Art of Managing Professional Services, The: Insights from Leaders of the World's Top Firms

by Maureen Broderick

Today, millions of people work at over one million professional service firms generating over $2 trillion in revenue annually. These firms face unique issues that are not fully understood by management thinkers and consultants. Making matters more complex is that many of these firms stand at a crossroads, searching for new strategies and practices to succeed in a radically new economy. In The Art of Managing Professional Services, Maureen Broderick offers the solution.

 

Broderick has brought together modern best practices for these and other crucial areas of professional services

 

·    Building, communicating, and maintaining shared vision, values, and culture

·    Recruiting, training, and evaluating people

·    Crafting the right strategies, portfolio, and mix of clients

·    Innovating and sharing knowledge

·    Financial planning, metrics, and reporting

·    brand, marketing, and sales

·    Defining effective equity, selection, and compensation

·    Ensuring responsibility and accountability

·    Organizational design, structure, governance, and systems

·    Leading effectively, and growing the next generation of leaders

 

This book reflects Broderick & Co.'s unparalleled research into professional services management, including 200+ executive interviews with leaders and innovators in organizations of all sizes and types.

 

Genres: Business

320 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 24, 2010

Reviews

[Karolina Šilingienė · Rating 1 out of 5]

“So and so did that”, “so and so said that” and that’s pretty much a waste. Had to flip through some boring parts that were poorly written. I’m surprised I found this book in a library of a business school as there’s no academic references at all, author just simply quotes his interviewees. Plain meh!

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quotes are interesting. Otherwise, pretty general stuff.

[L · Rating 3 out of 5]

This offers valuable insights to how professional services is run so I would highly recommend this for aspiring auditors/engineers/consultants, those who are switching from corporations into professional services, those working in professional services and those aspiring to open their own firm. There are also quite a few good examples taken from world class firms.

Unfortunately, I feel like this book paints too rosy of a picture and almost glosses over some of the underbelly of professional service firms (e.g. long hours, dictatorial leadership etc). That isn't the intention of the book but makes this more like a typical researcher looking at the facade/press releases.

Still a worthy read but just don't expect too much.

[Janelle · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was hoping that this would be more geared towards PSFs, and it was written as it it was, but really, it was applicable to a lot of difference business. I kept waiting for some new and exciting, and insightful, piece of advice but the information was nothing new.... and I'm no expert. If you want to read a book that has a lot of "so and so does this", this is ok, but if you are looking for some new information, this doesn't do it.