Growing Your Practice – “Making Time To Think..”

Today professionals spend
their time on what is urgent, what seems necessary on immediate basis. This
includes client meetings, attending to assignments, amongst many others. Most
of the time is taken away by ‘pressing’ needs of such day to day activities.
Professionals generally complain that they don’t have time, especially time for
thinking about their own practices; leave alone, management of their practices.

How can one grow if one cannot think adequately about one’s
own practices? For this to happen, it is never going to be automatic. It will
always be by a concerted effort on part of the professional and with support
from the professional service firm.

Practice management is largely accomplished by setting aside
quality time to think about the firm’s strategic direction, focus of practice,
people and their motivation, clients and services to clients, processes and
systems, and above all, strategic alignment for the firm. This would mean
taking out a “chunk of time”. And taking out a chunk of time to do real
practice management implementation needs commitment and focus. And it also
needs certain techniques and strategies which can make it easier for the
professional service firm to execute and not have practice area/s suffer due to
lack of time.

Some of these strategies are time tested and it is important
that professionals learn to implement them. The theme of this article is about
‘Making time to think for growth’. This presupposes that most professionals are
otherwise not able to easily do that. Here are some best practices that have
worked across professional service firms:

1. Taking out time

One of the most effective
strategies used by Partners of successful professional service firms is taking
out a day in the week or taking out half-days twice a week or reserving a
Saturday exclusively for issues concerning practice management. This chunk of
time that is devoted would lead to wonderful results.

Taking out a mid-week day such as Wednesday normally turns
out to be very effective because the Professional has a Monday & Tuesday
before and a Thursday & Friday after to cover up on pending work. Also,
generally mid weeks are less pressured for engagement deliveries or from a
client expectation for exclusive time to talk or meet.

Some professionals find that an end of the week day like a Friday or
Saturday works much better as end of the week generally are clearing days.

Which day of the week
works is a personal decision; it is important for the Professional to be
committed to pick up any a slot that works the best. Again, there is no one
size that fits all. What may work for one, may not work for the other. And
therefore, each professional can choose a day or two half days based on his or
her preference and commitments.

2. Why is it important to dedicate a full day in a week?

This could be a typical question being asked by most
Professionals. Well, simply because in the day to day grind and never ending
client expectations, it is only dedicated time that works.

What normally happens is that unless a Professional is
mentally free to think i.e. he does not have to attend to client calls, emails
or meetings; nor does he need to interact with staff or fellow partners – which
generally never happens when one is in office, he will never be able to think
through the nuances and arrive at the much required set of propositions, ideas,
postulations, probable range of solutions and conclusions. It is not so easy
for a professional to get up one day and start this dedicated approach to
taking critical decisions for one’s own practice. And therefore, Professionals worldwide have
practiced this art over time and over a number of months to finally reach the
stage where they dedicate 1/7th of the week to thinking about growth.

3. Action orientation

A dedicated day out means
a lot of commitment and it leads the professional to action. One will not like
to idle around, as there would be others in the firm who would be burning the
oil; and morally, a professional would be compelled to justify his absence from
work, by showing some productive and constructive outcome beneficial to the
firm.

This
situation is normally quite challenging when it begins. The partner taking out
the time can face a situation where he is not sure of the outcome or its
effectiveness. Thus, expectations have to be clearly set by those tasked with
“governance” of the firm, so that there is action bias and lesser chance of
fatigue setting in. This day out could also mean meeting partners of other
professional service firms, meeting entrepreneurs and seeking their inputs
about growth, meeting regulators/bankers/colleagues from other
professions/professors and academia and catching up with friends who have been
there and done that. If well planned, it is found that most people would want
to meet up with professionals and exchange ideas and thoughts in the hope that
“He is a good guy to converse with and I will certainly learn something”.

4. Make a start

If one thinks of it, even
taking out 25-30 days in a year and increasing it over time to 35-40 days in the
52 weeks that all of us have to our disposal would be a good start.

Successful practitioners take out a good 40 days a year for practice
management. Research shows that it is these firms that are normally successful
in ensuring continuous alignment of each facet of one’s practice and are set on
a path to growth. Each partner in a professional service firm may not be able
to take out so much time. Some may be at 10-20% of this benchmark whereas
others would be at 25-35% of this benchmark. That’s low; but is better than not
spending any time. So, make a start!

5. Partner retreat

One other strategy that
always works in such cases is a policy of having annual partner retreats of 3-5
days and quarterly meetings of 1-2 days. These 10-12 days are themselves invaluable
to firms that grow and grow fast.

When the partners meet in an environment of uncluttered,
uninterrupted, strategic mind frame – wonderful outcomes are a foregone
conclusion.

Partner retreats are not meant for discussing operational
issues but the focus normally has to be on strategic issues concerning the firm
and firm growth. These would include looking at the strategic direction the
firm is taking, looking at innovation in the market place, breaking ice in
relaxed environments and just getting to know each other better.

How invaluable all of these
could be if done in a manner that is consistent, thought through, and
sustained? The best of firms have used partner retreats to keep the firm on a
high growth trajectory without having to worry about missed opportunities or
absence from work or offices. To the contrary, when partners are not around the
teams or in the offices andif the practices are still working smoothly, it is a
clear reflection of a well-oiled machinery in terms of maturity of processes
that a practice area has been able to develop. It’s also a lot to do with the
way partners think about succession and growth.

Firms after firms have reported that partners in professional
services firms, being the unique breed that they are, come into their own in a
relaxed retreat environment.

Here are some suggested agenda questions for a typical partner retreat:

1)   What are
the challenges facing your practice area?

2)   How can
the firm help you address those challenges?

3)   What are
the emerging areas that the firm may want to expand their practice into?

4)   What are
some of the issues that you are facing at a personal level impacting your work,
if any, that the firm can help resolve?

5)   What
ideas do you have for innovation in the firm?

6)   What are
the challenges that you see facing the firm and its growth?

7)   What are
the three big ideas you have for growing the firm and for growing your practice
area?

8)   How do
you assess systems and processes, policies and procedures in the firm? What can
be done better? What role can you play in any of them? What could we outsource
to team members – internally or externally?

9)   What are
clients telling you in your practice area? How can we be more relevant to our
clients?

10)  How can
we be a better firm for our team members?

11)  How
should the firm think about some strategic aspects for the future:

a)    Expansion
organically

i)   Branches,
new locations

ii)  New
practice areas

b)    Inorganic
expansion

i)   Networking
with like-minded firms

ii)  Joining
an international network

iii)  Starting
one’s own network

iv) Merging
other firms into ours

v)  Merging
our firm into another firm

6. Strategic outcomes

Writing on a new change in
the law, say, a tax development, comes naturally to a tax partner. The question
to ask is: What is the strategic outcome of this tax alert that is being
produced for the clients of the firm? Doing this repeatedly is time spent by
various people in the tax team. So, what are we achieving:

1)    Client
outreach?

2)    A
message going out to clients that “we exist”?

3)    We are
on top of our game in tax developments.

4)    We can
help you navigate the law.

5)    Come to
us with questions and get the best response possible.

6)    Does
this all add up to “development” of the tax practice? Technical development,
client awareness, new business development, knowledge repository enhancement,
developing a reputation in the market place that here is a firm that knows the
subject well.

Is this the desired
strategic outcome that the firm seeks? If it is, then well – you are doing
well. Keep building on it. If the firm has not thought through this, then its
important that before serious time is spent, the outcome is thought through
before embarking on any recurring project.

7. Partner alignment

Often taking out time to
think and execute strategies to grow the firm means that partners need to
interact more and more. It forces a convergence of thought process, even if it
is not there to start with. This turns into a process where partners start
ideating, giving creative inputs, debating alternatives and outcomes, and
finally coming into alignment.

Imagine, if no real time is taken out for meaningful
conversations about growing the practice, where would it leave the firm? The
routine continues, drudgery sets in and the best people leave. Human capital of
the firm is often taken for granted. Partners have to be in complete alignment
about the fact that team members need to be handled well at all levels. And
partners taking out time to think about growing the firm should devote a good
portion of time to thinking about their team’s development, career path and
roadmap for growth. In their success and upward mobility, lies the firm’s
growth and success.

All said and done:

Partners in alignment is
always a wonderful sign of a firm’s integrated level of working, measured
growth and consistent delivery across all practice areas. One of the most
sought after outcome for a firm is growth of reputation and goodwill. A visible
brand creates a perception which ultimately turns into a sterling reputation
for consistent and solid advice and delivery.