Excella Reviews

- Toxic alcohol culture - Lip service to diversity (let alone inclusion) that is often mocked by the leadership member who talks about it - Performance is reviewed only once annually, which is the only time promotions and compensation are discussed - Poor feedback cycle upward to supervisors or management - Poor feedback for poor performers - HR extremely un-agile in supporting careers - Promotion of unqualified consultants to leadership roles - Promotion of consultants to supervisor who should not be managing their direct reports - All-hands meeting is now less transparent than in the past, due to feedback that this information was boring? Bottom line - Excella used to care deeply about its culture when it was a much smaller company. It was part of the reason I loved the company so much when I first joined, because this was truly evident. Having doubled in size, and with more and more new faces every month, there are very few people who even remember what that positive culture was like at this company. It is very alarming that so many people have been leaving last year, both newer employees who have been here for fewer than 2 years and more tenured consultants who have been around for over a decade. The big shuffles in leadership have also affected confidence in the firm as a whole. Excella is still full of competent people but it is time to stop claiming that the culture is a priority; we were left out of the Best Places to Work list this year and that is not a fluke. Excella was called out for its failures in diversity & inclusion a while ago, and the response to that was extremely lackluster. If anything, it became a joke to be "politically correct" and people of color were often involved in these jokes as being "proof" that there was no real diversity problem. What's frustrating is that I know that underrepresented groups are valued at Excella, but they're not well-represented at the leadership level. When leadership is running through talking points about diversity and then cracks an inappropriate joke at the end, it not only defeats the purpose of giving the talk but undermines it by making cultural sensitivity and diversity a punchline. Many of the recent negative reviews touch on points I wholeheartedly agree with (not least of all that many employees do not agree with taking on certain clients), so I would only add that Excella really needs to examine its culture around drinking. The large company functions often result in copious stories about coworkers who got sloppy, and many people can reliably count on specific colleagues to drink to excess at the events. What's most surprising to me is that, while Excella's young workforce is large and growing, a lot of the stories come from senior colleagues and leadership. I often got the impression that these leadership members only drank this excessively here... at a work event. Not only is it generally unhealthy to have binge drinking at work events that then get discussed ad nauseum the Monday after and in the years to come, but it was very alienating for colleagues who did not drink.

Excella has been on a downward trajectory since before COVID. It has consistently missed quarterly OKRs and annual goals, and its revenue has plunged. As it has shrunk, career paths have foreclosed. Many staff have exited for greener pastures, leaving entire capability areas withering on the vine. Employees have been profoundly failed by the CEO’s zealous devotion to his idiosyncratic vision. If every other firm acts differently, everyone else is wrong. If firm leaders identify issues, they must be brought into line. If employees don’t appreciate the firm’s direction, the CEO knows what’s best for them. Because the firm has complete faith in its approach, it seeks conviction above all, as if goals were achieved through belief and vision accomplished through invocation. This is sometimes known as the Church of Excella. At this church, you will experience: - Delusions of grandeur. Like when Excella planned to be a “100-year firm” here for our grandkids. Or when it was going to be an AI leader with just three data scientists. Or its years of preaching that our “transformative solutions” make us better than everyone, belied by the work we actually do and loss after loss to “lesser” firms. Unlike other CEOs, Excella’s doesn’t dirty his hands with BD. But he thinks that employees are dying to hear from him on firm strategy; that clients want to hear from him about Excella’s community impact; and that the world wants his pronouncements on hot-button social/political issues. - Unrealistic goals. The firm is no more grounded when it comes to creating goals, which are based on the CEO’s whims. There is no data to justify them and no plan to achieve them. When they are inevitably missed, the firm either repeats them into another period or sets a new set of equally unrealistic goals. - A disregard for results. Failure is dismissed at Excella. If the firm is on the righteous path, then any setbacks must be temporary. There has been no reckoning with the firm’s issues and no change to strategy. On the other hand, good results that don’t fit into the firm’s idea of “the right way to do things” are only accepted begrudgingly. - Faith-based business development. All of Excella’s growth came from people no longer with the firm. Since the CEO never did BD, his knowledge is purely academic. Raise a concern over our high rates, and you’re told to sell transformative solutions where price is (supposedly) no object. Bemoan Excella’s lack of contract vehicles, and you’ll be reminded of the few times we’ve overcome that hurdle. Point out that the firm’s biggest BD successes came from relationships, and you’ll hear the CEO’s disdain for relationship-based selling. The firm thinks we’re so great that clients will throw themselves at us, but the truth can be seen in the firm’s results. - Top-down control. The firm is designed so the CEO can unilaterally shepherd the flock. As a partnership, owner-partners could debate and disagree. But the firm switched to an executive model and five of the eight partners are gone. In their place, the CEO selected outsiders and elevated junior people dependent on his favor. Below them is an oversized “Leadership Team” that isn’t allowed to lead. Their actual job is to learn the liturgy and evangelize it to their teams. Questions, feedback, and critique are seen as blasphemous. - Preaching over fixing problems. When employees raise issues, the firm doubles down on messaging. It sends out its “leaders” to spread the good news to the nonbelievers, and then reinforces those messages at the “Exchange,” a highly-scripted revival meeting. Everyone sees the staff exodus, but the firm pretends it’s the same as past years. Everyone knows there is no career path, but the firm points to a few meaningless title changes. Everyone knows that revenue is declining, so the firm talks up its’ (largely fictional) pipeline. - A lack of agility. Excella bills itself as an “Agile technology firm,” but is completely un-Agile, with rigid silos and old-fashioned processes. You’re not going to respond to change if you already know that you’re right, and you’re not going to value collaboration when you just want your leaders to follow orders.