Corporate Executive Board

Washington Post staff writer Kim Hart hosted an online discussion with Derek Van Bever, chief research officer at the Corporate Executive Board. In an article today, Hart examines the CEB, which trains its young employees to dissect the problems managers face in a variety of industries. Today's coverage also includes a profile of the consultancy's founder, David G. Bradley.

A transcript follows.

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Kim Hart: Hi everyone! Thanks for joining us today. Derek van Bever, chief research officer at the Corporate Executive Board, is here with me to answer any questions you may have about the company.

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Derek Van Bever: Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Derek van Bever, and I am online representing the Corporate Executive Board. Thanks for all the time and thoughtfulness you put into the article, Kim! There were only a few places in the piece where we might have wanted to clarify or add a sentence (For instance, we actually hired over 35 MBAs globally last year, in the US, London and India), and we are keen to talk to MBAs who like what we do and want to know what it feels like to run their own business inside our four walls.

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Fairfax, VA: I'm wondering how your market your services. Do you offer exhaustive research -- the result of enthusiastic, energetic employees? Or do you offer clients some type of unique insights because young employees approach issues with a fresh outlook?

Derek Van Bever: Our value proposition to the busy senior executive is that we can help you avoid reinventing the wheel in addressing problems that you share in common with your peers around the world. Ask yourself: Is there any question I'm facing that wouldn't benefit from the guidance of 500 of my peers?That's what we do--we activate that global network for you.

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Arlington, VA: I'm not sure I understand why you want to promote a college-like atmosphere in the office. My first couple years in the "real world" were spent trying NOT to act and think like I was still in school.

Derek Van Bever: I wouldn't characterize it as "trying to promote a college-like atmosphere." All professional services firms share the need to train young, entry-level staff to handle complex challenges quickly; what differentiates the Corporate Executive Board is that our rate of growth means that we have to be effective at an entirely different level of scale from most other firms.

Kim Hart: From talking to a number of employees and managers at CEB, it seems that the young-oriented atmosphere is a natural by-product of the employee make-up. With nearly a third of the employees being under 25 years old, some departments take on the "feel" of college. And since many of the employees work with peers their own age, many of them said it feels like an extension of college. I think the company tries to make the transition as easy as possible for their employees.

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Ventura, Calif.: Given the rate of attrition of CEB employees, what have you learned from "exit interviews" or other similar practices?

Michael M.

Derek Van Bever: As you might imagine in a data-driven company such as ours, we do study exit interview data carefully and use that information to tune our "employment offer" to current and prospective staff. In general, we want to make sure that staff feel well-supported by their managers (the #1 most important driver of commitment--we've studied this!), and that they see the Corporate Executive Board as offering them more growth and development opportunity than they could receive anywhere else.

Kim Hart: I talked to several people who went to work at CEB directly out of school and have since moved on to different jobs. Many of them said it was a great first job because it gave them a sense of the business world and gave them a better idea of the career they wanted to pursue. Some managers at CEB are very young--in their late 20s and early 30s. From what I've heard, working with that group helped entry-level employees learn about the management process before moving onto grad school or the next job.

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D.C.: What do you look for in potential hires with working experience?

Derek Van Bever: In evaluating potential hires with working experience, we look for the same qualities we look for in folks just entering the workforce: horsepower, values and a desire to serve our members and each other. Expertise fades across time; values endure.

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Washington, DC: Given your staff make up is so young, how do you cater to this generation's interest in corporate social responsibility?

Derek Van Bever: Good question! One of our staff members just won an award for creating a CSR initiative in which we partner with nonprofits such as Ashoka through our Service Corps. We also have studied CSR in a number of our programs across time.

Very important and timely issue, and right down our power alley.

Kim Hart: CEB also gives extra time off to people who use it for volunteer work, such as a mission trip to India.

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Washington, DC: I live in a building with current and former employees of this place. Very nice young people, smart, and yet clueless about real jobs and businesses. This whole setup seems like smoke and mirrors to me. The companies that hire the CB could pay someone on staff a fraction of the fee to do this research in house. And talk about blatant, unapologetic age discrimination? I hope AARP sends out qualified candidates who will not get hired and then publicize this.

Kim Hart: CEB does tend to hire employees on the youngish side, but I wouldn't say that the company chooses candidates based on age alone. True, about 80 percent of the employees are under the age of 35. But that is not to say that if a qualified candiate who is 40 years old would not be hired purely because of their age. The company is 10 years old, so until now, it has attracted a younger demographic. Many of the older, seasoned consultants have tended to go to more established consulting firms, like McKinsey and Boston Consulting. But as the firm matures and becomes more established in the market, it is attracting mid-career candidates who are at least 35 years old.

Managers who have been with the company for over a decade have said that they hire a certain caliber of employees. They may be young, but they are high-achieving people. The nature of the work they are doing lends itself well to people right out of college: researching, polling, compiling reports.

And in regards to paying in-house people to do the same work, CEB has said that the value in their research is their ability to survey dozens of companies and executives in a particular space to reach their conclusions. That is information a single researcher in a single firm would have a hard time gaining access to.

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Arlington VA: How do you overcome your client's worries concerning the age of your staff?

Derek Van Bever: The most common question we receive from members is "Who does your service quality training?", which is kind of funny because we don't have a service quality vendor! Our members are uniformly complimentary about the abilities and service ethic of our staff; Kim captured this well in Seth's comment in the article.

Kim Hart: Employees said it is daunting at first to get on the phone with such high-profile executives. All employees go through frequent training classes to make sure they are prepared to enter these conversations. One of my main questions was, how to you ensure that these young people, who are working their first full-time job, are professional at all times? It seems that CEB's workers are well-aware of their roles in the firm and what their behavior should be when with clients.

It seems that the frequent training classes provide even more similarities to college. Many employees mentioned that they like the mentorship and professor-student relationships that emerge. It has evolved into a bit of a hybrid atmosphere, falling somewhere between college and the corporate world. Because the company is growing so fast, they have to make sure that these employees are brought up to speed and able to be effective for their clients as soon as possible.

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Bethesda, MD: How do you train and develop new managers who maybe be in their 20's and very inexperienced? Are there every problems that arise because managers don't have the life experience referred to in the article?

Derek Van Bever: We invest a lot in the training and development of new managers. As a new manager, you'll get three to six weeks of training in your first 3 months, with ongoing training as you progress. We also include upward reviews in our semiannual performance reviews, which enables managers to spot and correct any development needs they have.

From our research, we know that "manager quality" is the number one reason that people stay in--or leave--a job, and we try to practice what we preach to our members in this regard.

Kim Hart: A few former employees I talked to cited working for such young managers as a main reason they decided to leave the firm. With so many ambitious, competitive, Type-A people, competitive personalities can create clashes between a 30-year-old employee and their 27-year-old manager, for instance.

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Washington, D.C.: I noticed on your website that you hire people with journalism experience. Would you be interested in someone with a master's in journalism and experience in the field?

Derek Van Bever: Maybe! Submit a resume to our site, or contact me directly!

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Rockville, MD: You describe the challenging, vibrant and fun work environment at CEB while also mentioning their high turnover. What gives here... why do people leave at such a high clip?

Derek Van Bever: A challenge of hiring a lot of folks straight from campus--and a benefit of working here--is that our staff compress a lot of learning into a short period of time. Many staff members make the decision to go back to graduate school--and are able to--and a significant number of them return to us afterwards. (We have a program to sponsor eligible staff for graduate education, in fact.) We love when staff come back and reinforce a lot of what we think differentiates us in the professional services sector.

Kim Hart: Many people use their first job at CEB as a stepping stone, either to figure out what they want to do, or to gain experience before graduate school or their next job. Some people join on with the intention of only staying a year, and some end up staying longer.

The high turnover does have its advantages. It creates a lot of opportunity to move up into vacant positions or to move around the company. It can also be stressful, however. As people cycle through the company, other people have to pick up the slack or do the work of two people until a new person is hired.

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Owings MD: I manage a group of tradesman for a Fortune 500, when hiring I have had to interview more than 60 people for one slot, normally atleast 20+. I no longer hire for skill set, instead for attitude, any comment?

Derek Van Bever: Sounds like we hire similarly. We are much more interested in who you are, from a values and capability perspective, than in who you know or what you know. This enables you to operate independently from your earliest days here, and it is the right set of qualities for long-term success as well.

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West Palm Beach, FL: Hello Kim and Derek! I worked for CEB from 2000-2004. I noticed CEB's model in Europe working well. How has CEB's expansion in Latin America been going? Any plans for the future in that region?

Derek Van Bever: Hi! Who are you, West Palm Beach? (Maybe you're not allowed to say.)

Our service to the LAI market has been growing meaningfully across the past several years. As distinct from when you were here, perhaps, we now do all of our meetings and member servicing in-language (Spanish and Portuguese), and the team had a terrific run of accomplishments in 2006.

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Washington, DC: Hi Derek,

I'm a former CEBer who left after four years to go to law school and currently practice here in DC. I had a great experience at CEB and there are certainly times when I am very nostalgic for it (life of a lawyer, for ex). I worked hard, got great experience and it got me to where I am today.

I was wondering what effect on the culture the move to Rosslyn is likely to have on CEB and whether you are concerned about CEB's "brand" in the labor market. Certainly coming out of school, for me, whether it was the Watergate or Penna Ave, the downtown DC location was very important, and I know it was for others. (today, with a family, it would be less so!)

Also, what was behind the decision to move to Rosslyn instead of DC? Did you try to consolidate into one location in DC? Was space of that size not available?

Derek Van Bever: Hi! We thought a lot about the impact on our labor market "brand" and on staff logistics in considering the move to Rosslyn. We did a lot of research to understand where staff currently live and how they commute and found the Rosslyn location to be at least as good as, if not better, than any DC location, from a staff perspective. Also, we are pumped about the prospect of getting all of our DC staff back under one roof (haven't had that since 1999).

Kim Hart: One question I asked employees was if there was separation or "clique-iness" due to age differences or between departments. Many said that being spread across five different buildings in downtown Washington was what really divided people, so they are looking forward to being in the same place.

Many also mentioned that they hope there are good happy-hour places near the new office. After-work socializing seems to be a prevalent aspect of the company's culture.

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WDC: Kim,

Your article put a mostly positive spin on CEB. I'm curious to know if you heard from any former CEB employees who did NOT have nice things to say, and what their comments were. I worked at the Advisory Board Company for a year out of college, and I (and quite a large number of my co-workers) were quite unhappy there, and got out as quickly as possible. Clearly there is still high turnover at CEB, so I'm curious to know what comments ex-employees had, and what CEB has done to try to remedy the situation.

Kim Hart: I included one comment in the article from a former CEB employee who got tired of the high school-like atmosphere that formed around such a predominantly young workforce. That was the main complaint I heard. Some said it is like working with the people you always wanted to get away from in high school and college: the overachieving crowd. Others were frustrated with their managers who didn't really have the experience to effectively manage people. Some said the firm has an overarching "cheerleading" kind of feel, and that the training was more like "indoctrination." The "ra-ra" atmosphere was a bit too much.

Some pointed out that working with people around their own age didn't give an accurate picture of what the real business world is like. They said they would have gained a lot more knowledge and business-relationship skills by working alongside people with more diverse experiences. When you put a bunch of 25-year-olds together, gossip can be an issue. And there's lots of dating among employees.

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Harttford, CT: What are CEB's various areas of practice? I beleive HR and Finance are two of them. Are there others - strategy, etc?

Derek Van Bever: Yup, if you go to our site, you'll see the practice areas listed in the LH nav bar. Our only industry-focused practice is Financial Services, which is now in its 24th year of existence. Starting in '93, we launched HR and since then have been working our way around the senior executive table: IT, Sales and Marketing, Legal and Compliance, Procurement and Operations, Strategy and R and D, Communications. A complete list is on our site, or you are free to contact me for more information.

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Anonymous: Hi. What percentage of your new hires are MBAs? My friend who works there is from Wharton and she absolutely loves it.

Derek Van Bever:5-10% approximately

I'm glad your friend is loving being here!

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Bowie, MD: What's one of the biggest challenges facing CEB today as a company? Is CEB considering a merger with a more established consulting powerhouse?

Derek Van Bever: The quality of our product is purely a function of the quality of our people, so our biggest challenge today is, as always, finding, developing and retaining the best talent available in professional services. That's what keeps us up at night.

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Wheaton, Maryland: How does the CEB decide which issues they will research so that corp. execs don't have to "reinvent the wheel?"

Lynn

Derek Van Bever: We poll our members continuously to understand the urgent challenges that they share with their peers, and we then allow our members to vote on the topics they would most like us to study.

It's a very member-driven process (as with most things here!).

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Arlington, VA: It is surprising that such a fast-growth company would only have hired 35 MBAs (globally!) last year. How are you modifying your employment offer to attract more experienced professionals who might be turned off by the idea of a "college-like" experience?

Derek Van Bever: Where we have the best experience hiring MBAs is not directly off of campus (though we do receive hundreds of resumes from MBAs each year), but rather at an early- to mid-career post-MBA juncture. For example, we have a very compelling value proposition for consulting firm associates who are considering an offer of partnership, but who don't want to have to move away from the problem-solving and client service activities they love to focus on new engagement sales ("making it rain.") At the Corporate Executive Board, we specialize by role, so if you want to do problem-solving, or if you want to build a business through direct consultative sales, we can offer you a role tailored to your interests.

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Springfield, VA: Kim, I was interested in the "six degrees of separation" comment. How did you decide to profile the CEB? Have you come across many of its former employees?

washingtonpost.com: Today's article: Generations of Change

Kim Hart: It has become a running joke among the Washington twenty-something crowd that everyone knows someone who works or who has worked at CEB. I've heard that a lot among my own friends. And when I mentioned I was working on a story about CEB, the response I got was, "Oh, my roommate has a friend who used to work there." It's a small company that provides a constant pipeline of workers, many of whom stay in the area.

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D.C.: What's the average number of hours worked by associates right out of college?

Kim Hart: As with many consulting firms, the hours seem to be long. People get in early and stay very late. The employees are eager to prove themselves on the job, so many said they don't mind.

However, one older employee (at an ancient 33 years old) said that he appreciates more mid-career people joining the company because it reinforces that there is more to life than work. Many of his young colleagues don't have a family to get home to, so they don't mind working long hours.

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Washington DC: As a former employee (c. 1999-2001) I have found the company's growth model -- as the field of new broad "program areas" gets smaller, programs are added "vertically" within one of those broad program areas -- to be very interesting and quite ingenious.

Q1: How many broad program areas do you now count, and how many specific programs do you have?

Q2: Do you see a point at which your membership is going to be "tapped out" on CEB sub-programs and might begin subscribing to fewer of the new programs, dropping their memberships in older programs to join new programs, or asking for reduced membership fees to accomodate the burgeoning number of programs they'd like to subscribe to?

Derek Van Bever: Hi! Are you allowed to say who you are? To your update questions: We now have 43 programs--that is, 43 distinct executive constituencies that we have built memberships around--across our 10 practice areas. To your second question: Quite the contrary. The deeper our services run in the corporation, the more constituencies we find who can benefit from our service. For example, we serve the CFO and five of his or her direct reports; the head of HR, and four subfunctions. It really is a great model for creating value and for helping members to solve their problems economically, at any level.

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Derek Van Bever: On behalf of the Corporate Executive Board, let me just thank you for the opportunity to participate in this (it was a lot of fun!), and let me thank Kim for all of the work she put into the article. We pay a lot of attention to building a great culture here--performance-oriented, meritocratic, supportive and fun--and we think that culture differentiates us in the competition for top talent. If any of your readers wants to learn more about the firm, my email is vanbeverd@executiveboard.com. I'm happy to answer more questions, or to forward them onto the right contact here.

Kim Hart: Thanks everyone!

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