Managing The Professional Service Firm
Author: David H. Maister
List Price: $25.00
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ISBN: 0684834316
Publisher: Free Press (09 June, 1997)
Sales Rank: 697
Average Customer Rating: 5 out of 5
Customer Reviews
Rating: 5 out of 5
An utterly excellent guide to managing a consultant firm
If you have ever worked in, been a partner or managed a consultancy firm, this book will not only answer a lot of your troubling questions, it will also explain matters that you did not know the questions to - just the obnoxious frustration of something that was not working.It is with incredible ease, yet depth and understanding that David H. Maister plough through the important issues that concerns not only managing partners in a consultant company, but anyone who wants to climb up the ladder. He explains why you got to balance your workcrew (juniors up to partners) and why it is so vitally important to mix people on the right combination of projects (brains, grey hair and procedure projects) as this builds up the firm's human capital, and provides the means and profitability to continue to grow steadily. I could go on but space does not allow me to. This book is not filled with theoritical babble but practical and useful information, no - knowledge and experience!
The book is divided into seven parts (personal highlights inside brackets): basic matters, client matters (quality work does not mean quality service!), people matters (building human capital, the motivation crises), management matters (creating a strategy), partnership matters (the art of parner compensation), multisite matters (the collaborative firm, hunters and farmers, etc.) and asset management. All in all it comprises of 32 chapters.
You won't find many books that explains service business any better than this one. I know because I went searching.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Following this book one can grow a real professional
The book is outstanding. It's very simple to read and very understandable even for non-English-speaker. It helps to resolve problems, especially in Marketing and HR, but, which is much more important, first it helps to identify and articulate problems. The most spectacular feature is an attempt, and extremely succesful one, to see professional services from Client's perspective: each proessional involved into Customer service should read it and try to follow its advices.
Rating: 5 out of 5
If you are in for a "services career" must have book
I'm now in my seventh year in Professional Services and High End Management Consulting - as an individual contributor as well as in leadership roles - this book always lead the way in difficult situations.If you want to pursue a career in services: must read!
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