What’s different about a professional service firm?
So much business advice is aimed at businesses that make and sell things, but a huge number of businesses in developed economies nowadays make and sell thought. ‘Thought’ businesses demand different solutions to different problems from ‘thing’ businesses. And such businesses are also typically owner-managed – financed by owners who sell their own expertise to their clients.
Professional service firms are also in effect partnerships in style even if not in legal form – flat, non-hierarchical organisational structures that are flexible yet potentially unstable. In this ‘post internet’ age, such businesses often have a different approach to growth: no longer does a professional service firm need to be huge in order to sell high-fee advice to international corporations. Above all, professional service firms are run by and for highly intelligent, ambitious individuals, often leading experts in their own fields who are rightly suspicious of outsiders telling them how to run things.
The challenges of professional service firms
Businesses that sell thought trade in the intangible rather than the tangible; they require a different approach from their sources of finance; a different attitude to equity and profit growth; different approaches to organisational design and management structure. The tension between increasing profitability as a consequence of a drive for process efficiency and the exercise of professional judgement – what we call an investment in ‘professional disobedience’ – is another ‘professional service firm peculiar’ that needs to be understood carefully when proposing changes to organisational and management structure as a consequence of growth.
Where we come in
You work hard and successfully to solve the problems of your clients. So do we. The problems created by your own success are one of our areas of interest. We’ve seen them before. Why not call us and hear what we have to say?
