Our mission is to deliver “Change that Counts”: meaningful, lasting change to our clients’ businesses, our employees’ careers, and by extension, to the management consultancy profession and society as a whole.
Among our ambitions is a focus on delivering sustainable change so that our clients can continue to transform their businesses long after we have left. Delivering this sort of change requires a different consulting approach we:
- Challenge as well as support
- Make evidence-based recommendations
- Ensure collaborative working
- Strategic but pragmatic
A key point of difference for Gate One is our belief that an entrepreneurial mindset is invaluable to addressing client problems. Our consultants are encouraged to put themselves in our clients’ shoes and start their own business via the Gate One Incubator. This allows us to teach creativity, leadership and grit which we, in turn, use on client projects. A tangible example is in the process of Design Thinking (a methodology used in start-ups which keeps the customer in mind when designing a solution). The discipline is taught by the Incubator and shared with the wider firm, so that we can use its problem-solving concepts to deliver better client solutions.
We also apply an exceptional level of transparency in how we run the business. All consultants are paid the same amount within each grade and all salaries are published internally. We share our P&L and our company performance balanced scorecard with all members of the team. Our annual business plan draws on input from the whole team and it is shared across the firm once finalised. Doing this means our people buy into, understand and deliver on our ambitions.
Our dedication to transparency is also apparent in our recruitment processes. We value honest candidate assessments from both senior and junior employees. Final round interviews are conducted by a partner and a more junior consultant. We also ensure we always feedback to the applicant, whether they are successful or not.
Our commitment to diversity and inclusion plays a strong role in how we recruit. We ask ourselves whether a candidate is additive to our culture rather than a cultural fit. This results in diversity of thought, higher performing teams and, ultimately, a better service for our clients. We are proud of our almost exactly 50/50 gender split, <5% gender pay gap and are working hard on all aspects of D&I, including dedicating our upcoming Christmas team awayday to the topic.
We create the forums required for our consultants to be able to discuss D&I candidly, educating each other on how we can do better. We ask: What does D&I mean to us as individuals? How does our use of language impact others? How can I learn more without being worried I’ll be judged for not knowing enough already?
View the Gate One profile in the MCA Members Directory.