How Leaders Can Close the Alignment Gap, with Rob Brown

The gap between what happens behind closed doors in the boardroom or in the partner meetings and what is seen, felt, and heard in the rest of the firm.

There are many ways you could define an alignment gap.

The gap between AI investment and AI ROI is another alignment gap.

Oh, yeah.

A gap between the promises of private equity and what private equity actually delivers.

That might be called an alignment gap.

So there's so many ways to define it.

But in terms of – you say I don't work in firms so much, but I do work – I do interview the leaders that work in firms.

There are people deeper under the hood than I am in how they work.

But – in asking people what's working and what isn't and where are they feeling the pressures, I am sensing that the major disruption is happening below partner level or outside the boardroom.

For instance, a deal gets done, a change in leadership, an M&A deal, a PE takeover, a new capital, a big new tech system comes in.

Not all of it gets delivered in real time down to the people in the ranks, the senior people, the managers, the directors, the associates.

I feel that's why we're losing people to that alignment gap of engagement, that manager engagement to what degree are they bought in and they don't find out about decisions until they've been done and it's not perhaps what they bought into and the partner path has changed for them.

There's a recent poll by Ipsos that asked people what most marks a successful life.

And answers on the multiple choice were having children, having a home of your own.

But the number one answer was a stable, enjoyable job.

Now, with all the change going on in accounting, and you know more than most, that's difficult to say you've really got a handle on that.

So that's the alignment gap.

Yeah, it's a right now with all the change that's happening and the anxiety, the stress that's being brought about by it is having an impact on people.

And I've seen this.

So we do a survey.

And in our survey, we do see that.

AI specifically we ask questions about is putting additional stress on people.

The positive aspect of the survey is showing that people actually see the benefits that will come from it.

So they feel the pain right now, but they see the pain going away in the future, which I don't think normally people see.