by Robin Dicks | Apr 11, 2016 | Robin's Blog
There was a short but thought-provoking piece recently in Accountancy Age on this issue. To slightly paraphrase the article, it suggests that actually many of the approaches and ways of doing business undertaken by ‘professional firms’ or advisors are anything but professional in the 21st century. It also makes me wonder whether the description professional services firms, or indeed lawyers or accountants is the best way of describing what people do and the value they bring. While bolting ‘solutions’ at the end of a name or service descriptions risks an entry in Private Eye, firms would be advised to think about the commercial merit and value of what they do being much clearer in the description, and indeed the undertaking, of their...
by Robin Dicks | Jan 14, 2016 | Robin's Blog
The January football transfer window is pretty bizarre if viewed dispassionately – but in an idle moment it made me think. If your firm were a football team, how would you value your players? Who are your star strikers and which central midfielder would you ideally shift to a lower-league outfit? Perhaps more importantly, what are the characteristics of the players you should recruit, and where are the gaps in your squad? What are your objectives for this season? I’m not suggesting you take this analogy too far but if you’re feeling brave, it might open up an interesting debate with the management team and provoke some creative...
by Robin Dicks | Aug 22, 2014 | Uncategorized
For most professional services firms, successful growth remains driven by how well aligned marketing, business development and the activities of fee earners are – and, of course, how well they are executed. But it’s not a perfect world: what is there is a gap in the key activities you cover, or people duplicate effort, or the person responsible for the activity doesn’t have the skills (or desire) to do it? Effectiveness declines. Accountability, ability and appetite. Not all is lost if you don’t have all 3, and people can still drive results. But you do need to understand where people are at and how to maximise the impact of what you do. How can you optimise the effectiveness of all the people involved in the marketing and BD effort? Phil Gott, my colleague in the Winning Firm Alliance, and I have created a diagnostic which very inexpensively and quickly identifies how the whole firm, a practice/team, or an individual can really enhance the results from their activity. Contact me if you’d like more information on 44 (0)7940 886677 or at robin @ thrivingcompany.co.uk ...
by Robin Dicks | Mar 12, 2013 | Uncategorized
As a judge in the recent Managing Partner Forum awards in this category I was pleased to see some of the efforts being made by firms in this area. There is no doubt that many firms are recognising that more informal, judgemental forms of performance management, that often are not linked to the firm’s strategy OR the capabilities needed to survive in the future, just don’t cut it. That said, it seemed to me that entries were of three types: Firms which did not really have a consistent performance management system before and were implementing one (including appraisals across all staff for the first time) Firms which had very imaginative and creative processes in place to disseminate information, and empower and support managers, but still focused on backward looking measures such as billing and utilisation. Firms that recognised the need to put in place and manage capabilities for the future, and had created a balanced scorecard approach. The third, to my mind, is the only appropriate place to finish, but you can need a route map to get there and to evolve in this direction. ...
by Robin Dicks | Dec 18, 2012 | Uncategorized
I think one of the key future activities which will define the continued health of any professional services firm is its ability to gather client knowledge and to use it. We’re hearing a lot about “big data” for good or ill, but what are the inputs of client knowledge that firms can pick up today and use, and how can they use this data to improve their performance in day to day, tangible ways? Budgets are tight. Resources are stretched. So its worth using the processes you have to get the most possible benefit (or adding processes which make an impact on your performance in not just one way but several. You may be able to add to it, but here is at least the beginning of a checklist of the outputs that you can get from client feedback on without a $$$ budget. 1. Better knowledge of overall capability required by clients 2. Better knowledge of demand for individual specialisms and areas 3. Identification of specific opportunities and risks 4. Clarification of best positioning (and killing potentially risky “wrong” positioning) 5. Sales and cross sell opportunities 6. Better pitches and proposals 7. Input into training (to improve marketplace impact of that training) 8. Input into recruitment, job descriptions and personnel specifications 9. Creating the right Key Performance Indicators 10. Gaining testimonials to provide 3rd party evidence of your...
