A Return to Successful Consulting Fundamentals - Will it Last?
Pros
ARCADIS new CEO and COO are implementing a refreshing refocus on the fundamentals of successful consulting - letting their best people do their best work focused on loyal clients, and putting the operations of the company in support of that mission. This change reverses a decade of internal focus on continually reinvented management systems wherein the operations leaders made themselves and their programs a costly distraction from the core mission. ARCADIS' clients are the beneficiaries of this change, and secondly, the employees who weathered the years of misguided management are now seeing the company fully support their mission.
Cons
The programs senior management have reinvented and touted all to often have had very short lives, to be replaced by yet the next reorganization. This management must prove it believes in itself if they expect staff to believe in them - by holding a steady rudder. In attempting to adjust the team, senior management has seemed to project a preference that people leave the company to reduce proportion of senior staff. Its hard to feel appreciated and even wanted in the sequential rounds of surprise layoffs, and the COO announcing that "ARCADIS is not employment for life" . This message has to be urgently corrected - what is the message behind this? Should anyone feel like they want to invest the best years of their career at ARCADIS if there is no loyalty or expectation of longevity?