More about managing the professional services firm

This is an article I original wrote as at the date posted and brought across to this blog in Nov 2015. It is a review, and maybe a development of some ideas published by Geoffrey Moore in an article entitled “Just Shoot Me!”, which was published in Under the Buzz, Nov 2002. The article was subtitled “Managing the Services Function inside a Products Company”. The article was sent to me by a colleague, Mike Habek after reading my previous article. It astonishes me how useful it remains, eleven years after first reading it and thirteen after its initial publication.

Moore believes that the service functions of product companies are trapped inside a life cycle inimicable to optimal service strategies, but that by understanding the cyclical nature of these factors, management can build valuable and valued service delivery companies. In 2015, I’d add that his model offers insight to both data centre architects and consultancy strategists looking to avoid areas that lead to the conflicts Moore describes as endemic in product attached consultancy. …

More about managing the professional services firm

For some reason there are two copies of this in this blog, this one is the older and more original. Mike Habek after reading my last article, kindly sent me a copy of Geoffrey Moore’s article “Just Shoot Me!”, which was published in Under the Buzz, Nov 2002. The article is subtitled “Managing the Services Function inside a Products Company”. Moore believes that the service functions of product companies are trapped inside a life cycle inimicable to optimal service strategies, but that by understanding the cyclical nature of these factors, management can build valuable and valued service delivery companies. …  …

Managing the Professional Services Firm

This article was written in July 2004, and is a manifesto for change in Sun. In passing the article reviews and borrows from David Maister’s book, “Managing the Professional Services Firm“. I copied it across to this blog in 2015. It still reads as a manifesto, which was ignored.  I suggest, its remaining relevance is based on insights I hope still stand to be repeated. In summary, Consultants offer Expertise, the ability to invent and solve problems for the first time, Experience, the promise of having done it before or Efficiency, a cost promise based having done the thing many times. These propositions have different values to customers, overselling is hard and will be resented. Organisations will find it hard, Maister argues impossible to optimise for all of these propositions. …