It's a mix of things. The biggest is that they're just enormous, so nearly every engagement is pretty much from scratch. As in: single departments of single div

It's a mix of things. The biggest is that they're just enormous, so nearly every engagement is pretty much from scratch. As in: single departments of single divisions could dwarf us in headcount and revenue. It can be dispiriting for Labs consultants and I know people who quit because of it. A lot of the time you hit what I call "veto culture". You are forever running into groups, committees, boards, bureaus, offices of the whatever etc etc who have the power to gate some change. Those folks almost always say "no". The logic is simple: if they say "yes", and something goes wrong, and they are blamed for it, then they might lose their job or at least risk a bonus or promotion. But if they say "no", there's no risk to them. In practice it drives everything productive underground. We often relied on discovering the nomenklatura who actually did things as we went. The parallels to the USSR's experiences (as I understand them) were fascinating. It's important to note that I don't see any of this as being a deliberate outcome. In general folks don't wake up and ask "how can I make my company less productive and pleasant today?". People do what makes sense to them, based on their experiences. But I have seen how culture can drift into a bad place that's hard to dig out. Big banks seem to have even more of this than regular megacorps. I know some folks who worked in the Federal sector had some similar experiences, but overall it seems like a lot of the time it seemed more manageable due to different incentives. In fact a lot of the compliance / standards folks were often thrilled that someone wanted to talk to them.