Service Offerings Overview

The economic pressures that many professional service firms continue to experience have affected individual firms and individual practices very differently, thereby creating new external and internal strains for many firms and often suggesting some directional rethinking as well.

1. How should practice and firm management deal with these (hopefully) transitional strains, since "management" typically has little free time?
2. How can the firm create performance improvement relatively quickly, while ensuring that the near-term changes are consistent with intended future directions?

The PSF Advisors believe that:

• the biggest opportunities for many firms are in identifying opportunities among the firm's key processes and related people issues
• the most common reasons for failing to capitalize on those opportunities, whether strategic or tactical, is either a lack of clear, decisive action or a rush to scale without the benefit of pilot efforts with specific practices or offices.
• a simplified overview of the key activities of most professional service firms can help clarify critical issues and related opportunities by prompting a series of key questions.

Because the processes and the people in any professional service firm function within the larger context of the firm's organization and governance policies that shape direction and behavior. Those policies can establish a collaborative and supportive climate across the processes and people or, at the other extreme, they can foster fiefdoms and a climate of mistrust. It's important to view the process-specific questions within that larger context and across the activities, because complementary changes may be required for real improvement to occur.

A sample set of questions about critical issues and opportunities about each area can be viewed by clicking on the activities listed in the margin at left.

Simplified Professional Services Firm Overview

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Firms that want to investigate opportunities usually need senior-level experience and guidance, both to leverage the time of the senior management team and to provide knowledge that will help to drive the right questions, analysis, and improvement initiatives that will produce results. PSF Advisors and its complementary alliance of individual practitioners can work collaboratively with you in both opportunity identification and in the introduction of change that leads to those desired results.