Harriet Bynon-Murray: Senior Manager, Banking Strategy & Operations at PwC Canada

How did you become a senior manager at PwC?

I started right out of Ivey working at Deloitte as a Consultant. I was there for about three and a half years in their Enterprise Risk Management advisory practise. My area of focus was in risk and regulatory for financial institutions. I worked on projects in Anti-Money Laundering and Anti-Terrorism Financing, regulatory compliance, sales practises for banks, regulators, RESP companies and insurance companies.  At Deloitte, I spent two years as a consultant and then one year as a senior consultant. In 2015 I made a slight career switch to PwC when I was a Senior Associate so that I could focus more on operations consulting within financial services. I spent two years as a senior associate and became a Manager after that. I spent another two years at the Manager level and am now a Senior Manager. I was able to progress in my career quite quickly through hard work, an openness to try new things and some amazing project teams! Over the last eight and a half years my area of focus has shifted from risk and regulatory advisory to a focus on banking operations, all within financial services.

As you progressed from being an associate to being a senior manager, how has your role changed and what skills have you strengthened throughout your career transition?

As an associate, my role started with having to take a lot of direction. When you start, you are just trying to figure out what it is that you are trying to achieve. It was a lot more focused on absorption, taking direction and learning a lot. I do not think the learning has changed, but it is a lot more focused on managing the client relationship, project quality and managing my teams. As I have moved over from an associate to senior manager, the role changes from delivery to business development and sales. I never thought I was going to be in consulting this long because I never thought I was cut out for sales, but I find that it almost just comes with the role. I have old colleagues who are now somewhere else in the industry and they are like: “I need some help with doing this. Can you connect me with this? Do you have anyone at PwC who does this?”. I originally didn’t think I wanted to take on a sales role, but a lot of the time clients are reaching out to you based on the work you’ve previously done for them or just based on your network. Of course, there are big pitches and you do have to support them, but it is not as daunting as I thought when I was an Associate – you definitely get lots and lots of practise!  I have now been working in Consulting for eight and a half years and I find one of the best things about working in this space is the continuous compound learning. You get so many opportunities for variation in your projects to learn. If I look at the scope of the projects that I am working on right now, one is working with robotic process automation and machine learning, another one I’m doing target operating model design and then I have another where I’m developing a market conduct risk framework. I say compound learning because you have so many opportunities to learn many different subjects all at once! This is opposed to a job in industry where you would likely just focus on one area until you switch roles.  In consulting they are throwing things at you all the time and you always have the opportunity to learn!

What keeps you motivated to do your work and keep going?

I think number one is the compound learning. You are constantly learning. We have to also be one step ahead of our clients to provide solutions and solve their problems. You kind of have to be on the cutting edge. This is one thing that keeps me motivated and interested in my job. The second thing would be the ability to work with so many different people. In consulting your team changes and is very dynamic. So, if you are a social person and you want to network and things like that, then it is really great because you are always meeting new people. You are always learning and then your network keeps growing. One of the other things that is always fun is that you also have the opportunity to travel, see the world and learn a lot about different companies. The travel side was always a big bonus but in the current environment travel is limited of course. I spent a couple months in Montreal on one project, seven months in London England, have had the opportunity to travel to a number of cities in the United States and spent almost two years in Vancouver – if you love to travel, it’s definitely a big perk!

What are some of the most important attributes that you see in effective leaders today?

In terms of being a good leader, I think being open is really important so you can build trust in your team and they know you are going to have their back. I think it is also really important to create an open dialogue between your teams. You want to create openness in your team so that people do not have to hold anything in and they feel free to say whatever is on their mind, not only from an ideation perspective, but also if they are frustrated with something or they are not getting the right support that they need in order to effectively do their job. Leadership is about being able to provide the right tools and structure to succeed. As a leader you need to be able to figure out what level of support is needed. In order to support growth in people, you have to be able to give your team stretch opportunities so that overall, as a team, you can become better. I would say those are probably my three things, trust, fostering openness and helping your team grow through stretch opportunities.

At PwC, we actually have a really great program for women in leadership. It spans six months, with 4-5 in person sessions from woman across the organization and the country. You get to know each other through a cohort, and you go through a number of different trainings that help you to think about what kind of leader you want to be, personality tests to understand how you work with others, and a component of 360-degree feedback, which allows you to get perspectives from your seniors and direct reports. It’s a really fantastic program!

What have been some of the most defining moments in your career journey?

Moving from senior associate to manager was a big jump because you start to move from the delivery role to managing clients and your teams. Your day-to-day responsibilities change and there is a shift in the way you work.  I was also proud of being promoted from manager to senior manager in a couple of years because there was a lot of work that went into that promotion, since it is not as common to do it in two years.

I have also had a few memorable projects that have been defining where you can really provide value and you can see your impact. You get a lot of value out of that which equally comes with recognition from your clients and the rest of your team.

Looking back on your experiences, do you have any advice for students beginning their career journey?

Number one I would say is you are not always going to get the pick of the litter of your projects. You are going to be on projects sometimes that are way out of your depth or comfort zone, but there is always learnings and upsides to every project. I think for a lot of projects that I have been on and was certain I really did not want to do that project, I had the most learnings. Even when you think you might not like the project that you are working on, there are a lot of other things that come as a result, you gain a different perspective of the company, or work with a new company, in a new space, or you get to work with different types of people that you might not have had the opportunity to before.

Lastly, you do have to work hard to get places. You’re in Ivey and you know that it’s hard work, and it wasn’t easy getting accepted. Nothing rewarding comes easy, you have to put in the hard work. But you have to take time off when you can. Take a break from work and enjoy life - travel as much as you can, I am a big proponent of that and leverage consulting for travel if you can.

What were the biggest challenges you faced in your leadership journey? How did you overcome it and what skills did you learn along the way?

I think one of the challenges I always have is around delegation and that really goes back to the need to build a strong team that I trust to get the job done. From a leadership perspective, you have to have the right leader to build trust in the team, but your team also needs to be strong so you can gain trust. In the past I would take on a lot as opposed to spreading out the work, not because I want to, but I am just like: “it's not going to get done”. I think delegation is one of those areas from a leadership perspective that I continue to work on. As you move up from associate to senior manager, you do not have as much time in your day to do the delivery. A lot of your day turns into giving direction to your team on how they are going to structure the problem, how they are going to put the slide together to create the right story and support sales activities. Delegation and clearly articulating what you want your team to complete becomes important. If your team isn’t able to complete the delegated task, you, as a leader, need to make sure you’re coaching and upskilling them so they can.

Have you ever felt imposter syndrome/do you still feel it? If so, how have you learned to tackle it?

I think it is always there, but you just have to remember that no one knows the answer to everything and there’s many different ways of approaching a problem and finding a solution. I don’t know if you ever stop feeling the imposter syndrome. For me, I feel that it is inevitably going to be there as I’m a person who likes to push myself and take on stretch opportunities. In consulting, you are always going to feel that little stress in the back of your head because every project is unique, you may not have as much subject matter knowledge as the client but what you do have is a framework to think about how to solve the problem. Having a strong support system and team helps when you feel like you are pushing your limits and stepping outside your comfort zone.