James Allen
Bain & Company
Partner
James Allen is a Senior Partner in Bain & Company’s Lon- don office. He is the co-leader
of Bain’s global Strategy Practice,
the founder of the firm’s Customer
Strategy & Marketing Practice and
a member of Bain’s European Consumer Products and Technology
practices. In addition, he leads Bain’s
Founders Mentality 100 initiative,
hosting more than 30 Founder Forums around the world since 2015.
Over the last year, he’s worked on
Bain’s Micro-battles, which is all about
how large complex companies rediscover the art of “getting stuff done
fast,” which has been a source of pride.
“The Micro-battles concept came
directly from our deep work with com-
pany founders on what sets of skills and
behaviours led them to create success-
ful insurgent companies,” Allen says.
“Having worked with these founders in
writing our most recent book, Founder’s
Mentality, we continued to meet with
them through over 35 global forums and
co-created the Micro-battle System.”
Aside from Founder’s Mentality, Al-
len is a recognized leading expert in de-
veloping global corporate and business
unit strategy and has worked closely
with Bain’s Chris Zook on two other
books on strategy: Profit From the Core
and Repeatability.
In fact, ask Allen about the biggest
factor to his success and he’ll say Chris
Zook, who kept him from being fired as
a Summer Associate 30 years ago and
has been his Paul, John and George ever
since. “I’m a very lucky Ringo.”
Much like the real Ringo, Allen cred-
its his music—and his family—for his
success. “About 15 years ago, I bene-
fited from an executive coach, who was
helping me with those classic work-life
balance issues. Her insight was simple—
you’ll never get the work bit under con-
trol unless you let the life bit explode,”
he says. “I’ve always loved music, and
from that piece of advice I founded two
separate companies: a music label with
studios in London and Spain, as well a
charity, Singing Wells, focused on re-
cording, archiving and sharing the tradi-
tional music of East Africa.”
Because family and music were al-
ways a great source of energy, he found
it easy to throw a lot of that energy back
into Bain and his clients. “I love being
a tiny piece of a CEO’s transformation
story,” he says. “And, if you’re in a great
professional services firm, each year
your leagues get better in all things.”
Over the last several years, he says he
has loved working with founders, from
Jaipur to New Jersey, from Johannes-
burg to Sao Paulo. “They’ve created
something from nothing and most have
sacrificed so much of themselves to cre-
ate great companies. It’s humbling.”
Q&A: What does
being recognized as
a Global Leader in
Consulting mean to
you? Your firm?
Your clients?
Allen: “For me, it means I am lucky. I had the opportunity to
work with a lot of great clients and Bain colleagues, who have
created great things. I’ve been fortunate in that I got to hang
my name on some of it. But it is really all about the team.
Maybe it will inspire the next generation of Bainies to collect
lifelong lessons and fun stories. For clients? I hope they never
know. When you work with a client it is all about them, their
success and the company’s success.”
