Managing the Professional Service Firm by David H. Maister

Author:David H. Maister
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Free Press

This analysis clearly leads us to the conclusion that scheduling decisions need to be truly managed. And managed by someone in a position to make sound strategic trade-offs. It is not a task that can be delegated very far from the practice leader (or managing partner or partner-in-charge). Only such people have the knowledge and judgment to take a practice-wide view of scheduling decisions.

For example, it is sometimes necessary for the scheduler to “challenge” the staffing requests of a powerful partner, who has requested many of the best personnel to be assigned to his or her matter. Only a system which had a powerful scheduler (perhaps even the practice leader himself or herself) could force the necessary reflection on the best use of the practice’s resources. Wise, strategic allocation of resources among competing uses to accomplish competing strategic goals cannot come from a system that is run by an administrator, nor (as is all too common) from a “political, lobbying, horse-trading” process wherein each senior professional negotiates with the others to get the best resources (“I’ll let you have Susan this time, if you’ll give me Fred”).

There is nothing wrong with powerful partners lobbying to get the best possible staff for “their” projects—indeed they should act this way. But someone needs to be on the other side of that discussion, thinking of the good of the practice as a whole, asking such questions as: “Why do you need the office superstar on this one? Couldn’t you take one of our less qualified people who needs to work on a project like yours and train them? Maybe you could lower your project costs and also build skills for our practice by doing that.” It is through such negotiations that the practice leader has the chance to really control the trade-offs between profits, quality, skill building, and motivation. And if the practice leader isn’t doing it, then someone else (or something else) is really managing the practice.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.