Disengaged podcast

Anti-Consulting with Gerry Murphy

1/10/2026
0:00
1:30:44
Manda indietro di 15 secondi
Manda avanti di 15 secondi

Is it possible to run a professional services company without individual goals, without billable hours, without performance ratings? Gerry Murphy and Nua Group certainly think so...

Gerry Murphy is a co-founder and partner at Nua Group, the San Francisco firm that describes itself as the anti-consulting firm. He qualified as an actuary in Dublin, spent eight years in Europe, and was a senior partner at Mercer with earlier leadership roles at Watson Wyatt before he, Joe and Chris set Nua up ten years ago.
We cover the anti-consulting model, what happens to accountability when you delete the machinery, managers who never wanted the job, job architecture as a system of control, and whether any of it survives at ten thousand people.

What we covered:

  • Anti-consulting as a playful poke at billable hours, sales goals and internal meetings
  • Clients love their consultants, not the firms those consultants work for
  • Two internal meetings every two weeks, and what the rest of the week is for
  • Nua consultants asking the partners whether they could please track their hours
  • The nickel and diming that comes with the hourly model
  • Everyone at Nua gets the same bonus, whatever their individual performance
  • The bonus that moves from 20 percent to 21 and pleases nobody
  • Four job levels on paper, two in practice: partner and consultant
  • Majors and minors in place of practice areas
  • Gerry's rules of management, starting with do nothing, ending with two blank rules
  • Managers who never wanted the job and took it for the pay
  • Mercer's manager charter, and Jensen Huang's thirty direct reports
  • Electing your own manager, and where Gerry pushes back on the idea
  • The client whose job architecture, bonuses and equity created an incredible amount of work
  • Whether AI makes experience and education requirements irrelevant
  • Stock options, RSUs, dilution and growth
  • The Ryland Report, and why the team asked for more financial detail, not less
  • Scaling to ten thousand people, and the naming of Uber Nua

People:

  • Joe Farris, co-founder of Nua Group
  • Paul Reiman, compensation consultant and previous guest on this show
  • Dan Walter, equity compensation specialist and the first guest on this show
  • Jack Stack, who led one of the most leveraged employee buyouts in US history
  • Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia

Books:

  • Close the Gap, James Alexander Seechurn

Articles:

Organizations:

  • Nua Group, Mercer, Watson Wyatt, Radford, Irish Pensions Trust, Morning Star, Nucor, Handelsbanken, Buurtzorg, Nvidia, Gallup, MSCI, Stripe

Find Gerry:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gerrymurphynuagroup/
Website: https://www.nuahr.com
Email: [email protected]

Music licensed through Soundstripe. Code: DLQOKHPSWUMSTCMH.

Altri episodi di "Disengaged"