From the time he came to the company, Jaideep Bajaj has understood that the genesis of success at ZS Associates Inc. is all about creativity.
But creativity itself cannot sustain a business.
Two decades ago, Bajaj was one of about 25 employees at ZS, and good client work was fueling rapid growth at the management consulting firm. But as Bajaj’s career progressed, he stepped into the role of managing director about six years ago and realized that while creativity was still king, ZS had 17 offices around the world, with roughly 1,200 employees, but no global standards.
“We had lots of very creative people, but 100 percent freedom,” he says. “Meaning, if you’re in London, you decide how many people to hire, you decide what you want to do, and it’s really not about that, it’s really about synergy that you have to have with each other globally. You have to have a consistent product development and product expansion strategy. That requires structure with the freedom to innovate, because we had this legacy of amazingly free work … and yet, there was a realization in the firm that to truly harness and compete, we do need structure, and so balancing this 100 percent freedom to innovate with the need for structure has been a fairly significant trick.”
So when Bajaj decided to attack ways to create systems while still keeping that creative fire alive, he started at the top, creating accountability for his senior leaders. With that in place, he created review systems that teamed people across offices together and had them graded from above and below. All the while, he tweaked hiring and training while putting a limit on how fast the company grew.
The results have helped the company get to more than $250 million while keeping alive an incredible growth streak that has averaged 20 percent per year for the last 15 years.
