Purpose at BCG: Leading, with Integrity

This article is part of a series on BCG’s five purpose principles: Bring Insight to Light; Drive Inspired Impact; Conquer Complexity; Lead, with Integrity; and Grow by Growing Others.

Integrity is at the center of who we are at BCG—as an organization and as individuals that make up that organization. We are committed to instilling bold, truth-telling leadership in the work we do every day: ethical integrity when it comes to managing difficult situations and intellectual integrity in the way we with wrestle with complex problems and provide the honest answers that help us earn our clients’ trust and enable them to build lasting advantage.

“Lead, with integrity” is one of the five pillars that support our larger purpose: unlocking the potential of those who advance the world.

Embedding a culture of integrity in all our work requires building leaders who exemplify it. At BCG, becoming a leader is not a slow, opaque, and arduous climb. Instead, we offer enormous opportunities to people at all levels, allowing them to partner with senior clients and lead increasingly larger teams so that they build diverse skills and grow as the capabilities of the firm expand dramatically. This is a practice that drives intellectual and interpersonal leadership and confidence and, importantly, delivers results the right way to all stakeholders.

At BCG, leading with integrity means developing leaders from their first day at the firm, learning to confront the hard issues and chart the right course. Both as individuals and collectively, these leaders embody our stated values and live our purpose with each other and with our clients. As individuals and as part of the organization, they push BCG to get even better.

A Legacy and Culture Built for Leadership and Truth

Bruce Henderson, BCG’s founder, was famous for emphasizing over and over that our responsibility was to tell our clients what they needed to hear, even when it wasn’t what they wanted to hear. BCG’s culture of honesty, candor, rigor, and directness fosters discussion and engagement and enables transparency—all of which makes it easier to surface complicated issues, spark the right discussions around them, and make the necessary decisions to operate at the highest standards in our work.

In the many training sessions he conducts around the world, BCG Chief Risk Officer Tad Roselund talks about how every BCGer has to be a risk manager and maintain the personal responsibility to speak up—even when it might be uncomfortable. Tad recently reminded me of a story that exemplifies how this works at BCG.

Several years ago, a BCG associate discovered that a client’s primary competitive advantage was a result of inappropriate payments to customers. “The associate recognized the importance of the issue” says Tad, “and she raised it to her project manager, who raised it to the partner, who ended up bringing it all the way to the head of our operations in that particular region. As a result, BCG walked away from the client.”

The individual, a young, recent college graduate, was not intimidated to speak up because she knew she was doing the right thing—and that the firm would back her up and follow through. Between the firm and the individual, leading with integrity becomes mutually reinforcing.

Honesty and Transparency Above All Else

In another example, recently told to me by Senior Partner Gerry Hansell, we were in the middle of a project with a corporate client when it became apparent that one of its business units had performance improvement opportunities. The corporate parent asked us to team with the business unit on a 12-week timeline to diagnose the situation and devise an action plan to get things on track. “After a few weeks of not very fruitful meetings,” says Gerry, “it became clear that the leaders of the business unit were not interested in having a third party engaged. They did not want to make time for our meetings, nor did they agree to share much data with us. ‘Things are on track, everything is fine,’ they told us.” 

We went back to the corporate parent to have a difficult conversation: We thought the business was headed the wrong way, but we didn’t want to keep a team engaged and bill for work that it didn’t want done. So we jointly agreed to withdraw from the business unit and stop the billings until we could get the engagement we needed to create impact with our work.

Reinforcing Values at the Rock Face

At BCG, we talk about our values a lot—in trainings, in internal meetings, and with clients. We conduct seminars on risk and ethics, and we keep telling stories like the ones I’ve told here. None of this is a guarantee that we’ll get it right every time, but we work at it day by day and learn as we go. This is a culture in which we discuss, engage, and expose—instead of burying. We know that the decisions that individuals make—sometimes in a single moment—can have huge impact.

Everyone at BCG gets a lot of rope to work with, but the firm’s expectations are always clear: you are empowered and you are also accountable. This is a dynamic that builds leadership skills and a strong moral compass for the very big roles across BCG, industry, and society that BCGers take on throughout their careers.

Read the series:

#1 Unlocking the Potential of Those Who Advance the World 

# 2 Bringing Insight to Light for Malaysian Consumers

#3 Driving Inspired Impact in Rwanda

#4 Conquering Complexity in the Airline Industry

#5 Leading, with Integrity (currently reading)

#6 How We Grow by Growing Others