In June when Mercer announced that David Morrison would be retiring as head of its specialty consulting businesses it was, perhaps, no surprise that the firm's parent company (Marsh & McLennan Companies) tapped yet another of its consulting company leaders to head its specialty portfolio of businesses. As President of Mercer Oliver Wyman (MOW), John Drzik had already proven he could have MOW march to Mercer's all-for-one and one-for-all mantra. Now it's up to Drzik to help all of Mercer's specialty companies do the same. Earlier this summer, Consulting Magazine caught up with Drzik on the first day of his new job. CM: Now that you have taken on this expanded role, how will your day-to-day role change?
Drzik: I think the most obvious thing is that I'm now the representative for the Mercer specialty businesses at the MMC (Marsh & McLennan Companies) level. I also now have a responsibility across those businesses for developing the future vision, strategy, and organizational architecture. So, that's a new role. The combination of those –MMC and Mercer Specialty responsibilities– are going to take up a piece of my time that would've otherwise gone into managing and developing Mercer Oliver Wyman (MOW) on its own. In part, what I need to do is develop some of the people within MOW to fill some of my responsibilities and then I will have more free time to allocate to these new responsibilities across Mercer Specialty. So, it will change the balance of work that I do, but I think it will be fairly evolutionary because I'll still have a number of the responsibilities I have at MOW today as part of my Mercer Specialty responsibilities. Some of them will be overlapping but some of them will be new.
CM: Should we expect to see the collaboration between Mercer's different businesses increase?
Drzik: Yes, I think there will be an increase. Our experience at Mercer Oliver Wyman is that (collaboration) has increased overall since we joined the group as Oliver Wyman three years ago. The Mercer Specialty group has been formed through a series of acquisitions over the last 20 years. Some of them, like Oliver Wyman and Delta, are quite recent. So part of this is that companies are still settling into understanding each other's businesses and form the right type of collaborations across the businesses. As time moves forward, there will be more and more because you'll see opportunities for joining the expertise of a Mercer Delta with a Mercer Oliver Wyman or Lipincott Mercer with Mercer Management and so forth.
CM: How is this collaboration achieved?
Drzik: Each Company has distinct expertises. Some of them are straightforward in that they have functional expertise throughout all industries. Lipincott Mercer, for example, is a unit that focuses on brand and identity consulting across all industries. Mercer Delta similarly works on organizational design, change management and corporate governance across all industries. Whereas Mercer Oliver Wyman is focused on financial services as well as risk management across all industries. Mercer Management works on mostly strategy consulting for non-financial companies but those relationships can introduce the other capabilities of the group. Some companies are defined by industry verticals, some by functional capabilities, but the expertise can be joined together to solve client problems that have a multi-disciplinary nature to them. One of the trends we see is that clients are trying to solve more complex, multi-disciplinary problems. We think we can bring together specialists from both industry and functional disciplines to solve those problems together.
CM: Are there times when you are uncertain as to what group is best equipped to address a client challenge? Do you encounter client-ownership issues?
Drzik: Usually, it's pretty clear which capability the client is looking for. From time to time, of course, there are gray areas and then the different units have to solve the problem for that particular situation. In a way, the different entities have those problems within themselves. For example, within Mercer Oliver Wyman we've had to set up a process called "Best Foot Forward," which enables us to find the best people in response to a particular client issue. It's really the same type of backdrop to solving that problem at the Mercer Specialty level. You want to get the people who have the best combination of industry and functional expertise as well as local market knowledge in front of a client, and yet you can't bring everyone who could potentially help. You have to get the group that will be your most powerful group and build management processes to solve those problems. It works pretty well today. Most client problems can be defined well. But there are always some gray areas.
CM: Could you describe the "Best Foot Forward" process? Is it used throughout the different units at Mercer Specialty?
Drzik: Each of the companies has its own process. We have "Best Foot Forward" at Mercer Oliver Wyman, we have something called "Best in Front" at Mercer Management, which is a very similar process. There are only occasionally situations where issues have to be resolved above—if you will—the entity level. Without describing each process in depth, the first step of the process is generally covered by the first unit the client has established contact with. They become the primary coverage entity for that client, and then we look to pull in capabilities from the other units when we can.
CM: What goals do you have for the next 12 months?
Drzik: Well, I can give you my best answer. But having just assumed these responsibilities, I'm still working on defining what those goals will be. In the next several months, I'm going to take some time to look at how we should evolve the growth strategy for Mercer Specialty as a whole and for the individual parts of the division as it stands today. I'll be learning about the existing growth plans of the other companies, seeing how they can be put together into a more powerful and unified direction for the division as a whole. So, one of my goals for the next several months is to define the medium-term strategy for the company.
The second part is really just to maintain the factors that have made the individual companies successful in the past and hopefully enhance them through the things we can do at the Mercer Specialty level to further energize the growth. The companies have been extremely successful over the last 2 to 3 years. So my goal in part is to maintain that momentum, while putting in this overall growth strategy for the division as an umbrella over the companies.
CM: How do you envision your relationship with other companies in Marsh & McLennan?
Drzik: We still want to be an active collaborator with Mercer HR as well as the other companies in MMC like Marsh and Kroll, where there are often also intersecting capabilities that we can take advantage of. But my first job is to get the collaboration within Mercer Specialty to work well, and then separately get the collaboration between Mercer Specialty and the other units to work well.
CM: Do you anticipate any change in the relationship with MMC? Do they view consulting any differently?
Drzik: I think they see broad continuity with what David Morrison was doing and the direction he was taking with Mercer Specialty and what they see as likely to happen under my leadership. We share similar outlooks for the business. MMC's outlook for the business is that we will be a contributor to growth of the overall company and that our businesses can deliver results successfully.
CM: Do you feel that recruiting will change as far as the types of people you will be hiring?
Drzik: I think we will continue to look for similar kinds of people as we have in the past. All of the companies have a development model for people to grow from being entry-level consultants to being partners or directors. We need to continue to compete effectively for top talent at the entry level as a main source of our future growth, as well as attract senior talent to help us build new sectors. I think the mix of recruitment is likely to be quite similar to what it's been in the past. I think we will be recruiting more as we continue to grow. I think we will be a terrific place for people to come because we will be able to create, through the overall growth of the enterprise, opportunities for personal growth. For entry level and senior talent we will be a strong opportunities for people to consider.
I think we need to be very competitive in those markets because I see the future of the firm as being strongly linked to how successful we are at recruiting. This is a talent business. We have to win in that market as much as we do in the market for clients. From a competitive strategy standpoint, we need to think about how we win clients in the market place from bringing the right expertises in the right combination to solve client problems. But then we also need to bring the right proposition to new recruits at the entry level and senior level. We feel we have attractive propositions now, but we will make sure that our offers remain competitive in the future.
CM: Many firms appear to be seeking out more specialized talent. Is Mercer taking a similar approach?
Drzik: Each of our companies is in a different position. Mercer Delta has a senior-weighted talent model with not as many senior level consultants per director as you would find in the world of MOW or Mercer Management. So I would have to answer that question differently for each of the companies. …Our view is that specialization is something we can build organically within the company by focusing people at an earlier stage of their career. For example, within Mercer Oliver Wyman we hire people in the entry-level to focus on financial services and they build their career within that industry. We feel that this gives us an advantage relative to other companies competing in the financial services industry that tend to use a mix of financial services specialists and generalists. We have to get the right balance of specialization versus other attributes in the different sectors we compete in.
But if I take up your general point, I do think specialized expertise will be an important source of competitive advantage for us and for any consulting firm in the industry going forward. Clients will increasingly seek people who can bring expertise at the start of the project rather than just develop it through the course of the project. I think we will position our firm to be advantaged in that regard.
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