We started doing something interesting in our Total Business Reset offering, recently, and the results have been enlightening. We have two carefully crafted surveys—one for principals and one for each team member—and every person completes it, with name attached. We synthesize the findings, but everything is anonymized. That combination is important: no anonymous beefs thrown over the wall, but transparency because the participants are protected and they aren’t afraid to be honest.

We’re doing some deeper analysis on the thousands of combined responses to see what we can learn, and thus what we can helpfully share, but there are sufficient trends to share a few highlights here.

What I’m going to share is broadly true of nearly every single firm. At least 95% of them, so you can probably safely assume that they apply to the firm you run. I’ll share these overarching themes in two categories.