One on One with Waterstone's Eric Pelander

When a bunch of consultants get together to form their own firm, the elevator pitch usually touts their collective experience. But few firms can match the brainpower of Waterstone Management Group, whose leadership includes: Chairman Roger Nelson, the retired Deputy Chairman of Ernst & Young, who led the growth of the US practice from $300 million in revenue to $2.5 billion, and the eventual $11 billion sale to what is now Capgemini; Waterstone co-founder Mark Hauser, former CEO of Cap Gemini Ernst & Young Americas; and partner Eric Pelander, IBM's former global leader of strategy and change services and a key member of the small senior team that was responsible for the acquisition of PricewaterhouseCoopers' consulting practice. (And yes, he's a former E&Y partner, too.) So, when Waterstone's leaders say they're finding new success with their firm, we listen. To find out more, Consulting's One on One recently sat down with Pelander to see what's keeping his team busy. Consulting: What trends are you seeing in the marketplace?

Pelander: What we see is a real interest from our clients in strategy with a bias toward quick action. We do the proper strategy work: we identify how big the potential opportunity is and try to determine if the opportunity is viable for the client, etc. But our clients want us to very quickly get to execution. We're able to access issues faster than most firms because our senior people have all operated businesses or pieces of large businesses in addition to consulting.

Consulting: How does this 'bias toward quick action' compare to what clients were asking for a few years ago?