As a professional services firm partner, you face unique challenges:
A Dual Role
- Your lot is more demanding than a classical management position. You have a dual role, as a key producer of fees and as a leader/manager of people.
- You are a key producer because clients demand your involvement and experience and for the firm, you are highly profitable.
- As a leader you are charged with devising the firm’s strategic direction and engaging staff.
Strategic Direction & Growth
- How will digital disruption change your business model?
- Achieving sustained organic growth in a highly competitive environment is difficult. What is the best practice?
- Inorganic growth i.e, selecting and integrating merger partners and/or lateral hires can fundamentally change your firm’s culture and the failure rate is high.
Engaging Staff
- Selecting, engaging and retaining great employees, and providing a career path against a backdrop of increased demands for flexible working.
These challenges can be overwhelming and the more senior you are, the less people you have as available as sounding boards.
There are a number of options available to you to navigate these challenges. You can ignore them (many do), you can rely on internal resources and skills or retain an external organisation to assist.
An external organisation, such as a consultancy, brings many benefits. They will usually have a robust strategic framework, bring a vast array of experience and play the role objective party. Other important selection attributes would include Industry expertise, contemporary approach, and track record of success.
Parkins Lane specializes in assisting Managing Partners, Practice Group Heads and Partners of professional services firms in the development and execution of strategy. Our team has an unparalleled track record of successfully growing substantial professional services firms.
- Our approach recognises defining strategy as the first step in the change process, not the only step.
- Our initial focus is on ensuring alignment of strategic elements (differentiation, customers, services, price) and involving the right business model to achieve the strategy
- Communication and engagement of staff around the strategy and business model is then crucial to its success. Devolving these down so they are meaningful to all staff.
- Lastly, locking in milestones which gauge the success of our strategy or otherwise
To further discuss how we will assist your firm, please contact our Managing Director, Robert Patterson on 0413 751 691 or email at robert.patterson@parkinslane.com.au.