Short Takes

CM: What brought you to consulting?
Stuchiner: I graduated from Columbia Law School in 1947 — it was the first class that entered after World War II. I started out in law with a small firm and then had a practice with my husband's firm for a while when I had four children. I was interested in the tax field, and we were interested in diversifying. Eventually, I headed up the legal department at Kwasha Lipton.

CM: How did you pursue a career when your children were young?
Stuchiner: For many years, I probably paid out more for help than I earned in income, but you do that because you want to adequately take care of the children. In the early years, when I was getting my masters in law and taxation from NYU, my husband Martin would take care of the kids on weekends so I could study. I used to go to the park with four kids and the Internal Revenue Code at the bottom of the baby carriage.

CM: Did you face any discrimination early on?
Stuchiner: People will tell me that there must have been some discrimination, but I didn't feel it or observe it. What I did was build my reputation largely through a lot of the speaking engagements and by being active in the bar association. When you get the recognition, people tend to forget sex.

CM: What's a typical week like now?
Stuchiner: I put in between 20 and 30 hours, depending on the level of work. In 1984–85, I had worked on developing the first cash balance pension plan for Bank of America. It's an innovative design that doesn't fit squarely into the literal reading of the statutes to some extent. I've been involved ever since, but in the last few years there has been a lot of controversy about it. I've been involved in various bar association activities in connection with it and I'm attempting to work with government agencies on some of the issues involved.

CM: What do you do in your spare time?
Stuchiner: I like sports. I like to scull, play tennis, and cross-country ski. I like music and reading. I sail a little bit. You are supposed to be both physically and mentally active to keep going. I like the activity.

The Consultancy Query

What challenges will e-consultancies face as they attempt to expand globally?

Mel Bergstein, Diamond Technology Partners chairman:

I believe there is so much demand out there right now that the tide is going to lift all boats. But the real challenge that these little companies will face is that they have never managed scale before, and a lot of these management teams are very young with little or no experience in this area. If you look at which professional services firms have accumulated knowledge around how to scale a business, Andersen is clearly the firm that understands how to scale. And scaling up sounds simple, but the fact is that everything a firm does has to be focused on scale and everything a firm's management does has to be about scale and today you will even see for (IBM's chairman) Lou Gerstner, as effective a leader as he is, that there exists a certain scale level where he's failed as well.

Bob Howe, Scient chairman:

The fact is, we are going global, and we have clients in Hong Hong and we're headed into Germany. And we have put in the upfront infrastructure that is going to allow us to grow, and you can certainly see it in our numbers, where we added 300 people last quarter alone. We're heavily focused on building the infrastructure that will allow us not only to grow and be scalable, but do it while maintaining control. I suppose time will tell, but we're very confident of our position at the moment. The fact is that we organized ourselves globally from the beginning, and we go to market through our industry groups, and it's now about taking these groups global. And what you'll find is that we already have the knowledge management systems and IT infrastructure to support this growth. We are now growing the business into these capabilities, not past them.

Bill Nussey, iXL CEO: