Rich Lesser
Senior Partner
The Boston Consulting Group
Excellence in Healthcare
The Boston Consulting Group senior partner Rich Lesser could be described as a classic consultant—if the description sufficiently emphasizes change and roll-up-your-sleeves client collaboration. While Lesser values traditional hard-nosed consultant analysis and guidance, he believes a consulting mindset that does not include a strong emphasis on "thinking about change from day one" is ultimately insufficient.
"The old paradigm of the consulting industry is that you spend weeks conducting an analysis, come up with recommendations and only then do you think about how they're going to get implemented," says Lesser, a core member of BCG's healthcare practice. "That is not a success paradigm. The success paradigm is that you take the time very early on to understand what is required to make change happen. What ideas have already been tried? If your ideas are such good ideas why haven't they been done before? If they have, then why haven't they succeeded?"
