By starting with caring (working from the inside out), we open ourselves to possibilities and become willing to go where the client will take us. The skill or action behaviors can then fall on fertile...
Make sure you’ve done absolutely all your homework on the client company, the client marketplace, and the client individual, and that it’s absolutely up to the minute. Even if you know them and their...
The solution for an individual firm must always address three perspectives in any organizational review: structure (how we are formally organized); processes (how different types of decisions are to b...
Profitability will not come from managing hygiene factors alone: Future profitability depends on health as well—and firms’ methods of measuring, reporting, and managing need to reflect both.
The firm exists to help its people succeed, not the other way round.
The most effective organizations are those that are held together by shared and enforced principles, values, and standards.
It is important to note that while goods are consumed, services are experienced. The professional service provider is (or should be) as much in the business of managing the client’s experience with re...
Success, no matter how you define it, is attainable only by persuading another person-a boss, a client, a colleague, a subordinate, a friend or loved one-to give you what you want.
Sincerity, the way we usually mean it, has to do with intentions; we assume it comes from within. But our clients have no way to observe sincerity except through external behaviors. From certain behav...
We try to elevate the empowerment of our people over the organizational niceties of structure and process except to the extent that those structural and process features work to empower our people
10. Return calls unbelievably fast Stephanie Wethered, the pastor referred to earlier, does this. She tries to return calls within ten minutes. She says it’s the most trust-creating thing she does; no...
Less formally, we consider the time it takes someone to return a phone call, whether meetings are canceled or kept, and whether to-do lists are completed. Reliability
A new $100,000 engagement can be very profitable, or be one that loses the firm a lot of money. Yet many firms reward partners for the volume of fees (top-line) that they bring in, not whether or not...
Treating financial success as the goal rather than as a by-product of a well-run firm
Unity, pride, respect, loyalty, excellence, and integrity.
In busy times there is also a temptation to let investments such as training take a back seat to getting the work out the door. Only adherence to the firm's principles and values prevents opportunisti...
It is ironic that a business in which the serving of clients depends so heavily on interpersonal psychology should be peopled with those who believe in the exclusive power of technical mastery. And
Make specific commitments to your client around small things: getting that article by tomorrow, placing the call, writing the draft by Monday, looking up a reference. And then deliver on them, quietly...
Are there any topics I should avoid because they are too delicate to discuss in a large forum? • Are there any topics on which the views of your colleagues are significantly divided? •
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