Utilizing Summit Meetings for Integration: An Interview with Don Boyd
Don Boyd is the Executive Chairman of the Australian-based group of worldwide Deacons offices. Don instituted four days of summit meetings that he conceived of to kick off the practice management and firm leaders of their newly-integrated firm. We’ll let him tell you about the successful impact those meetings had on the new firm structure… […]
The Leading Question of Learning.
Many people seem to think that skills such as management and leadership cannot be learned; you are either born with them or not. This article examines the case for management and leadership training in Professional Service Firms. I had a Partner once who firmly believed that all leadership and management abilities are a matter of […]
Intelligent Design for Law Firms
In a recent issue of Fast Company, an article entitled “The Interpreter” starts out like this: Claudia Kotchka is holding the secret to understanding design at Procter & Gamble in her palm. It’s not a P&G product, but a tin of Altoids®, the “curiously strong” mints produced by Wrigley. As the scent of peppermint oil […]
A Cautionary Tale: Broken Glass
Once upon a time there was a practice group that thought it was special. It thought it could accomplish much more than many of its counterparts within, and outside, the firm. And it came to pass that the practice group did accomplish a number of measurable results. And the firm said it was good… In […]
Peak Performance
It’s not only about the money… In working with hundreds of professional services firms over the last fifteen years all over the world, we have had the privilege of making a few observations that may be of value to you, especially if compensation issues are chronic in your firm. If your firm is experiencing chronic […]
Be a Cheerleader for Downsizing
To reach their potential in productivity and profitability, greater numbers of firms than ever before have been focusing very seriously on the development of effective practice groups. However, many firms succumb to the temptation of choosing the wrong professionals to head up their practice groups. Historically, firms have tended to make practice leader that individual […]
Avoiding Pitfalls in the Practice Group Structure
The popularity of the practice group — an entity within the firm dedicated to practicing a specific kind of law, or serving a specific industry — seems well grounded, in that it offers a number of advantages to managing a practice and its services. But with all its advantages, there exists an easy propensity to […]
The Black Hole of Branding
Fast-forwarding through fads from Steven Brill’s adaptation of Tom Peter’s In Search of Excellence for the legal profession, to TQM (Total Quality Management), to enormous marketing departments now we arrive at the Branding phenomenon – a license to burn money. When I began practicing law it was a profession. Those who argued that it might […]
The Professional’s Mindset and the Slight Edge Theory
Many good professionals think that the extraordinary achievers–the professionals we all look up to, the exemplary practices–many people think that those people are twice as good or three times as good as the rest will ever be or can ever be. That is wrong. That is nonsense. The very best in the profession are only […]
Future Trends in Marketing for Professional Service Firms: An Interview with Gerry Riskin
Marketing ideas are the toughest things in the world to breathe life into, and real advice — information based on experience and knowledge that is really outside the scope of what most professionals within the firm would otherwise be aware of — sometimes seems hard to come by. Gerry Riskin is interviewed here by Capstone […]