Tierney often speaks of "fostering the humility to learn" as a key corporate success factor. And he believes that this humility to learn is at the heart of innovation. Taking on new initiatives in light of-and often in spite of-risk is evidence of Tierney's willingness to question traditional approaches to consulting. Considering the accelerating obsolescence of learning, he suggests that professional service firms like Bain & Company make questioning the status quo the way they do business. Tierney, however, tempers his appetite for change with a cautionary note: "By all means, drive the organization to create. But our business pushes us to be more adaptive than inventive. There is little institutional value to the first mover. Consequently, we build our business around sifting, synthesizing, and adapting. We are adaptive learning leaders."
Tierney speculates that as far as the future is concerned, managing organizational complexity as a function of Bain's growth and diversification will be an important training issue for senior management to tackle.
As a consulting firm, Bain relies heavily on a "train the trainer" model, employing its own consultants as training leaders. Bain's practice of relying heavily on Bain consultants and senior management as trainers and program directors has been criticized by both insiders and external training experts as inefficient and expensive.
Tierney is adamant in committing Bain's case-team and firm leadership resources to flagship programs. "The consultant trainer pool will grow in proportion to the numbers we have to train," he says. "But that's a complexity issue, not a scale issue. It is and will continue to be expensive. But consider the value! Our internal data show us that our partners rank being a trainer as one of the most outstanding activities of their careers. I would never want to go to a cadre of professional trainers to do the bulk of our training. I want consultants, managers, senior partners all involved in training. As trainers they learn more. They become more integrated and committed to the firm's goals and values. They come back from the programs truly energized. They show their student colleagues what it means to be a committed teacher-learner! This has been my experience at Bain. This is who we are and how we succeed.