John Drzik
President and CEO
Oliver Wyman
Excellence in LeadershipJohn Drzik graduated from Princeton in 1983; a year later, he was Oliver Wyman’s ninth employee. He was appointed Chairman in 2000 and led the successful integration of the Mercer Management Consulting, Mercer Oliver Wyman and Mercer Delta Organizational Consulting into today’s Oliver Wyman Group. And last year, of course, he led the firm through the Great Recession.
“Last year was the toughest year I’ve seen in my 25 years in consulting,” Drzik says. “In terms of how we navigated, it comes down to our people and the overall culture of the organization. Our people and the environment here are pretty entrepreneurial, even though we’re pretty large. Our people were always looking for where they could serve our clients who were facing significant challenges.”
That often meant changing course mid-stream. In financial services, for instance, Oliver Wyman traditionally didn’t have involvement with public sector clients. “We realized that the changes taking place in that market would be led in some way by government thinking.” Drzik says. “We created a public policy practice globally to serve the public sector and help advise our clients in this area. We got to scale and capability pretty quickly.”
Even with the nimble-minded approach, Drzik couldn’t avoid a 10 percent drop in revenue in 2009. “We had a really solid second half of 2009, and we’re expecting 2010 to be a growth year, but I don’t see us jumping back to the 15 to 20 percent growth that we enjoyed for a five-year run.”
Drzik, however, is focused on the bigger picture. “Given our unique circumstances of trying to build the Oliver Wyman brand, we’ve made a lot of investment last year,” Drzik says. “It’s an exciting time to be here. And there’s a real opportunity for someone in the leadership role to make a significant—and hopefully lasting—difference.”
—Joseph Kornik
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