People

Leaders in professional firms often struggle to prevent staff burnout; an issue that can seriously impact the success of their business. If a burnt out associate stays on at the firm, their productivity decreases and their attitudes worsen. And when an associate leaves, the firm suffers the loss of institutional knowledge, experience, project continuity, and … Read more

It’s repeated to the point that it’s cliché: talent matters.  How you recruit, organize, engage, motivate, and deploy your people matters.  But with constant client demands and a changing landscape, it can be easy to let talent management fall by the wayside.  When recruiting new leaders, many firms recruit superstar individual contributors without thinking about … Read more

With firms everywhere getting rid of annual performance reviews, the new mantra is continuous feedback.  To help support the shift, a variety of HR vendors have changed up their software from a long box that you have to fill out once a year to a shorter box you fill out more frequently, or an inbox that collects … Read more

One of the most common tropes when thinking about business developers is the dichotomy between “hunters” and “farmers”. It tends to crop up when looking at business development styles: hunters going out and finding new business, then quickly move on. Farmers cultivating relationships over the long term. David Maister used a similar distinction to describe … Read more

Over the past few weeks, I’ve explored the ways I think new overtime rules will affect professional services firms here and here. But these articles looked at the sorts of larger trends or cultural shifts the new regulations might cause. When it comes down to it, what will these rules really do to an agency’s bottom line? … Read more

When I was explaining the Department of Labor’s new overtime rules to an ad-agency veteran over lunch, he nearly spit out his drink: “That will destroy every agency’s talent model.”  My earlier post on the subject was a little more subdued, but he’s right that the new rules have potential to shake things up in … Read more

Building a great team has two parts: making sure you get the right people on it, and quickly getting the wrong people out. But while leaders spend a lot of time thinking about hiring, they push firing to the back of their minds. That’s a problem, because while firing might be uncomfortable, it’s even more … Read more