ISSUE
Ernst & Young (EY) wanted outside expertise on how to transform their organization, deal with disruption, retain and attract future talent, and compete with their competitors on delivering services in the year 2030.
BACKGROUND
Ernst & Young (EY) is one of the largest and oldest professional services firms in the world, with over 250,000+ employees.
Predominantly known for its auditing and tax services, EY is considered one of the Big Four accounting firms and modeled around five service lines: Assurance, Tax, Transaction Services, Advisory, and CBS.
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EY functions under a partnership model, and considers itself a purpose-driven organization that strives for "Building a Better Working World."
EY's reputation and favor have fallen under scrutiny recently because of conflicts of interest with clients, which resulted in poor auditing practices.
EY's reputation is of the highest importance to them and one of their main concerns. Their vision for 2020 is to be the leading professional service organization, best brand, and highest performing teams in the world.
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They are in a highly regulated industry and currently facing a market breakup, along with the other Big Four, due to faulty auditing which stems from a conflict of interest with clients.
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Due to EY's reputation in the media and their conflict of interest with clients, members of Hyper Island refused to work with them as a client, as they perceived EY as a company without morals.
HIGH LEVEL TIMELINE
3 weeks from brief to pitch.
Discover
Define
Develop
Deliver
MY ROLES
Lead Strategist
Researcher
Concept Designer
Design Facilitator
KEY GOAL
Meet the demands of a highly disruptive and fast-evolving technological world.
PROBLEM
EY asked:
How do we shape our organization to meet the needs of our current and future clients and the markets they operate in?
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What does the market look like in 10 years?
Who are our core audiences within markets? Will they think and act differently?
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How will the way people work affect our pool of and access to talent?
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How is the perception of our brand helping our hindering us in securing future success in our chosen markets?
EY asked many questions making the task both complex and disparaging in focus. Given our limited amount of time, it was best to try and focus on one core area and choose two sub-topics that supported or affected the dominant area of focus
MY ROLE / TEAM
The project was completed from start to finish in three weeks.
I collaborated with my team on the solution and research by leading in group facilitation, research analysis, strategy development, concept solution, and the storyline for the client presentation.
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The team comprised of five international team members with backgrounds in marketing, consulting, and HR (Ireland, Switzerland, Peru, Netherlands, America).
One member left the group on the second week due to their belief that EY is corrupt and refused to work with them.
A personal achievement was successfully navigating and facilitating a disruptive team setting due to opposition towards the client because of their media image. Bias was the most significant obstacle I worked at untethering from our research, along with unifying the group in a shared vision and direction (more of this is covered below in the Team Conflict section).
UNDERSTANDING THE USER
The user for this brief was Millennials and Gen Z, the dominant workforce and future clients of 2030.
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Autonomy and flexibility were identified as trends and desires in work for these audiences
A sense of purpose in a job was another find we came across for these audiences; which translates as doing meaningful work and feeling connected to the job.
Autonomy, flexibility, and purpose were all found in previous studies to improve job satisfaction, motivation, and employee happiness, and as a result, improve productivity and business relations with clients.
A trend that was mentioned by EY and repeatedly emerged in desktop research was the rise of remote work, the gig economy, and flexible working hours. Despite the prediction of a rising gig economy and desire for a flexible work schedule, research indicated that Gen Z and Millennials want stability. We found that even though the gig economy and flexibility are strong trends for the next ten years, 87% of people prioritize job security while they are looking for employment. Why? Because people still want to buy houses, cars, have health insurance, and a sense of stability.
Identity and autonomy were motivating factors for both generations, but a need for security was essential as well. This was important to sus out as the gig economy is not one of stability. The gig economies element of flexibility and autonomy was necessary to distinguish and not take at face value.
PROCESS
The group's process centered on understanding EY's culture, overall market trends in consulting, generational attitudes towards work, and the confluence between the three areas.
Three interviews were completed with EY employees to understand internal views of EY's culture and for insights on internal and market trends affecting the future of EY.
Desktop research was conducted to understand both generational attitudes towards work and influences in the consulting market.
A synthesis of findings through design thinking methods as well as a PESTEL and SWOT analysis was performed to make sense of the findings.
Lastly, a 'how might we' was developed after our problem analysis to help ideate a solution.
Three current EY employees from the Netherlands, Ireland, and the UK were interviewed to understand what challenges EY is facing in the future and their experience of EY's work culture is. The interviews gave insight into employees' experience at EY and challenged group bias about its perceived culture.
Interviews were complemented with secondary research about Gen Z's and Millennial's needs and viewpoints, trends of the gig economy and contract work, consultancy trends, and how AI and automation are shaping our learning habits and need for human-centered design in the workspace. These were all performed to develop foresight on the future market of consulting, the attitudes of future workers, and likely trends in how work will be completed.
The data was then inputted into a SWOT and PESTEL analysis to asses the current market and further refine our foresight. Data was also mapped through design thinking exercises to identify critical observations, insights, and problems.
Once our observations, insights, and problems were identified, we performed multiple ideation sessions to develop a solution.
In the end, our solution was based on a concept I mapped out at home and presented to the group, which we then built upon through team brainstorming and collaboration. The idea I gave tied together team members' different beliefs in the project's focus: focusing on EY's culture concerning Gen Z and the consideration of what the future market will require from consulting agencies.
THESE WERE SOME MAJOR LEARNINGS OR POINTS WE WANTED TO CALL OUT
AI and Automation are the biggest disruptors.
Interviews revealed AI & automation are the biggest disruptors EY is facing, and secondary research showed that the future of work would no longer be about what you know, but about how you learn.
Agility is needed to combat disruption and compete.
Flexibility is vital for future agencies, as they will be required to learn and invent new skills to stay up-to-date with technology, which is both advancing and becoming obsolete at equal rates.
Break down silos. Build collaboration across teams.
Interviews revealed EY is difficult to navigate, and that it is internally competitive and rewards employees for focusing only on their line of service and office (thus precludes agility, autonomy, and cross-department communication and objectives.
New talent wants flexibility and purpose.
Secondary research found purpose is essential and a motivational factor in work for Millennials, and more so for Gen Z in a workspace.Future talent/generations also expect flexibility in order to have a better work/life balance.
Consulting is changing.
The future of consulting is about expertise in innovation, emerging technologies, and user-centered design. Smaller agencies are offering niche expertise services at a cheaper price, and mid-size to large consulting agencies are buying up design firms to move into the future of experience and transformational economies.
TITLE OF THE CALLOUT BLOCK
SOLUTION
Develop EY from a working force into a learning force by applying Agile principles in a system called Stretch.
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Stretch allows employees to be autonomous, purpose-driven, lifelong learners and takes away the fear of becoming redundant because of AI.
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Stretch also breaks EY out of silos, develops diversity on projects, gives employees control of their growth, and makes the company agile and ready to combat disruption.
Stretch allows employees to choose projects and grow new skillsets while sharing their skillset with others. It's not sitting in front of a computer and taking classes, nor a peer sharing program, but rather a method for slowly developing employees into experts within emerging fields by working on projects that both utilizes and stretch their abiltiies.
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Agile project methods are a set of principles, values, and practices designed to assist teams in dealing with challenging environments and designed to meet the challenges of disruption. Main agile methods include self-management and self-discipline, people development, customer focus, participatory decision making, and less bureaucracy; all of which is the core of Stretch. While EY does use agile in certain instances, the company is not set up to be fully agile on all teams and departments. Stretch is the system that will help EY meet this need.
An example would be an accountant who will lose their job to AI in a few years but uses their mathematics skills and the opportunity to help train AI and become an expert within machine learning. By helping build the new AI system and working with another employee who specializes in AI, they will slowly develop the skills and knowledge they need to become an expert in the field. Managers and peers will asses the employee after each project in the Stretch system to indicate the progression of skills and eligibility for future projects. At its core, Stretch is a combination between a hands-on education and an internal resume system.
TITLE OF THE CALLOUT BLOCK
GROUP CONFLICT
Team member departures and beliefs about the client ultimately resulted in our solution being developed in four days and hindered our ability to deliver a more innovative solution.
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To overcome this issue, I did two specific actions:
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1. Focused our research and brainstorm sessions on the client whom we needed to persuade.
2. Mediated group views by combining interests in the final solution.
Outside views of EY tainted the project from the getgo, which disrupted group dynamics, deflected time from the objective of understanding the future of consulting, biased initial research, and hindered time spent trying to understand the future of consulting.
A big push from one-half of the group was to turn EY into a more purpose-driven company and revise its culture, to align with Millennial and Gen Z perspectives and to help rectify a feeling that EY is corrupt and without morals. The other half of the group had a problem with this perspective because it was based more on feelings than insights from research.
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The other half of the group wanted to focus more on the opportunities of emerging technologies and the ways in which EY can transform how it delivers services and the services it provides. The issue for this focus with other group members is that it did not address EY's culture and allowed them to operate without critique.
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And, in the middle, there was a desire to dissolve EY into a gig economy employer because it was a perceived trend (which did not look at the forces behind why gig jobs are becoming more prevalent).
To overcome the differences in point of view, I guided our focus to our audience (EY) to ensure that whatever we present was backed by facts, numbers, and explains why it will benefit EY. For example, if we were to illustrate why EY needed to become a more purpose-driven company; we had to show how it would benefit EY's productivity and revenue we could not just say become a purpose-driven company because future workforces will want it
Ultimately, I went home and combined the different points of views by focusing on the benefits companies endure when their employees are more autonomous (culture), tied the element of autonomy to agility and technology (disruption), and how employees' freedom to learn can relay into EY's purpose and values.
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By applying it into agile methods I made the solution practical, rooted in practices that have been validated, and figured out a way to address one part of the group's concern about a disruptive market, and the others about making a culture where people could select the projects they worked on (moral).
LESSONS LEARNED
Don't take data for what it is, ask what forces are shaping it.
Always ask if the findings are supported by research and be wary of groupthink.
Engage in activities that promote creativity and listening.
Many people believed that Gen Z wants a gig-economy because data is showing it is becoming more dominant. I pointed out we should focus on why people choose contract work and assess the motivational factor-- autonomy. Had we taken the data at face value, we would have said everyone wants a gig-economy job because it is becoming more common, but that is not true. Research showed people still want stability in knowing when their paycheck is coming, access to loans which is predicated on a stable income, and services such as healthcare and retirement plans, which employers typically provide. Switching to a gig economy model would not have done this, nor would it have solved the concern of culture and purpose.
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Groupthink and bias are issues one needs to be aware of. These are not always easy to identify and overcome, and hence why diversity is best in a group setting. Diversity alone is not enough; however, as you will still arrive at conflicts. Ultimately, communication and listening skills are needed for healthy conflict resolution, and bias-check through concrete-research is required in order to remedy groupthink.
To enhance creativity and communication skills, schedule time for short-exercises and sessions not focused on the work at hand. For example, improv sessions helped opened members' thinking processes and brought laughter to the group, which helped members bond. Another beneficial exercise is structured feedback sessions between group members, to help create open-dialogue, reveal perspectives, and resolve any issues before they build to a critical point.