Expertise Marketplace - Professional Service Firm Marketing Blog:

Late last year I was approached by my friend Patrick McKenna to participate in a new innovative initiative entitled The ENABLE Program (Executive Network of Advisory Boards for Leadership Excellence). Intended specifically to be a unique resource for managing partners. (Scroll down if you’re a managing partner and you’d like to read McKenna’s description of the service.)

McKenna's idea is to bring together a flexible stable of retired professional service firm managing partners and gurus like me to be available as Advisory Board members to current managing partners. Each managing partner, with McKenna’s guidance, selects ENABLE advisors whose expertise and perspectives most closely match the executive’s particular challenge.

I think McKenna's idea is very powerful, because it allows managing partners to receive customized – and well-integrated -- guidance for their particular professional sector and enterprise.

McKenna reports that one of his early ENABLE managing partner clients said he had a very successful first meeting with his new Advisory Board at the end of November. This managing partner reported, "They will meet with me, our COO and our practice group leader three times per year and with our full executive committee once per year. I know that there is much I can learn from others and I look forward to learning best practices and to being challenged."

This is a win-win scenario, especially as so many professional service firms are private enterprises, and many have not yet created their own board of directors or advisors. This model can be situation-specific, with the Advisory Board able to be evolved as necessary to meet specific challenges.

Reach out to Patrick McKenna directly to learn more about this new concept.

McKenna writes:

Consider for a moment: As the leader of your firm, where do you turn for counsel on issues like . . . knowing how to get some of our more reluctant partners to accept some necessary new change; determining how you might effectively implement some of the various alternative billing models; or figuring out how to help those partners with underperformance, behavioral problems, or retirement challenges.

Perhaps even more profound, if you are like many of your peers, you puzzle over how to integrate your firm’s culture and really provide seamless service when spread across multiple offices; you agonize over how to posture your firm for a period of flat economic growth and potentially decreased client demand; and you try to make sense out of how technological advances may significantly disrupt the conventional ways in which lawyers have practiced.

To specifically help you address those and other sensitive issues, a new innovative initiative entitled The ENABLE Program (Executive Network of Advisory Boards for Leadership Excellence) has just been launched and intended specifically to be a unique resource for managing partners like yourself.

Over the holidays, when I was on vacation, I was gratified to be recognized as one of the top gurus in professional services (and the only woman on the list). (Thank you, Ian Brodie!) First on Brodie's list (with great justification) was David Maister, who this week announcedhis well-deserved retirement.

Brodie said his criteria were "most influential writers, advisors and consultants to the professions – particularly when it comes to strategy, marketing and business development."

Notwithstanding the fact that this was one man's opinion, Brodie's "top gurus" list calls an important question: why was Maister included on this list? Why was I?

I think it's a couple of factors. First, and I have followed Maister's lead on this, is the idea of giving away one's intellectual capital. I have never worried that I couldn't eventually make a decent living while creating and sharing my expertise. "Giving it away" appears to increase one's stature and influence.

Second, of my own accord, I've endeavored to push the envelope in the arena of professional services marketing and management strategy. Call it curiosity, or intolerance to the status quo, but I want to continuously shape the future success for professional service firm growth. "Pushing the envelope" appears to increase one's stature and influence.

What are the other factors that make professionals recognized as influencers?