A firm’s success or failure truly
boils down to three things: Finders, Minders and Grinders. For any firm to be
successful at all, it needs these three speci?c types of professionals.
1. Finders-
Rainmakers who provide the work
2. Minders-
Mid-level supervisory employees who manage the Grinders and are accountable for
their output
3. Grinders-
junior level employees who are required to run assignments and matters
The Finders,
being an integral requirement in today’s hypercompetitive service landscape, pose
a special challenge to the otherwise collegiate culture that prevails in
professional services firms. More often than not there is a misplaced sense of
indispensability experienced by Finders who see themselves as the primary
generator of clients, and consider themselves extremely important to the
survival and success of the business. This attitude can generate some conflict
between the Finders and the Minders.
Role of Finder
Finders provide business and work
that keeps a firm running. They are extroverted by nature, enjoy networking and
making new connections and are able to generate business through new avenues.
Finders are not just salespeople or marketers but ‘people’s people’ who know
how to ?nd clients and what to say to them. Although primarily business
generators, they are also sometimes involved in executing the work since
clients have a high degree of comfort with them and repose more faith in their
abilities and competence.
Role of Minder
Finders cannot carry the firm on
their shoulders alone; a crucial element for success is being able to inspire
people to go through the journey with them. Minders are those employees who are
technically sound and expected to know every detail of their practice area.
They are focused on details of matters and are excellent at supervising
engagement teams. Finders need to be the captain of their Minders, steering the
vessel straight on course, adapting where necessary, and enabling them to
succeed.
A poor concept Finders have of
Minders is the stereotype of a micro-manager ruling over others with a task
list. However, it is the job of the Finders to enable their Minders to succeed
and intervene only at strategic points.
Role of Grinder
If the Finders are the Queen Bees
of the service industry, Grinders are the Worker Bees. They are responsible for
the heavy lifting of the workload, executing finer details of transactions and
are a very important cog in the wheel of the service industry.
Fees and revenue generated by a
firm are a combination of the talent and effort of all the above three
stakeholders. It is a well known fact that compensation increases with age and
competition. However, in many firms compensation can be disproportionate and
not entirely commensurate with the effort involved in the work.
This often causes feelings of
jealousy and insecurity among co-workers. Since people are the only asset of a
professional services organisation, it is imperative for the Finder to create
an environment of trust and fairness so there is a just and equal distribution
of work and compensation, which is commensurate with the skill and abilities of
the Minders and Grinders.
Compensation structures should
involve a proportion of fees to be distributed among the pool of employees in
addition to their salaries. There should also be incentives given to employees
who introduce clients and bring work to the firm. Some employees however, may
not have the contacts to generate revenue for the firm; they may have other
skills that would help them contribute to the growth of the firm such as
practice knowledge management, conducting training and learning programmes for
professionals and clients or contributing in other ways such as writing
articles for professional publications and journals. The management will also
need to find alternate ways of compensation for such skills.
The expectation of a Rainmaker is
to have a disproportionate share in the fees generated by his/her efforts to
bring in clients. Firms need to adopt best practices of profit sharing amongst
their partners to create a sense of fairness. This could include a number of
parameters such as rainmaking ability, execution capability, client
relationship management, promotion and marketing of the firm and contribution
by way of knowledge management.
While there is no “one size fits
all” approach to arrive at partner compensation, a balance of all these
indicative parameters may be the right approach towards achieving some
semblance of equity which would result in greater satisfaction and motivation
amongst the partnership.
At the end of the day, Finders, Minders and
Grinders need each other. One cannot exist without the other and all are
co-dependent on the others for their existence. In order to make a success of a
firm, Finders, Minders and Grinders must work together in a cooperative and
collaborative manner, each one knowing their place and purpose in the larger
scheme of things. As Henry Ford said, “Coming together is a beginning, staying
together is progress, and working together is success.”
