including analytics, subject matter expertise and leadership and management experience. However, its current command and control operating model has significantly limited opportunities for risk taking and innovation. In other words, the senior and mid-level ranks have become too homogeneous, lacking any appetite for disruptive thinking

Cons

The days of fast growth and entrepreneurship at CEB are over, this is now value company where employees are rewarded for running the trains on time and for the volume of their output, no longer for the force of their ideas. The company has a dinosaur and grossly overcompensated HR executive who has turned a thriving and democratic appraisal system into a tenure-driven and point -based approach that was fashionable at twentieth century manufacturing firms but has no place in a mission-driven organization like CEB. Bottom line is that most employees are treated as units of labor around which the company has built so many metrics that leaves no room for human ingenuity.

Advice to Senior Management

Senior leadership needs to share accountability for failure and success. Forced and voluntary attrition rates are high, while many employees feels disengaged and disempowered. Still, the human capital at the firm is enormous. Find ways to galvanize that talent, win their trust back and live your values, don't just talk about them.

Pros

- Very talented and intelligent people
- Collegial atmosphere
- spirit of generosity that shows
- great start to get exposed to big-picture in a company
- good work that sharpens critical and analytical thinking

Cons

- no matter how hard you try, work-life balance goes for a toss, esp in the India office
- if you are doing good work, then you'll be asked to take on more
- in the long run, without the details, knowing the big picture is meaningless
- opportunities for client engagement are limited in India
- exit routes after a certain level are difficult, unless it is an MBA or research or consulting (which is tough to get into)
- fuzzy, sugarcoated feedback to employees
- confused senior management and leadership
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Advice to Senior Management

- practice what you preach in your insights
- rigorous in your insights and recommendations
- focus on fewer things, but get them right. Currently everything in CEB has a' smart amateurish' feel to it. While it may be smart, but it is still amateurish
- break down the silos
- formulate and stick with a strategy. right now strategy is more like a tactical plan.
- stop reorganizing after every 6 months.

Pros

CEB is a fantastic way to get cross-industry exposure and face-time with very prestigious clients while you're young. I love the work!

Cons

It's a young company, which means sometimes management lacks a bit of experience. A bit more management training would be helpful.

Advice to Senior Management

I think reconnecting Sales/Member Services and research is important. Right now the revenue side is too far removed from the research, and while this improves their productivity it limits their credibility.

Pros

Good learning curve especially for individuals starting their career. A lot of responsibility handed out at a very junior level with promotions given with results not time.

Cons

Management is terrible with communication and holds its primary obligation to shareholders and profits and not people. Promotions can be promised and subsequently delayed. It is a very transient culture not as supportive as it could be in retaining talent. Pay is lower than average for a good consulting services firm (more at the junior level and except for sales).

Advice to Senior Management

Treat people better and make a greater effort to retain high performers not just on the sales side.

Pros

-Intelligent, interesting coworkers
-Fairly organized work flow processes in place
-Social work environment
-Attractive work environment (people and building)

Cons

-Immature management
-Highly pressured work environment
-Subjective promotion process in place
-Informal to the point of unprofessional

Advice to Senior Management

-Demonstrate that you value your employees
-Provide products to memebers that fulfill promises made to prospects
-Provide fair process for promotions and evaluations