Managing the Professional Service Firm

For the first time in paperback, international expert and consultant David Maister offers a brilliant and accessible guide to every management issue at play in professional firms.Professional firms differ from other business enterprises in two distinct ways: first, they provide highly customized services and thus cannot apply many of the management principles developed for product-based industries. Second, professional services are highly personalized, 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 recognizing 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."

David Maister, formerly a Harvard Business School professor, consults to professional service firms worldwide.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments
Introduction

PART ONE: BASIC MATTERS

1. A Question of Balance
2. The Professional Firm Life Cycle
3. Profitability: Health and Hygiene
4. Solving the Underdelegation Problem

PART TWO: CLIENT MATTERS

5. The Practice Development Package
6. Listening to Clients
7. Quality Work Doesn't Mean Quality Service
8. A Service Quality Program
9. Marketing to Existing Clients
10. How Clients Choose
11. Attracting New Clients
12. Managing the Marketing Effort

PART THREE: PEOPLE MATTERS

13. How's Your Asset?
14. How to Build Human Capital
15. The Motivation Crisis
16. On the Importance of Scheduling
17. On the Meaning of Partnership
18. Surviving the People Crisis

PART FOUR: MANAGEMENT MATTERS

19. How Practice Leaders Add Value
20. How to Create a Strategy
21. Fast-Track Strategy

PART FIVE: PARTNERSHIP MATTERS

22. Partner Performance Counseling
23. The Art of Partner Compensation
24. Patterns in Partner Compensation
25. Pie-Splitting
26. Partnership Governance

PART SIX: MULTISITE MATTERS

27. The One-Firm Firm
28. Hunters and Farmers
29. Making the Network Work
30. Creating the Collaborative Firm
31. Coordinating Industry Specialty Groups

PART SEVEN: FINAL THOUGHTS

32. Asset Management

References and Sources
Index

What is included with this book?

The New copy of this book will include any supplemental materials advertised. Please check the title of the book to determine if it should include any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.

The Used, Rental and eBook copies of this book are not guaranteed to include any supplemental materials. Typically, only the book itself is included. This is true even if the title states it includes any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.

FREE SHIPPING

Amazon no longer offers textbook rentals. We do!

Managing the Professional Service Firm

Summary

Author Biography

Table of Contents

Supplemental Materials