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		Home >> Perspective >> Think Fast Think Fast The annual Deloitte Challenge asks Maxwell graduate students to tackle a pressing policy problem. And they have all of 24 hours to get it done. It’s four o’clock on a bright Thursday afternoon. In a meeting room filled with young men and women, you’re given a briefing on port cargo security issues in the United States and the daunting obstacles to addressing them—from the involvement of multiple government agencies to the massive volume of shipments arriving every day, mostly from foreign-owned carriers. In addition, Congress is poised to pass legislation requiring 100-percent screening of “elevated risk” cargo within three years. Your mission—should you decide to accept it—is to work with a small team of people you may have never met to devise a strategy for cargo screening that will meet Congress’s expected mandate, be supported by the various government agencies and the public, and, of course, effectively tighten port security. Oh, and one more thing: your analysis is due before midnight, and your group will present it to a panel of judges first thing in the morning. Welcome to the Deloitte Challenge, an annual event co-sponsored by Deloitte Consulting and the Maxwell School. Deloitte presents the case challenge to offer Maxwell students a taste of what public-sector consulting is like—because, as the announcement puts it, consulting work “is much easier experienced than explained.” Students interested in consulting careers (many, but not all, from P.A. and I.R.) can talk with Deloitte recruiters, and their presentations are judged by a group of Maxwell alumni as well as Deloitte practitioners. In the 2007 challenge, as in previous years, the 33 students had no advance warning of what the case would be about and no special background in port security. “I didn’t have any specific knowledge about the topic,” said Diana Hollman (I.R.), whose team included Charles Cutshall (P.A.), Sarah Hammer (P.A./I.R.), and economics graduate Jason Hecht. “The information Deloitte provided was pretty comprehensive. It looked like it would be two long days to get through all that input.” After almost eight hours of group brainstorming—at 11:28 p.m., to be precise—the team e-mailed its PowerPoint to Deloitte’s Emily Demich and got a bit of rest before the 8 a.m. start of the presentations. On Friday, the plot thickened. In the morning, the panel of judges from Deloitte (including Lora Walters ’03 M.P.A., Stasha Fyfe ’02 B.A. [P.St.]/’06 M.P.A., and Chappell Henderson ’05 M.P.A.) along with local Maxwell alumni Lloyd Purdy ’06 M.P.A., Jessica Crawford ’00 B.A. (Econ./P.St.)/’01 M.P.A., Helen Dewey ’97 M.P.A., Ben Walsh ’05 M.P.A., and Michael Frame ’02 M.P.A. (and guest Steve Kearney), winnowed the initial eight teams down to three. Then the finalists were given a “case twist”: among other things, an accelerated timetable requiring 100-percent screening of all cargo (not just elevated risk) by the end of 2008. This time, the teams had a scant hour and a half, up until 1:30 p.m., to revise their presentation in light of the new developments. “We used many of the same ideas that we came up with on Thursday but completely overhauled our strategy,” recalled Charles Cutshall. “The feedback from the judges following our first presentation was helpful. We were trying to sell our idea too broadly. Going into the afternoon we zeroed in on the process, trying to come up with something feasible and market driven.” Cutshall and his teammates rose to the challenge and came away with first prize. Lloyd Purdy, who participated in the Deloitte event as an M.P.A. student in ’05, joined the other judges in praising the grace-under-pressure performance of all the teams. “I found impressive parts in every presentation I saw,” he told the group. “You make me proud to be an alum.” Though the case had fictional elements, its realism was underscored by a closing presentation from Deloitte’s Barbara Wong. In the scenario given to the students, the agency in charge of port security was known as the Office of Transportation Security; its real-world counterpart, Wong revealed, is the Transportation Security Administration, and she and a Deloitte team are currently advising TSA on the closely related problem of air cargo security screening. In fact, she said, “We’re in the twist right now.” A recent bill implementing the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission requires 100-percent screening of air cargo by 2009. Though the goal of the challenge was to make a persuasive presentation, not to match Deloitte’s real-life recommendations, it was striking how similar the students’ proposals were to actual policies. The walls between Maxwell and the world of policy making seemed low in those two days, and the students more than ready to step over them. — Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers This article appeared in the Fall 2007 print edition of Maxwell Perspective; © 2007 Maxwell School of Syracuse University. To request a copy, e-mail dlcooke@maxwell.syr.edu.