One on One with West Monroe Partners' Dean Fischer

Dean Fischer, president and co-founder of Chicago-headquartered West Monroe Partners, heads a firm that focuses on getting a good "gene pool." According to Fischer, that means people who fit into the positive culture at the firm, typically have a good deal of technical knowledge and probably do not have an MBA. The result? Nonstop growth—the firm, which opened in 2002, now boasts 220 billable consultants. Growth also includes a new office opening in Dallas in just a few weeks and big-name clients like Merrill Lynch and Bristol-Myers Squibb. Here, Fischer opens up about his surprise at the talent challenges before him and how happy employees in turn create happy clients.

Consulting: You just opened a New York office. Tell us about how you've been growing.

Fischer: There's a long history of firms that have grown through acquisition. If you grow though merger and acquisition, you inevitably end up with a really, really goofy gene pool because you don't end up with people who end up working well together, and it ultimately implodes. We start new offices. We don't go out as a general manner and do an acquisition, [but] we've done some smaller ones. We'll be opening up a Dallas office on Sept. 1.

Consulting: What's your long-term growth plan?

Fischer: We hope to be 500 [billable consultants] three years from now 1,000 in five years. At least that's what our goal is. And we've been hitting it so far, when we look at the leadership talent we have assembled. There are two things that have to happen for that to come true. One is economic, and that is the health of the economy and the marketplace in general. The other is our success in the war for talent. You hear about the war for talent all the time. I thought as it was as bad as it would ever get pre-dot-com, pre-9/11. Man, was I wrong, because five years later, it's as tense as it's ever been.

Consulting: How are you managing in that war for talent?

Fischer: He who gets the best people wins. When we go on campus to recruit and when we recruit just in general, we're a people-first organization. That's what West Monroe is all about. And that's a little bit blasphemous. It's almost blasphemy to not say that the client comes first, but I really believe that if you put your people first and you treat them right and you grow them and you train them and you do all the things that are necessary to care and nurture them, the outcome of that is going to be great client service.

Consulting: About half of your employees have a technology background. Is that a model that specifically works for you?

Fischer: I think it's part of what works for us. I think many of the consulting firms are getting weaker technically, and I think the reason for that is particularly the big firms are outsourcing a lot of that stuff to India. Look what's going on with all the big firms. They have outsourced their technology capabilities to India and to other development centers that are outside of the United States, and as a consequence to that is that, they have become weaker and weaker and weaker in the area of technology in the United States, so I think just that's an interesting dynamic that plays very much to our hand because we are continuing to invest very heavily in resources that understand technology. It's not like when I was a kid when you could be a very, very successful consultant and not know anything about technology. [New consultants] can't any longer. So even if your degree was not in a technology-based field, you better figure it out, and you better deepen your skills in that area.

Consulting: So then would you advise an undergrad right now not to get an MBA?

Fischer: Absolutely. I'm not bashful about it. Don't even think about it. You're going to learn more here [in the field] and you're going to get paid while you're here. If you want to get your MBA, figure out what you want to do with your professional life first. And then maybe when you hit that five-year mark, that ten-year mark in your career, [then that's] maybe when you think about going back if you think you need a more well-rounded set of experiences in some sort of domain that you don't know. But don't waste your time and waste your money going to get your MBA right out of school.