At the mid-market consulting and accounting firm Grant Thornton, partners’ bonuses now depend on how well they use AI.
The strategy comes from Tom Puthiyamadam, the recently appointed US head of advisory at Grant Thornton, which last year had global revenues of $8.5 billion.
After a 28-year career at PwC, Puthiyamadam joined Grant Thornton in April 2025. He’s exuberant about building a “real breakaway firm” that dominates the middle market, and sees AI as crucial for getting there.
One year into the job, he has set new annual performance goals to ensure his ambitious plans spread throughout the entire organization.
But it’s not the rank-and-file workers that Puthiyamadam’s new performance metrics target — it’s the firm’s most senior staff.
Grant Thornton is tying partners’ year-end bonuses to how well they deliver against the four new strategic goals now added to annual review scorecards, Puthiyamadam said.
He introduced the system in January this year, the start of his first full financial year since joining Grant Thornton.
The four strategic goals for partners are:
- Commercial performance: Who are the clients you will make successful?
- How they’re delivering AI solutions in the market and bringing new AI solutions to help clients
- How are they elevating & developing talent
- How they’re leveraging AI in delivery and day-to-day work
The scorecard is evaluated holistically — partners must still meet standard financial goals and quality delivery expectations as baseline responsibilities — but there’s no opting out of AI, he said.
If a partner achieves partial success in AI adoption while doubling their revenue, that balance will be taken into consideration, but if they do zero work on AI adoption, that will be a problem, said Puthiyamadam.
“I am aligning up an incentive, as in your year-end bonus, on whether or not you were able to clearly demonstrate how you adopted the AI tools we provided you in your delivery, in your sales process, and whether you’re becoming a proponent for it versus being a lag,” said Puthiyamadam.
When asked by Business Insider, Grant Thornton declined to provide specifics on how much of the partners’ year-end bonuses would depend on their performance against the strategic goals.
J. David Ake/Getty Images
AI is transforming the consulting industry, putting pressure on pricing models and talent strategies, but creating new growth opportunities and ways of working.
Firms are actively pushing AI adoption internally; for example, the Big Four firm KPMG has also turned to incentives to encourage workers to adopt AI, offering cash prizes to consultants who demonstrate “an incredible thing that they’ve done” with the technology.
Puthiyamadam’s strategic goals are intentionally being rolled out to partners first. Junior staff are AI native when they join the team and expect the technology to be used, he said. The problem is what Puthiyamadam calls the “frozen middle,” midlevel managers who might otherwise resist adopting new technologies. He’s hoping that by incentivizing partners to execute the strategy, the rest of the business will follow suit.
“If I put the compression and the heat on the partners in the business, trust me, it’s going to just seep right down pretty quickly,” he told Business Insider. “If you’re not on the boat, choose a different boat.”
Building a ‘breakaway firm’
Puthiyamadam told Business Insider that he left PwC to do something different before retiring. His move mirrors a broader industry shift, with senior leaders leaving top consulting firms for midsize players and startups that offer faster growth and greater influence over strategy.
“I came to GT for a reason, to move with speed and move with accountability,” said Puthiyamadam.
He hopes to outperform the market and transform Grant Thornton into “the most dominant player” in the middle market, serving clients with revenues between $500 million and $10 billion.
In Puhtiyamadam’s first year at the firm, the advisory business has grown from a $680 million domestic business to a $1.5 billion multinational advisory practice, the firm told Business Insider.
Grant Thornton ranks among the top 10 global accounting firms, but its consulting arm operates in a highly competitive landscape dominated by MBB and the Big Four, alongside rivals like Alvarez & Marsal, Lek Consulting, BDO, and Baker Tilly. Puthiyamadam said he wants Grant Thornton to be seen as a standout in its segment, much like McKinsey, Accenture, and Deloitte are in theirs.
That strategy rests on two core pillars: technology and deals.
Grant Thornton is investing heavily in AI capabilities while expanding its presence in transactions and transformation work, including recent acquisitions aimed at strengthening its commercial and financial due diligence capabilities, he said.
The firm is also reshaping its talent base and tools, and has recently hired nearly 40 partners from competitors, including Deloitte, KPMG, Accenture, and AlixPartners, all with “a digital backbone,” Puthiyamadam said.
At the same time, it is aligning its global network to drive more collaboration, he added.
Underpinning it all is a “far more aggressive commercial model,” said Puthiyamadam.
AI may reduce unit costs, but the tooling will also dramatically increase the volume of clients that his team can serve, he said. “When I have a better mousetrap, I will take market share,” Puthiyamadam added.
