“Everything is unfamiliar all of the time.”
Today we went on the final business visit of the Pittsburgh portion of the program. With our first visit being to EY, it was fitting for our last to be to their competitor, KPMG. They were very similar companies, as would make sense for two titans of their industry, but they presented themselves very differently. EY took great pride in its company culture and made it the central theme of their presentation, whereas KPMG did not mention it until a question was raised, much to some of my classmates chagrin. For me, though, the culture today was clear without being worded. The employees all clearly loved the firm and it had a distinct tone of hyper-professionalism, yet with a rogue element of freedom. Unlike Google, where structure was set up to make it seem like there was no structure, KPMG made me feel that the hard lines were boundaries rather than cells. I also appreciated the way they attacked the experience divide, rather than simply ignoring it, by promoting the “if you need something, knock on a door” ideal.
Our first speaker, Jim Heatherington, talked to us about the international aspects of the company. He worked for two years in the Ukraine with other employees around the world, took a break to explore a different path, and then went back to work for the firm, referred to as “boomeranging” when I asked about their employee retention. It was great to listen to Jim as I am planning to work on Eastern European studies in addition to business. The biggest thing he said that stuck out to me was about the process of preparing to go abroad. “Everything is unfamiliar all of the time. The first few months you will be uncomfortable and things will go wrong.” It was a stark reminder that life likes to shirk our best laid plans and it is good to keep the lesson in mind as we prepare to leave for Dublin. Another fascinating thing he mentioned was that the best translators in the world will still lose ten percent of the message. It was one of the first times that language barriers were actually acknowledged by a company, a reality I was grateful to see recognized.
Like the other companies we have visited, KPMG is a very innovative firm. They are all aware that if they do not grow, they will not thrive. In combatant with this, they each work to innovate for the future. The primary way that KPMG does this is through the KPMG Ignition, a collaborative environment for teams to meet and improve the tech and their own efficiency. Similar to EY, they are working to automate the dirty work so that they can focus on larger issues. These steps allow them to stay at the top of the industry and push it forward. The importance of innovation can not be overlooked, and they hold that principle close.