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Grow or Die. It’s probably the most common business axiom, and the least accurate, according to the new book “Smart Growth: Building an Enduring Business by Managing the Risks of Growth” (Columbia Business School Publishing). To better understand the book’s implications for firms, Consulting’s One-on-One sat down with the book’s author, Ed Hess, a former Arthur Andersen strategy consultant and current professor at the University of Virginia's Darden Graduate School of Business.
- »One on One with Summit's David Litherland
When prospective employees interview for a job, they obsess over making a good, lasting impression. Firms should do the same. To learn how firms can avoid typical pitfalls, Consulting’s One on One sat down with David Litherland, managing partner of Summit Search Group, an executive search firm specializing in placing professionals within professional service firms.
- »One on One with PwC's Tom Craren
Senior executives are becoming immune to traditional marketing. Marketing consultants tell us that to pierce through the white noise of corporate communication, firms should consider “content marketing”. Instead of more traditional marketing, providing valuable insight and perspective in a blog or electronic newsletter can serve as a more effective door opener. One of the best examples is PricewaterhouseCoopers’ “10-Minute” series. For almost three years, PwC has boiled down complex thought leadership into small electronic pieces an executive can read in about ten minutes. To learn more about PwC’s marketing efforts, Consulting’s One-on-One sat down with Tom Craren, the firm’s brand strategy and thought leadership leader. His team of 20 writers produces between two to three 10-minute pieces each month, along with more detailed white papers.
- »One on One with Stanford Hospital's Kate Surman
Transitioning healthcare companies from paper to electronic records presents huge consulting opportunities.
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2009
»Top 25 Consultants, 2009: Ken Mungan
 Ken Mungan
Principal
Milliman
Excellence in Financial Services
While most consultants lament that there are no big ideas to drive consulting growth, don’t tell that to Ken Mungan, a principal and leader of Milliman’s financial risk management consulting practice. Looking ahead, he would like his 75-person practice to be at the center of overhauling the retirement savings process for every person in the world. His practice grew by about 20 percent in 2008 and continued on that pace through the first quarter of 2009, though he’s cautious about whether that growth rate is sustainable given market conditions.
Since 1998, Mungan has lead a team advising insurance companies on ways to better manage their risk. “The goal of the practice, in the beginning, was to address a basic problem we saw in the industry. Our clients were selling products that provided guarantees to their clients, but the insurance companies were not protected against market risk,” Mungan says.
He says they were investing in overly complex instruments that carried significant risk, especially during a potential financial crisis. Mungan’s approach was to simplify the process by providing total transparency and encouraging lower-risk investments. That foresight has provided significant credibility for him as he tries to tackle his next big challenge: changing how people across the globe save for retirement.
“The last generation largely retired based on a pension model. And that model is largely gone. It has been replaced with what I see is a retirement savings model, but savings does not constitute security,” he says. “Savings are vulnerable to a prolonged Wall Street downturn. And as people continue to live longer, the odds are increasing that people will run out of money.”
For the last few years, Mungan has pushed for a consortium of institutions (insurance companies, fund managers and administrators, etc.) to offer an insurance product with a lifetime guaranteed annuity, with the risk spread out over multiple companies. While historically, the mega-life insurance companies have refused to work together, that mindset is changing as they increasingly realize that financial institutions can fail, he says.
—Jess Scheer
>> Full list of Top 25 Consultants 2009
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