by Paul Richmond

After years working in and with, hundreds of people in professional services I’ve come to the conclusion that in general, the profession is pretty shocking at managing performance.

Psychology is complex as human beings are complicated and as I saw in a recent report regarding investment analysis and the ‘Monte Carlo hypothesis’, AI and statistics can do a brilliant job of creating averages, medians, means but that does not account for people acting “out of character“, or perhaps just being bloody minded or choosing not to follow the rules.

I find people fascinating, and always have done, which is probably why I moved out from being a frontline accountant, and one time partner in a small firm in sleepy Tunbridge Wells, to working globally with partners identifying how they can best manage performance in their own firms. But first it’s worth just setting the scene because the way we create firms means that accountants and lawyers have a tough job!

They are trying to be experts in their field and as they achieve a greater level of technical ability they are promoted into more responsible positions that require people management skills, where they have frequently had less behavioural development and often are completely unsuited. As promotions continue through to associate, senior associate or senior manager and director the responsibilities mount up and so we find ourselves as aspiring partners responsible for:

• Client relationships
• Business development and extension sales
• Team management
• Estimation and billing
• Coaching technical skills
• Being a mentor

Is it all worth it?

On one hand I believe partners are monstrously overpaid. Seeing people earning a quarter of a million in practice when they are responsible for a relatively small team of perhaps 10 or 20 people and a handful of client relationships that give them the ability to invoice over £1m may be intellectually stimulating but it really does not compare to a senior manager in a blue-chip global organisation managing a team or division of 500 people who may be earning half that amount.

So it’s highly paid but it does come with a ridiculous expectation that you are going to be able to excel in a number of different fields.

What are the best companies doing?

Well, for a start they train people in the skill set that they need. If you look at any organisation whether it’s the military or blue chip organisations they have experts in every field deployed to do the very thing they’ve been trained for: accounting, sales, marketing, bridge building, blowing things up, being the chief people officer…

When you have that expertise it is straightforward to manage your team and I’m often drawn towards pharmaceutical and software firms and their approach to business development. I’ve supported a number of firms in these kind of programmess and I’m fascinated to see experienced sales men and women on a weeklong programme to develop their sales skills.

Every. Single. Year.

That’s what good companies do, you take your best people and you keep training them. Because every time they come along to a programme that challenges them, where they may well be pitched against another team who are playing the main competitor, they inevitably learn a great deal and take that back into the field. Many firms will deploy “war gaming“ where you pitch against your national competitors knowing all their skills and weaknesses to identify how you can be perceived as an ideal choice.

These are markets that are highly competitive. Drug companies go to great lengths and are highly restricted in what they are able to say or claim in any presentations to healthcare professionals, But they have a wealth of data and more importantly: Clear goals Everyone in the sales team has a clear goal. Their manager monitors their “gap to target“ on a monthly basis and they are very focused on the lead activities that will help them achieve their lack targets.

Total clarity

So everybody knows if they are behind budget, exceeding budget, and they know precisely how well they are doing in the grand scheme of things and the way that all their activities are supporting the business as a whole.

But in professional services we have so many multiple targets: timesheets, financial, team performance, individual performance, timesheets, client relationships, WIP write off, timesheets… You only need to look at @yves Morieux video on TED to understand why complexity kills performance.

It’s no surprise then to find that performance reviews end up with “how’s it going?“ and a perfunctory review of billable hours.

What’s the solution?

Clarity.

Clear goals that refer not only to lag measures (which in 99% of cases are financial) but also lead activities which are far more useful from a management perspective. Identify the activities you expect the individual to be taking:

Financial: reviewing figures, monitoring variances, but most importantly having conversations with people when they miss deliverable targets.

Behavioural: good leaders and managers will be speaking to their team on a regular basis. But this needs to be absolutely outside of client matters and current projects. It’s about understanding the team, how they work, how they’re feeling.

Client relationships: how frequently do they call their clients for no reason? Have meetings with no agenda to allow you to be curious?

Meetings with referrers: to identify what’s going on in their world, to understand how you can help them perhaps?

The Bottom Line

Create a clear matrix of LEAD ACTIVITY. All of this is in the teams remit and control. Pushing on lead activities means you can redefine and reposition priorities so that they keep these Lead Activities top of mind – do it before you do the client work – it’s more important (a tough but important message) and you always get client work done.

Have regular conversations, don’t leave it to the half year – wait no sorry something came up can we defer….

Talk to the team every week and manage them. Yes it’s time consuming but their performance improves and as a team you excel.

Prioritise your own time.

Should you really be doing all that client work? I know you love it but honestly – you have better things to do.