The other major factor which has also contributed to the fall of EY middle east is the bitter treatment of EY leadership on people willing to join the Andersen legacy now PwC Middle East. The continous harassment in Jeddah and Al-Khobar office of employees, employees being blamed of stealing and police being involved,EY not accepting resignations, continous threats to people who would leave, mass terminations for people having relationships with the now PwC people.

It would be in the benefit of EY Middle East Management for once to look deeply into its current leadership and get rid of those who are damaging or jeopardising the name and prestige of the firm, if it wants to survive in this market. We sincerely pray that the middle east leadership will wake up one day and see what the problem is and finding a true solution.

If we were talking about building and sustaining a house instead of an organization, we would instantly know the answer. To sustain a house for the long term, we would need strong infrastructure – a strong foundation, roof and bearing walls, etc.

However, no matter how strong that infrastructure might be, if the house is to remain strong over time, it will also need people to take care of it.

The same holds true for building and sustaining strong, engaged professional service firms. It will require that we create strong infrastructure for such a firm – infrastructure that is meant to stay standing for as long as that firm is benefiting the business agenda. It will require that we build systems for engaging people who care, to keep that firm strong.

It is therefore not surprising that E&Y struggling towards the goal of financial strength never feel secure. More typically, whether times are good or bad, E&Y leadership spend considerable time and emotion each year trying to fill in the gaps in yet another budget with no avail.

1. Unclear Vision:

Ernst & Young has not been able to clearly inspire people with a compelling story of how and why its going to manage it business in such a fierce environment; more importantly, the lack of strategic alignment amongst Ernst & Young network of entities and its people has resulted in complete confusion and people don’t know where the firm is going and what it is trying to achieve in the future.

Every model Ernst & Young has promoted so far as a path to organizational effectiveness focused on building financial strength through generation of more revenues. This revenue generation strategy led to focusing on the lagging indicators rather looking ahead for leading indicators that would transform the firm from the strong-hold audit culture into a more business oriented and entrepreneurial culture. Looking back at the example of a sustainable house, we know that all the money in the world will not sustain that house if the foundation is crumbling or there is no one who cares about the house. In Ernst & Young case the comprehensive business strategy and linking Skills keeps missing.

It is therefore not surprising that while Ernst & Young is focusing on market leadership (financial growth) still feels vulnerable and is witnessing a severe internal turmoil as result of its poor business strategy. Ironically, in good and bad times, Ernst & Young leadership spends considerable time and emotions each year trying to fill in the gaps in yet another budget, not realizing that budgets -driven approach may apply to far less complex firm and does not really help in a matrix organization striving to build and sustain its practice. The view that Ernst & Young keeps missing is the real reason why it exists: if we assume that the reason is to add value to business by identifying issues before they turn to be problems, it then so obvious that a business-driven approach to sustainability should aim to create entrepreneurial, strong and engaged practice. But again practice with a sound infrastructure, and with hoards of people who care.
Aiming first at business is not semantics. Where we aim our ultimate results changes everything about the way we conduct ourselves and the way we do our work.

2. Lack of linking Skills:

it so amazing that the gust if Ernst & Young service offering is geared to promote the premise that business environment without any form of changes would not only be monotonous but also inconceivable! Still Ernst & Young is known for fear of change; and Ernst & Young leaders lack entrepreneurial spirit. The leadership style on the part of management is either too directive or too hands-off; managers do not lead and don’t manage change, they just administrate and micromanage.

To the credit of Ernst & Young, it has many wonderful ingredient of linking skills; least is its shared values. However, the lack of one firm approach, lack of trust; blame culture; focus on problems, not opportunities; internal politics that result in people not having fun at work and failures are not tolerated; bureaucratic structures with too many layers; high boundaries between management layers; poor decision making; too close monitoring of things and subordinates; etc result in one thing: people lose confidence in their leaders and systems.

3. Poor Communication:

People have no clue of the big picture and do not feel that their contributions are important; too much uncertainty; people don’t know what top-managers are thinking and planning. Although, a great deal of electronic emails are being sent to staff telling the news of what happing, often, these electronic communications are focused on E&Y own needs and wants, maintaining thin relationships with staff only to the extent those relationships will benefit the firm’s immediate agenda. Now, when times got tough for E&Y, they are on there own with nothing but money and possessions to comfort them for a while. They have lost credibility in the Middle East market and more importantly lost the engaging spirits of its employees.

Ernst & Young has not been conscious of others, and was only focused on it own self perspective, however, when we consider a person who is always thinking of others, we know that when times get tough, that person will always have much to sustain him – friends, family, faith, and all the other non-material things that make our lives rich. Even with recent event of massive leadership changes in E&Y, recent communication was so poorly written labeling old and new teams and trying disparately to gain credit for business that has already been secured by the departing team to PwC.

The same holds true for any professional organizations. When the focus is on sustaining the organization, and engaging in the outside world, business becomes a competitive advantage. It is not a struggle against all the other organizations in the marketplace; it is a struggle between the call to the organization’s mission, and the call for financial strength – the struggle of means against ends.

4. Poor Cross-functional Collaboration:

E&Y’S most remarkable weakness it is silo structures within its business divisions. These divisions operate independently and without the common functional mindset. Because of the office-based model each office leader is emperor in his own geography and they often lack cross-functional goals and cross-functional collaboration spirits to work tighter. They even fail to share business and resources to support each other. This to the extent that hiring subject matter experts on contractual basis is more feasible than having cross office resources due to office-based model which literally allows high charge out rates between offices.

Nevertheless, extraordinary efforts are being exerted to create an enterprise-wide business process management; but without a cross-functional management committees; E&Y continues to suffer from powerless cross-functional teams. This has resulted in Poor Teamwork. The lack of shared and worthwhile goals; weak team leaders; team members who don’t want to play as part of a team are tolerated as part of the silo setup.

5. Poor Knowledge sharing culture:

This is probably the best manifestation of cross-pollination of ideas that is not facilitated across E&Y. The organizational setup defeats creativity, and does not smooth the progress of idea and knowledge management strategies and systems; the leadership approach of “know-it-all” attitude; “not invented here” syndrome is so overwhelming that any critical idea is crucified at the outset.

Sadly, E&Y repeatedly prove to be naïve in managing its own crises and neither it is learning from own mistakes nor from others in market. E&Y work hard to provide significant improvement in the quality of services to the business community, but it is not building strong, sustainable, resilient Firm and, unfortunately, the evidence in this case is overwhelmingly seen by the market.

I guess, E&Y’s next challenge is to realize that doing the wrong things well does not create success; it creates frustration and self-destruction.