At a time when "thought leadership" flows trippingly off too many tongues too quickly in the consulting profession, Watson Wyatt Worldwide Director of U.S. Benefits Consulting Sylvester Schieber simply rolls his eyes at the term.
He speaks with modesty, but his actions, research, and consulting are exceedingly deep, broad, and timely. That package, a 5th-century B.C.–era thought leader once noted, defines a superior man. Schieber would likely roll his eyes at the Confucius mention, too, but he might appreciate the historical reference.
Schieber's interest in understanding history to help improve current business decision- and policy-making helps fuel his research and consulting. His insights, white papers, and treatises are regularly cited in the lengthier analyses by top economic and political columnists such as Robert J. Samuelson that grace the pages of the Wall Street Journal, U.S. News & World Report, and other top publications.
Since joining Watson Wyatt in 1983, Schieber has delivered a steady stream of thoughtful and, at times, provocative analyses on the sustainability of pension systems, the benefits of consumer-oriented healthcare programs, the impact of aging on global workforces, and the value of individual accounts as a component of Social Security reform in the U.S.
Schieber first advocated individual Social Security accounts 23 years before the current debate flared up, when he served as the first research director of the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI). Prior to that position, the economics Ph.D. served in the Social Security Administration. He now sits on that agency's advisory board.
How Watson Wyatt, then called the Wyatt Company, came to hire Schieber helps explain the deep, multifaceted nature of his research and consulting. The Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act (TEFRA) of 1982 represented the first in a series of legislative actions that contained troubling implications for corporate pension programs. Many of the provisions that corporate managers found most onerous were stitched into the act in conference committee as the two houses of the U.S. Congress patched similar but separate pieces of legislation into a single law.
The changes took most business leaders by painful surprise, a shock that many blamed on the consulting community. Wyatt Company's research and information center was created to address that perception. Its mission, explains Schieber, is "to figure out what's coming down the path in terms of policies, practices, and changes that affect the workforce and in terms of changes to the economy that are going to affect the whole environment in which employers offer and run benefits plans for their workforce."
As he begins his new role in leading Watson Wyatt's U.S. benefits practice, he would like to help nurture a return to first principles by guiding a retreat from an overly mechanical focus on regulatory compliance in favor of a more richly informed understanding of how and why pension and benefits programs originated — and where they're headed.
That wide-open area of inquiry has produced important research. The executive chairman of the World Economic Forum complimented Schieber's most recent book, The Economic Implications of Aging Societies: The Cost of Living Happily Every After (Cambridge University Press, 2005), cowritten with Watson Wyatt colleague Steven Nyce, for its scholarship, calling it one of the "most comprehensive analyses to date of the macroeconomic implications over the next few decades of current demographic trends in a wide range of countries."
High praise — but just don't call him a thought leader.
— Eric Krell
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