Received a 'Concerns' Rating? What To Do Next?

It feels like getting sucked into a powerful vortex. To recover you need to improve your performance. To do that you need to get staffed, which now feels like a mission impossible.

Unfortunately, many consultants have received a 'Concerns' rating in this annual review cycle.

Essentially, a 'Concerns' rating, although named differently in various firms, universally means performance below expectations.

If not swiftly recovered, it will lead to a counsel-to-leave decision.

Dealt a Bad Hand

The most affected cohort are consultants who joined last year, arguably the worst time to enter consulting.

These people were dealt a really bad hand from the start, facing forces beyond their control, such as a lack of staffing opportunities.

In these difficult times, tenured consultants occupied all the available staffing spots, with leadership obviously opting for the most capable consultants.

A Global Trend

This year, consulting firms were forced to radically reduce their employee numbers after two years of the post-COVID recruiting frenzy.

The logic is simple but quite brutal. If firms don’t let go of redundant people now, they won’t be able to hire new talent. Without new talent, consulting pyramids will have a gap.

Consequently, in 2-3 years, consulting firms will struggle with a deficit of managers. And most likely, this will coincide with a new period of economic growth. Then, firms will start hiring like crazy. The new cycle will start.

You would expect that the best strategic firms understand how these macroeconomic cycles work and prepare well to take full advantage of them. Apparently not.

What To Do Next?

Enough with negatives.

Let’s try to take a constructive view and think about how we can turn this around.

First, we need to do an honest post-mortem analysis of what happened in each case.

Typically, two main factors are in play here - poor utilization and negative feedback.

Poor Utilization

This cycle utilization was a significant factor in decision-making. There are two main drivers of low utilization.

1. No staffing opportunities

New joiners were not given enough staffing opportunities to gain momentum. Finding projects independently in this environment is virtually impossible.

Consequently, long staffing delays at the beginning would have a massive negative impact on the overall development trajectory.

2. No staffing pull

Sometimes, people were given some opportunities, around 3-4 studies per year, but still couldn’t build sufficient staffing pull.

Here, consultants need to have an honest assessment and determine if there are any fundamental gaps in the toolkit.

Everyone has gaps at this stage, but if too many, that could be a deal breaker.

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Unfortunately, these two drivers are linked to each other. One leads to another. A slower start at the beginning results in slower development and reputation building. Then, consequently, this leads to a lower staffing pull. A vicious cycle is activated.

In previous years, people would have been given more time to ramp up, but not this year, unfortunately.

Negative Feedback

Another major factor is if consultants receive negative feedback. There are two main reasons why it is happening:

1. Not sufficient feedback

There is one specific challenge related to low-tenure colleagues.

When providing feedback, many managers and partners do not expand too much on new consultants’ strengths. They just say that consultants are developing okay, according to tenure expectations.

I myself as an evaluator find it hard to populate the strengths of low-tenure colleagues, trying to pull more concrete examples from their leadership. After all, consultants are still learning the ropes and it is really hard to showcase outstanding results. But it doesn’t mean that these people are performing below expectations.

If evaluators are not diligent enough, they take this lack of feedback at face value, don’t probe further, and leave the strengths section empty.

However, if consultants had colleagues who expanded more on development needs, these would be fully reflected in the evaluation papers.

Junior managers often over-index on development needs rather than strengths-based feedback. This happens due to a lack of calibration.

So, put these two factors together, an empty strengths section plus a detailed development needs section. Add to this low utilization. Here we get a clear Concerns rating case—a very common scenario. But maybe could have been avoided.

2. Delays in development

Sometimes, there could be genuine slow development or even hiring mistakes. This also happens, but rarely.

Most likely, delays in development happen due to not being staffed in the first few months. Expectations grow with tenure very quickly. Without real client work, it is impossible to keep up.

Plan Going Forward

Unfortunately, there will be no silver bullets.

A turnaround will come down to the same two fundamental factors: staffing and performance, resulting in utilization and feedback.

Staffing

Staffing will be the most challenging barrier to overcome because it is mostly outside of consultants’ direct control. At this stage, reputation plays an important role—unfortunately, probably a negative one.

However, despite these complications, you can still do a few things to turn it around. You never know when luck will be on your side.

First of all, lean on the people with whom you managed to build positive relationships.

Also, theoretically, staffing coordinators can place you in some projects with reduced costs, but they don’t like doing it and may not volunteer to do so. Also, the leadership of that project should be willing to take you in.

It is possible to pull the following stunt.

Find a project that desperately needs additional capacity but doesn’t have a budget. Pre-discuss with the manager or partner that they are, in principle, ready to take you on.

Once you have their green light, ask the staffing coordinator to place you there with a reduced or zero cost.

It is a long, long shot, but I’ve seen this happen before. Sometimes, smart managers do this stunt, but pulling this off from the consultant position will be very hard.

Internal projects could also be a way out. It can give a positive impulse, but won’t be enough to save your case.

These are long shots, but I just wanted to show you the level of hacking and scrappiness required to get out of this tricky situation.

Most people won’t do this. So get scrappy, pushy, and more proactive. This is a survival game.

Please read this article on the staffing process: Staffing = Reputation x Network.

How to communicate your Concerns rating on staffing calls?

Many consultants ask this question.

The simple answer is you don’t have to communicate this.

Typically, partners should know already. They probably participated in the same evaluation committee and must have seen ratings of all the consultants. Also, typically, staffing coordinators are obligated to inform partners of all Concern ratings in advance. And finally, the office talks, so it is not really a secret.

But, you may try to use this as an opportunity to create trust by bringing it up by yourself for full transparency. But need to have some kind of angle here, showcasing that you will work hard to overcome this situation. Put more energy and dedication than any other consultant. Also, don’t forget to highlight your unique strengths relevant to this project.

Performance

If consultants get staffed, the chances of success increase dramatically.

At this stage, the main goal is to ensure that all achievements translate correctly into feedback papers.

The first thing to do is sit down with the manager and partner and tell them you need their help.

Generally, there are many good and empathetic people who want to help. Develop a recovery plan together, focusing on what specific skills you need to showcase.

If your colleagues know you need help this cycle, they most likely ensure that positive feedback is detailed and reflected correctly. Tell them that in the last cycle, you didn’t have enough details in your evaluation papers, which eventually hurt you.

The best-case scenario is if your colleagues send detailed written feedback to your evaluator. Evaluators are busy; they will likely copy-paste that feedback in your papers. That’s how you can control the narrative for the committee.

It is pretty awkward to ask your leadership to do that. But sometimes, you may develop close relationships where you are more comfortable asking these favors, mainly if you delivered a significant impact on the project.

I was always shy about asking for these things. But I had a few supporters who would go and ask on my behalf.

Additionally, have a hard look at your consulting toolkit. What areas require significant upgrades?

In 9 out of 10 cases, it boils down to fundamental skills. And if you are under 12 months tenure, I would make an educated guess that focusing on slide creation skills will have the best return on time invested.

I'd like you to please read this guide on How to create great slides.

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P.S.

I feel your pain.

As a consultant, I struggled to perform and faced an impossible situation with extremely high expectations and minimal support.

My life turned into relentless stress, pain, and anxiety. But I always suspected that there should be a better way.

All that pain was not necessary with the right support.

Nine years later, I designed the coaching program I desperately needed back then. Its sole focus is helping you excel and achieve high performance.

Only then can you build strong sponsorships, find great projects, and become confident.

If you are an MBB consultant and want to achieve high performance, please
Book a 1-1 Discovery Session.

Learn more about the Hero Journey coaching program.

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