Corporate Executive Board Reviews

Pros

CEB provides good to very good exposure to how people think and behave at the upper echelons of large companies, and is a very good place to polish your own communication and presentation skills and ability to analyze business problems.

Cons

It's core business is stagnant, and upper management has spent years unsuccessfully trying to figure out what the company should be when it grows up, dabbling in many small things without placing a big bet or improving the core in a way that would make it more appealing to a wider customer base. Most draining, the higher one rises in the company the more energy goes into managing internal personality-based rather than external market-based challenges. The level of ego and vanity at higher levels of the company can be suffocating.

Pros

smartest people in the world

Cons

you work hard and don't make enough money

Advice to Senior Management

Promote your jr. staff that has shown dedication. Dont let them get away and use the skills they earned at CEB to grow other orgnizations.

Pros

1. Work with smart, young, motivated professionals
2. Access to world-class best practices
3. Search thousands of companies worldwide to target specific executives and gain better understanding of different industries
4. Great Sales Training; speak with C-suite execs daily

Cons

- "Smoke and mirrors" about promotion process
- Cold calling; long hours & little intellectual stimulation
- Ask detailed questions during interview; make sure they explain promotion process, compensations systems, etc.

Advice to Senior Management

Consider using your own best practices within the company in regards to employee engagement, succession management & professional development.

Pros

builds up strong business acumen
good workpace

Cons

cold calling
hard sales environment
variable pay difficult to track

Advice to Senior Management

identify a way to grow mid-level talent

Pros

the salary is just decent
nice commission potential

Cons

horrible horrible training, or lack thereof

Advice to Senior Management

fire everyone and start over

Pros

Plenty of entry level positions

Cons

Low pay, terrible management and HR, and they do not allow for work/life balance.

Pros

1. Surrounded by really smart, motivated people
2. Strong work life balance
3. Ability to innovate within a structured framework

Cons

CEB is a growing company, so change comes frequently. People who enjoy a fast paced environment will do well.

Advice to Senior Management

Continue to encourage a culture of innovation

Pros

1. Can be a good place to start your career.
2. Great exposure to senior executives, however, the exposure is truly valuable for junior ranks.

Cons

1. Poor senior management; the business model is now more dependent on "conning" abilities of sales folks rather than quality of research (quality of research has deteriorated over the last few years, though PR improved considerably to hide that fact).

2. Mid and senior level managers (read Directors, Senior Directors and MDs) are sort of trapped - they neither have the capability to move laterally to another consulting firm nor have the competence to take on managerial roles in other sectors.

Advice to Senior Management

Stop the process of promoting incompetent managers to the leadership ranks. 80% of MDs/ Practice Managers are there because they worked for the company for a long time (and realistically don't have any other place to go if they want to keep their "senior" ranks).

Pros

Really smart people. Incredibly challenging work. Professional growth. Knowledge base. Compensation. Opportunities to travel. Rewards for high performance. Opportunities to meet with some of the smartest businessmen and businesswomen in the world.

Cons

Long, long days of work. Micromanagement. Incredible physical, mental and emotional stress to cope with. "What have you done for me lately?" mentality. Tagline should be, "We churn and burn our employees with the best of them!" Promote high performing front-liners into middle management positions without effectively evaluating their people-building skills, their level of maturity and without providing training critical to the success of the position--all to the detriment of the people they're supposedly leading.

Advice to Senior Management

Take inventory of your middle managers. Train them to spend far less time crunching metrics and far more time building their people.

Pros

The people at CEB are great. Very smart, very fun people to work with. You get opportunities at an earlier stage of your career to do things (ie management) that would take much longer at other places. There is lots of exposure to senior leadership as well.

Cons

A lot of times managers are young and do not have the necessary skills to develop junior employees. Compensation at junior levels does not seem fair and there is a perception that the bonus structure could be better.

Advice to Senior Management

Follow your own advice and learn from your own research. Communication during tough times is not consistent across practices and rumors can run rampant. Senior Leaders should proactively address those rumors before they become too widespread.