Sublime

Another managing partner, well informed about a variety of professions, observes that “professional service firms are managed in one of two ways: badly or not at all.”

Much of the pervasive fear that runs silently through organizations—and much of the politics, the silos, the greed, blaming, and resentment that feed on fear—stem from the unequal distribution of power.

The way information flows illustrates how assumptions (conscious or unconscious) shape organizational practices.

publicly visible.

successful firms I know, all of the individual partners act as if they have personal strategic plans for their own careers—they have each thought through what their special value on the marketplace will be, what will make them more than just one more practitioner in their specialty, how they plan to achieve this vision of personal career progress.

Rather, it substitutes a vision of the manager as a (demanding) coach, a conscience, instead of the manager as boss, decision maker, or overlord.

successful leveraging of top professionals is at the heart of the success of the professional firm.

In executing its strategy responsibility, the firm’s management should review policies (“rules of the game”) such as the following: Performance appraisals (For what do we hold people accountable?) Profitability and other measurement systems (How do we keep score?) Systems for salary, bonus, and profit allocations (What incentives drive the behavior