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

by Maureen Broderick

Maureen Broderick draws on her 30 years of experience in professional services to explore both the art and science of running a high performance firm. She presents tangible processes and programsùincluding 40 featured best practicesùthat readers can tailor to their own organizations and cultures. Inside you will

-How to create and maintain a shared vision, values, and culture

-Best programs to recruit, train, and retain great people

-Strategies to develop and manage a profitable portfolio of clients

-What it takes to innovate services and share knowledge

-The key metrics to monitor financial health

-Insights into effective positioning, marketing, and selling firm services

-Proven practices for rewarding and managing the partnership

-A guide to both long-term and annual strategic planning

-Balancing structure and governance in a consensus-driven organization

-Secrets For leading "incredibly smart and independent people"

Genres: Business

297 pages, Hardcover

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.