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Managing the Professional Service Firm, by David H. Maister
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Professional service firms differ from other business enterprises in two distinct ways: first they provide highly customised services thus cannot apply many of the management principles developed for product-based industries. Second, professional services are highly personalised, involving the skills of individuals. Such firms must therefore compete not only for clients but also for talented professionals. Drawing on more than ten years of research and consulting to these unique and creative companies, David Maister explores issues ranging from marketing and business development to multinational strategies, human resources policies to profit improvement, strategic planning to effective leadership. While these issues can be complex, Maister simplifies them by recognising that 'every professional service firm in the world, regardless of size, specific profession, or country of operation, has the same mission statement: outstanding service to clients, satisfying careers for its people and financial success for its owners.'
- Sales Rank: #181703 in Books
- Brand: Brand: Free Pr
- Published on: 2004-10-30
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.17" h x .98" w x 5.98" l,
- Binding: Paperback
- 400 pages
- Used Book in Good Condition
Review
Tom Petersauthor/co-author of "In Search of Excellence, Thriving on Chaos," and "Liberation Management"The professional service firm is the best model for tomorrow's organization in any industry. When it comes to understanding these firms, David Maister has no peers.
About the Author
David Maister is widely recognised as the premier expert on professional service firm management. Maister is British by birth but has made his success in the US where he founded the highly successful Maister Associates Inc. He is also the author of several highly acclaimed business books.
Excerpt. � Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
CHAPTER 1
A QUESTION OF BALANCE
One of the most interesting discoveries in my consulting work has been the fact that (apparently) every professional service firm in the world has the same mission statement, regardless of the firm's size, specific profession, or country of operation. With varying refinements of language, the mission of most professional firms is:
To deliver outstanding client service; to provide fulfilling careers and professional satisfaction for our people; and to achieve financial success so that we can reward ourselves and grow.
The commonality of this mission does not detract from its value. Simply put, every professional firm must satisfy these three goals of "service, satisfaction, and success" if it is to survive. Management of a professional firm requires a delicate balancing act between the demands of the client marketplace, the realities of the people marketplace (the market for staff), and the firm's economic ambitions.
Many factors play a role in bringing these goals into harmony, but one has a preeminent position: the ratio of junior, middle-level, and senior staff in the firm's organization, referred to here as the firm's leverage. To see the importance of this factor, we shall briefly examine, in turn, its relation to the three goals of the firm.
LEVERAGE AND THE CLIENT MARKETPLACE
The required shape of the organization (the relative mix of juniors, managers, and seniors) is primarily determined by (or rather, as we shall see, should be determined by) the skill requirements of its work: the mix of senior-level, middle-level, and junior-level tasks involved in the projects that the firm undertakes. Consider three kinds of client work: Brains, Grey Hair, and Procedure projects.
In the first type (Brains), the client's problem is at the forefront of professional or technical knowledge, or at least is of extreme complexity. The key elements of this type of professional service are creativity, innovation, and the pioneering of new approaches, concepts or techniques: in effect, new solutions to new problems. The firm that targets this market will be attempting to sell its services on the basis of the high professional craft of its staff. In essence, their appeal to their market is, "Hire us because we're smart."
Brains projects usually involve highly skilled and highly paid professionals. Few procedures are routinizable: Each project is "one-off." Accordingly, the opportunities for leveraging the top professionals with juniors are relatively limited. Even though such projects may involve significant data collection and analysis activities (normally performed by juniors), even these activities cannot be clearly specified in advance and require the active involvement of at least middle-level (project management) professionals on a continuous basis. Consequently, the ratio of junior time to middle-level and senior time on Brains projects tends to be low.
Grey Hair projects, while they may require a highly customized "output" in meeting the clients' needs, involve a lesser degree of innovation and creativity in the actual performance of the work than would a Brains project. The general nature of the problem to be addressed is not unfamiliar, and the activities necessary to complete the project may be similar to those performed on other projects. Clients with Grey Hair problems seek out firms with experience in their particular type of problem. In turn, the firm sells its knowledge, its experience, and its judgment. In effect, they are saying, "Hire us because we have been through this before; we have practice at solving this type of problem."
Since for Grey Hair-type projects the problems to be addressed are somewhat more familiar, at least some of the tasks to be performed (particularly the early ones) are known in advance and can be specified and delegated. The opportunity is thus provided to employ more juniors to accomplish these tasks.
The third type of project, the Procedure project, usually involves a well-recognized and familiar type of problem. While there is still a need to customize to some degree, the steps necessary to accomplish this are somewhat programmatic. The client may have the ability and resources to perform the work itself, but turns to the professional firm because the firm can perform the service more efficiently, because the firm is an outsider, or because the client's own staff capabilities to perform the activity are somewhat constrained and are better used elsewhere. In essence, the professional firm is selling its procedures, its efficiency, its availability: "Hire us because we know how to do this and can deliver it effectively."
Procedure projects usually involve the highest proportion of junior time relative to senior time (and hence imply a different organizational shape for firms that specialize in such projects). The problems to be addressed in such projects, and the steps necessary to complete the analysis, diagnosis, and conclusions are usually so sufficiently well established that they can be easily delegated (under supervision) to junior staff. For Procedure projects the range of possible outcomes for some steps may be so well known that the appropriate responses may be "programmed."
The three categories described here are, of course, only points along a spectrum of project types. However, it is usually a simple task in any profession to identify types of problems that fit these categories. The choice that the firm makes in its mix of project types is one of the most important variables it has available to balance the firm. The choice of project types influences significantly, as we shall see, the economic and organizational structures of the firm.
Consider what will happen if a firm brings in a mix of client work such that its "proper" staffing requirements would be for a slightly higher mix of juniors, and a lesser mix of seniors than it has (i.e., the work is slightly more procedural than the firm would normally expect). What will happen?
As Figure 1-2 suggests, the short-run consequence will be that higher priced people will end up performing lower-value tasks (probably at lower fees), and there will be an underutilization of senior personnel. The firm will make less money than it should be making.
The opposite problem is no less real. If a firm brings in work that has skill requirements of a higher percentage of seniors and a lesser percentage of juniors, the consequences will be at least equally adverse: a shortfall of qualified staff to perform the tasks, and a consequent quality risk.
As these simple examples show, matching the skills required by the work to the skills available in the firm (i.e., managing the leverage structure) is central to keeping the firm in balance.
LEVERAGE AND THE PEOPLE MARKETPLACE
The connection between a firm's leverage structure (its ratio of junior to senior professional staff) and the people marketplace can be captured in a single sentence: People do not join professional firms for jobs, but for careers. They have strong expectations of progressing through the organization at some pace agreed to (explicitly or implicitly) in advance.
The professional service firm may be viewed as the modern embodiment of the medieval craftsman's shop, with its apprentices, journeymen, and master craftsmen. The early years of an individual's association with a professional service firm are, indeed, usually viewed as an apprenticeship, and the relation between juniors and seniors the same: The senior craftsmen repay the hard work and assistance of the juniors by teaching them their craft.
The archetypal structure of the professional service firm is an organization containing three professional levels. In a consulting organization, these levels might be labeled junior consultant, manager, and vice president. In a CPA firm they might be referred to as staff, manager, and partner. Law firms tend to have only two levels, associate and partner, although there is an increasing tendency in large law firms to recognize formally what has long been an informal distinction between junior and senior partners.
Responsibility for the organization's three primary tasks is allocated to these three levels of the organization: seniors (partners or vice presidents) are responsible for marketing and client relations, managers for the day-to-day supervision and coordination of projects, and juniors for the many technical tasks necessary to complete the study. The three levels are traditionally referred to as "the finders, "the minders," and "the grinders" of the business. The mix of each that the firm requires (i.e., its ratio of senior to junior professionals) is primarily determined by the mix of client work, and in turn crucially determines the career paths that the firm can offer.
While the pace of progress may not be a rigid one ("up or out in five years"), both the individual and the organization usually share strong norms about what constitutes a reasonable period of time for each stage of the career path. Individuals who are not promoted within this period will seek greener pastures elsewhere, either by their own choice or career ambitions, or at the strong suggestion of the firm.
This promotion system serves an essential screening function for the firm. Not all young professionals hired subsequently develop the managerial and client relations skills required at the higher levels. While good initial recruiting procedures may serve to reduce the degree of screening required through the promotion process, it can rarely eliminate the need for the promotion process to serve this important function. The existence of a "risk of not making it" also serves the firm in that it constitutes a degree of pressure on junior personnel to work hard and succeed.
The promotion incentive is directly influenced by two key dimensions: the normal amount of time spent at each level before being considered for promotion, and the "odds of making it" (the proportion promoted). These factors are clea...
Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
Practical and very accessible
By Erik Gfesser
This text is a classic resource on the professional service firm, and as a consultant this reviewer appreciates the accumulated wealth of knowledge the author graciously decided to share. The content that Maister provides here is practical and very accessible, and consists mainly of articles published separately over a 10-year time period within such publications as "Sloan Management Review", the "Journal of Management Consulting", "International Accounting Bulletin", and "The American Lawyer". While most of these articles refer to professional service firms as partnerships, the vast majority of the material is still applicable to other types of firms, including the limited liability company (LLC). And the title might suggest a management audience, but the content is important for all associated professionals, including new associates. Because this book is so well written, this reviewer also recommends a reading by those considering work in this field, either those still studying at the university or those contemplating a professional transition. There is no other book quite like "Managing the Professional Service Firm", even though it has been over 15 years since its first appearance (1993) and a host of other texts have entered this space, especially after the late-1990s boom in consulting. The foundation of this book is the simplified mission statement that Maister indicates is the same, with varying refinements, for most professional service firms: "To deliver outstanding client service; to provide fulfilling careers and professional satisfaction for our people; and to achieve financial success so that we can reward ourselves and grow". Probably no coverage of this book can quite deliver justice to its quality. This reviewer set out to list several of the articles which they consider to be above and beyond the rest, but it was difficult to include all but just a small minority of the chapters. The strength of the content is slightly skewed toward the first half of the book, but strong articles persist throughout the 7 sections covering basic matters such as balancing company composition and profitability, client matters such as listening and marketing to clients, people matters such as motivation and scheduling, management matters such as strategy, partnership matters such as performance and compensation, and multisite matters. Highly recommended.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Excellent for Law Firm Managing Partners
By O. Cazac
I purchased this book out of sheer luck, by reading a review to law firm start up book that recommended professional services firm management books.
I am a East European Lawyer and feel empowered and enlighted when reading this book. Its style is user-friendly. In particular, I liked and appreciated the chapter on what clients expect from professional servicepersons.
I have not yet read all its chapters, but those I did, I read several times and each time new helpfull skills come to my attention.
As a lawyer, new tothis type of source of information, I was not expecting I could find such a book, of such a high quality.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Learned a ton!
By Ronnie
Excellent read! I learned so much that helped me to manage my start-up professional services firm.
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