When Watson Wyatt CEO John Haley first tapped John Caldarella to be his new director of growth and development, he was turned down. Caldarella wanted to continue doing what he loved most — working with clients on large creative assignments. Eventually, though, colleagues persuaded Caldarella, among the top four revenue producers in the firm, that he could have the best of both worlds.
Today, no one consultant is doing more to increase client access to Watson Wyatt's knowledge and assets than Caldarella. And in doing so, the 40-year-old Harrisburg, PA, native is today recognized as a chief driver of what many believe could become the human resource consulting model of the future.
Watson Wyatt's digital business plan is "not just a sexy Web site or a killer application," says Caldarella. "It really has to do with how we converge tools, information, data, and services with the human interface that is our trademark with our clients."
This strategy has several components, which include increasing clients' access to Watson Wyatt's knowledge without increasing face-to-face interaction and developing solutions that have a faster ratio of speed to volume.
"As business cycles shorten and change happens more quickly, we can't spend nine to 12 months developing a solution if it's a six-month business cycle. We really need to add value on Day One," says Caldarella, who was credited with advancing the firm's human resources re-engineering capabilities in the mid- to late 1990s.
Ultimately, by organizing its assets and services offerings in a different way, Watson Wyatt will better be able to develop various partnerships with competitors in order to give their clients more efficient, fast, and valuable solutions.
"The clients that we deal with are more and more interested in the whole box," Caldarella says. "If you look at the human resource consulting model itself, it is very fragmented because there aren't any end-to-end players. There isn't a single firm that you can go to that can completely take care of everything, at least on a consistent basis."
That leaves Watson Wyatt and its competitors with two choices: Try to go end-to-end, or develop partnerships for specific client engagements, along specific service lines or, in some cases, firmwide. By coming together, Caldarella says, firms may realize a bigger pie for all.
"John's a real intellectual," says Kevin Meehan, vice president and a member of the board of directors, who helped convince his colleague to take his present position. "He's able to instinctively put together the various pieces of our business and come up with a strategy where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts."
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