d. Can we develop systematic ways of helping, encouraging and, above all, ensuring that our people are skilled at client counseling in addition to being top technicians?

The central issue, I have learned, is that, in most firms, billable time is carefully monitored, but marketing time is considered “extra.” Marketing activities represent an investment, requiring nonbillable time to be spent with uncertain, long-term results, and few firms are well organized to manage their investment activities. Billable time has a

The strategy development task is not an exercise in forecasting. Rather, the goal is to create the responsive organization;

Democracies flourish when the nation is at peace and the harvest is bountiful—as, historically, was the environment of the professions in the post-World War II era. However, when war is declared or the crops fail, even the most ardent democracy selects a government that will direct the troops and tell factories what to produce.

Drop unprofitable clients

spend a lot of time on the why (“provide meaning”).

Yet it is only by understanding the profit per partner of different practices, services (and even engagements) that the firm can manage its “equity investments” (partner time) wisely.

At the best professional service firms, it is routine practice to require that, at the end of each and every client project, the engagement leader will sit down with the client to obtain the client’s feedback on what went well, what less well, and how the engagement might have been improved.

These conversations, if conducted with candor, are often the source not only of good ideas for improvement that can be deployed on subsequent engagements, but (I have heard repeatedly from my clients) often highlight additional unresolved issues (perhaps not formally within the scope of the current engagement) that represent immediate new business