For Professional Service Firms

PSFs are unique in many ways. Firstly, the professionals themselves are a special breed and don’t take easily to being ‘managed’ or managing (and leading). For partners and other seniors, the balancing act between producer/manager is not an easy one. Additionally, the professions are notoriously resistant to change and hence how does one overcome existing tradition to innovate? For firms which are used to acting in the short term, the concepts of strategy and marketing are often hard to accept, and even harder to implement. For example, how does one create competitive advantage and differentiate a service that many clients see as fungible and commoditized? Even harder is the question of how to decide on and create a firm culture that breeds success, not inhibits it?

These are all potentially tough issues. At SRC, we have worked through these problems with many PSFs:

Our service scope revolves around five distinct but interdependent areas:

• Strategy and Marketing (for internationalization services, click here)
• Leadership Training, Development, and Planning
• Client and People Relations
• Practice Management
• Firm Culture and Structure

We also provide training and facilitation services conducted at your in house meetings, retreats, workshops, and seminars for matters related to the above service areas. Additionally, Robert Sawhney (key person), is available for key note speeches, talks, and panel discussions.

To see how these five service scope areas translate into real world problems, see how the following questions relate to issues you are facing in your firm:

How can we truly differentiate our firm?

What is our value proposition and what markets should we target?

Why don’t all our partners and associates understand our strategic direction?

What strategic direction should we follow and how to get everyone on board?

Should we be leading our people or managing them?

What are the key person and firm attributes that will create leadership success?

Our best people are leaving, de-motivated, insufficiently challenged and developed, why?

Why are we losing more clients than we should be?

Why are we not getting the work we want?

Is our firm culture holding us back?

Which comes first, our people or our clients?

The leadership in our firm is not what it should be, why?

Why does our business development team miss more than it hits?

Which new services should we develop?

Which new markets and industries should we target?

How should we best structure our practice groups and firm to meet our objectives?

How can we meet the needs of all our stakeholders?

Is the balanced scorecard the appropriate measurement system for our firm?

Why don’t we have a better understanding of our clients, competitors, and market place?

The values and philosophy of our firm are poorly understood and articulated, how can we create a culture that unifies the entire firm?

Contact us to see how we can be of help.