Vantaggi
If you're looking to do pure health system strategy, Chartis is one of the top firms in the space and its client list routinely includes some great health system names throughout the country. There are a handful of Principals at the firm that really look out for their team's well-being and are interested in developing junior talent. Because the typical projects are staffed quite lean, Associate Principals, Engagement Managers and Consultants get a lot of internal visibility with directors and external executive exposure. Knowledge Management processes have improved over the past few years and given the somewhat repetitive nature of our projects, there is often an analogous previous project that you can leverage materials from as to not "reinvent the wheel". Work-life balance is average compared to other consulting firms (expect 55-60 hours/week to be standard) though the firm has put a lot of lip service on improving this since the pandemic started and has not actually implemented any of the things they said they were going to do (ex. Leadership/CEO said 60 minute meetings should be shortened to 50 minutes companywide yet the monthly all-company meeting he led never was changed). Travel benefits historically had been pretty good (use the credit card of your choice and keep all your points). Exit opportunities appear strong with many talented former employees getting great positions after leaving Chartis.
Svantaggi
Chartis as a whole is stuck in the traditional Academic Medical Center / Health System space, which is fine, but they have not made much progress consistently working with innovative providers and technology driven business models except for a small handful of projects in their Digital practice. Compensation is significantly behind larger firms and justified by "market surveys" relative to other niche boutique firms but leadership will discredit those same firms during the sales process and argue our work product position us against the McKinsey, BCG, Deloitte, Strategy &'s of the world that are all paying the higher compensation to staff. While mentioned above that there are a few principals who do look out for their teams, many of the younger principals promoted over the last 3-4 years have poor reputations internally for not providing clear direction, overworking their teams, and generally passing the blame downhill rather than admit they sold a project that was poorly scoped/staffed and then they didn't engage in the actual delivery to help out. Sadly, over my tenure, this has become more of the experience at Chartis, particularly as the current Private Equity owner has emphasized sales and cost management over the traditional culture that was Chartis' sales pitch to talented consultants coming out of school or other firms. Unfortunately it appears the CEO and top 2-3 leaders at the firm have heavily drank the Private Equity juice (likely because of the stock they own) and the firm has been spending its cash purchasing tangentially related assets (e.g. a CMS compliance firm, a health care communications firm) while cutting salaries during the pandemic and not providing raises, even after business has surpassed pre-COVID business levels. Increasingly they seem disconnected from the actual experience of many of the "do-ers" in the firm and poor internal satisfaction surveys are explained away, or met with solutions that do little to address underlying problems.