Pro£itable Performance Management

by Patricia Wheatley Burt (FCIPD)

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Dear Partner / Director,

Some of you in certain Professional Practices, including law firms and accountancy firms think that you are going to continue to enjoy the current good times of business without making any changes…for quite few years.

Some Partners have said to me: “Oh, we do all that appraisal stuff, but I see my people every day and I know what they’re thinking so I don’t need any structured process.”

When I asked them about how effective that is, how they measure the loss of staff, what the cost of it is, they usually shrug their shoulders and say “Oh, I leave all that to HR!”

It’s as though the problem lies somewhere else and not with those Partners, Directors or Heads of Departments. It’s no secret, along with the changes of the Clementi review, there will be double the problems of an aging population of Partners who can’t retire because their pension funds aren’t up to it, and a reducing number of people entering the legal sector of any quality (the Law Scholls are still happily taking in many people who aren’t up to standard) and to compound this, this Generation X+1 – will not want to work in your firm the way it is right now.

This could well be the end of the formal Partnership structure as we know it, and firms who do not face up to career planning, retention strategies and alternative career routes will end up in the same mess that some of the major 6 Law Firms in the UK have had to manage and the difficult situations a number of Accountancy Firms have had aswell.

You face a stark choice. One option is to do absolutely nothing. That’s right, do nothing. Just sit and wait for this inevitable wave of problems to overtake you. But you know what? Everybody you speak to, of course, will sympathise with you because they too will be victims of this problem, apart from the leaders.

In the next 3 – 5 years, firms are going to increasingly merge, become more corporate, and retain less of the values and principles of Partnerships or Professional organisations, not just in any one country, but all around the world.

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Because of this, potentially exciting work will become more transactional, the depth and breadth of any professional person will become severely limited, unless some thought is given to the actual products of professional services, whether Legal or Accounting.

The challenges and opportunities you had as a young lawyer or accountant are going to disappear for those who are now the young in your organisation. How are you going to manage to make sure that they will have the stimulus and breadth of education in your practice to be able to deal with the challenges ahead?

Just look back at what has happened in these sectors around the world in the last 5 years. Not just individual lawyers and accountants moving firms but whole teams! In the banking sector, individuals have moved, taking huge client bases with them. Can your practice afford to lose 10%, 15% or 25% of its business because you failed to install an effective Performance Management process?

And this applies to you, whether you live in an out of town part of Atlanta, Georgia, or in Cheltenham in Gloucestershire, UK or in the big cities of London, New York, Paris, Singapore, Hong Kong, Sydney or Vancouver - wherever.

Life is changing; your staff will not remain loyal to you when they start to receive all sorts of enticing and exciting job offers which have more interest and much higher salaries. Do you really want to take the chance?

I am sure you don’t want to be just a follower. So what’s your alternative?

he alternative is to position yourself and your professional practice for the changes in the employment market place.

You need Pro£itable Performance Management - so... Buy it now!

The professional practice of the 21st century will have to spend time focusing on developing the skills and abilities of their staff, (including Management capability), if they are to have any chance of providing sustainable quality professional services. This applies to you whether you are in the law, accountancy, banking, architect, or surveying worlds.

All sorts of Marketing gurus say “get bigger, get niched or get out!” you may be consumed with business development activities which are incredibly important; however, if internally you are not in good shape, it is all a terrible waste of time.

You shouldn’t bother thinking about business development until you are internally in good shape!

In my opinion, most professional practices should scrap their HR team, who are unable to be effective because the management structure just frustrates them, so they just don’t give you the results you need.

Have you ever seen Performance Management in the playground? You have only got to watch 5 and 6 year olds to see how instinctively we are all able to recognise those people who are good all rounders, those people who are good at leading, solving problems, plotting and scheming and working together.

So how can you harness the natural abilities that we all have, to get the very best out of everybody in a straightforward, comprehensive and coherent manner? This is something that has to be done by you the Partners and Directors, and cannot be delegated to other functional departments, such as Personnel or HR.

I am suggesting you need to improve how you manage, motivate and communicate to your people in an infinitely more committed manner, so that you genuinely get the results that will then allow you to market your services to your clients.

Because…

…You need to be attracting, retaining and motivating fabulous people who will then bring you profitable clients. It’s because of all this change and my experience of working in professional practices, that I have put together Pro£itable Performance Management for Professional, Financial and Service sector businesses. This book is now available as an easy step by step guide which focuses and recognises issues within professional practices. If you are serious about attracting, retaining and motivating your staff through an effective career management process, then this is the book for you.

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Let me give you an overview of the chapters you will experience when you buy the book:

1. Why is Performance Management important?

Using a case study, I illustrate for you what the financial imperative is when you are not managing people effectively, but also show you how easy it is to actually get hold of the data and understand what it is telling you.

2. Purpose, scope and policies:

We look at policies and procedures, and how to link reward with career progression, to look at bonuses and the benefits that you can expect to get but recognising also, that not everybody is motivated by financial rewards. We look at what the elements are of an effective process, an opportunity for you to review where you are now and where you would like to be a useful checklist.

3. Performance Management Essentials:

You need to understand how Performance Management fits into your strategy and forms part of a complete philosophy within your organisation. To do this, you need to recognise the importance of your organisational design, roles, authorities and responsibilities, be aware of the issues around Emotional Intelligence, the importance of the Appraisal discussions (not just those terrible annual processes like going to your head teacher) with lots of options and ideas. We also tell you some real stories, as opposed to hypocriphal, and talk about Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).

4. Management responsibilities, how it should work:

This is the rub. Unless you are all prepared to take responsibility for Management, then you will never have an effective process. So we explore management teamwork, the concepts of rubbish in, rubbish out, your responsibility for motivating people and then we go into issues around induction, promotion, development and finish with a story about a Northern convert.

5. Competencies and how to make them work for you:

Increasingly, Professional Practices are using competencies to help pin point exactly the behaviours and skills necessary to indicate someone is doing a good job. So we look at examples of competencies, looking at issues around different levels in different roles, how HR processes can dovetail into a competency framework, which keeps posing the question: do you know what you want from your people and how you can measure if they are giving you what you want.

6. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in all their glory! :

Well, we’ve had KPIs around for a long time, and most Professional Practices will have a number of measures of performance. The question is, are you measuring the right actions, are you able to interpret the data you have accurately? And what do some of the top 100 companies do to be truly effective?

7. Change Management – Shifting mindsets:

As my late husband, Richard (Senior lawyer for Camelot the UK Lottery), used to say “shifting mindsets is what it is all about.” Is doing nothing really an option, and when it comes to change, what stops people from being prepared to embrace change with wild enthusiasm, and should we be writing everybody off just because “they are old”. Bearing in mind Professional Practices will have an aging population in the next 5 – 10 years, we all have to shift our mindsets!

8. Change Management – Making it happen:

In this final chapter we give you a number of ideas and tools to help encourage your fellow partners believe that Change Management can happen, and that it can actually bring some serious improvements to the practice. We look at team development, emotional capital and some final thoughts to help you put together an effective Performance Management process that will enable you to manage your business more effectively, more consciously, and with far greater commitment so that you are able to retain profits within the business.

This is a content rich handbook for Partners and Directors interested in improving the overall performance of their practices and with a serious interest in the people they employ as well as an interest in increasing bottom line revenue.

If this describes you and your firm, then why not download Pro£itable Performance Management - A comprehensive guide to setting up a Performance Management system in Professional Practices. To do this, simply click on the link below:

Yes, I would like to buy the book!

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You need to buy this book so that you can:

If you think this is the kind of Performance Management process you would like to get your hands on, let me tell you some of the specifics about the book.

Who should read this book?

Any Partner, Lawyer, Accountant, Banker, Head of Department, Supervisor or HR / Personnel executive who wants to attract, retain and motivate staff, manage talent and improve profitability within the Practice.

Who should NOT read this book?

Those who are not interested or open to new ideas, or think that they know it all, should not purchase this book. If you think you are too old to learn new tricks (a fallacy) or believe that the systems that you have in place are absolutely perfect then clearly this book will not take you any further. Some of the information contained in the book is technical and does require commitment – but then again so does implementing an effective Performance Management process.

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