Let’s Play "Survivor" – PwC Style

The answer was consistent when PwC responded to questions regarding the “Matching Process” in the Frequently Asked Questions document provided to staff during the McKinsey designed “reorganization” of their support services function. There were three versions of the document over a two month period, from May to July, 2007, but the non-answer was the always the same.

They couldn’t or wouldn’t say who would be making decisions on whether specific staff has a job or has to go.

The approach to this “reorganization” is closely aligned to their process for performance review. Both are set up, in my opinion, to obfuscate who was responsible for the decisions made and to allow PwC partners to abdicate responsibility and, therefore, legal liability for personnel decisions regarding specific people. Lawyers made this stuff up, not consultants or human resources professionals.

Too bad their lawyers can’t shield them forever from all of their mistakes and shortsightedness.

It’s like the TV show “Survivor”. The survivors of the Matching Process are theoretically the winners. But at PwC, since you’re kicking your own colleagues off the island, you’re going to feel like a loser in the long run.

The rules of this game are simple: sixteen average Americans (eighteen in seasons 8, 9 and 11, nineteen in season 14 and twenty in seasons 10, 13 and 16) are abandoned in the middle of some of the most unforgiving places on earth. Divided into teams, they particiapte in challenges and every three days, the losing tribe must trek to Tribal Council to vote out one of their own.

Support Services Re-Design
Frequently Asked Questions

Who is on the matching committee?

Each function will have its own series of committees that will match people to jobs using a top-down, cascading approach. The committees will be composed of the newly designated leaders in each function, the relevant newly designated functional managers, business unit and/or local leaders, an independent advisor (someone from PwC who is not a member of that function and can provide objectivity in the discussions), as well as a member of the diversity team.

Functional leadership will begin by filling the jobs at the highest level, and then create the next committee from among those designees; the new committee will then determine who should fill each job at the next level down in the function. As that matching process is completed, the next committee will be formed, and so forth until the entire matching process is completed for the function. Given the cascading nature of the matching process, we do not yet know the exact people who will comprise each of the matching committees.