typical proportion of time required from professionals at different levels—has not been a variable that is routinely monitored by firm management.

The management of the firm has two key roles to play in the strategy development process: It must establish policies concerning the “rules of the game” (firm policies) and “expenditures” (firm-level investments and funding).

The strategy development task is not an exercise in forecasting. Rather, the goal is to create the responsive organization; to put in place a set of operating procedures which force the practitioners to listen to their marketplace on an ongoing basis, not as a one-time piece of market research; to require them to reexamine their methods of operatio

At the end of this conversation, the surviving plan becomes a “contract” between the coach and the team. Before the meeting concludes, a specific, ironclad meeting date is chosen approximately three months hence to review the execution of the plan, and its impact—what worked, what didn’t, what proved easy to pull off, what is more complicated than

many firms cannot “fix underperformers” as a profit improvement tactic because their financial reporting systems do not reveal where the real underperformers (assignments, service lines, clients, or partners) really are.

The team philosophy at McKinsey, one senior partner explained to me, is illustrated by its approach to project work: “As a young individual consultant, you learn that your job is to hold your own: You can rest assured that the team will win. All you’ve got to do is do your part.”

This seemingly simpleminded calculation, relating the staffing mix requirements of the work to the staffing levels existing in the firm, is in fact of extreme importance.

There is a common misconception that marketing and selling are specialized skills possessed by a limited number of professionals (“natural rainmakers”). This view ignores the fact that, to develop its practice, a firm needs to invest in a wide range of activities, each of which requires a different set of skills and behaviors. For example, most fir

most frequently selected) option—maintaining a firm with diverse practices at various stages of the life-cycle spectrum—is a challenging managerial task. The conflicting economic, behavioral, and managerial requirements of different practice areas are sufficiently great to create severe internal tensions and stress