Professional Services Leadership Handbook


Book Description

Professional services firms - from the legal sector to accountancy, consulting and beyond - face increased disruption. Service delivery models are under pressure to adapt to changing client expectations. Technology offers new ways of working with clients, but changes the skills profile required of professionals, and threatens the traditional people-centred business model. The Professional Services Leadership Handbook equips leaders, and aspiring leaders, with tools and insights both to tackle these long-term disruptive trends and to maximise their firm's profitability today. Leaders of professional services firms find themselves with a daunting, but exciting, range of challenges ahead. Using practical insights drawn from experienced professional services leaders, the Professional Services Leadership Handbook explores new models and working practices to address four components of strategic leadership: clients, business, people and self leadership. It offers clear-sighted analysis of common pain points, and provides innovative solutions for dealing with them. This practical guide is designed for everyone involved in leadership decisions, whether that be a practice area, sector group, business function, or even firm-wide leadership role. It will help readers to focus their attention on the activities that will really make a difference to the success of their firm.




Managing The Professional Service Firm


Book Description

Professional service firms differ from other business enterprises in two distinct ways: first they provide highly customised services thus cannot apply many of the management principles developed for product-based industries. Second, professional services are highly personalised, involving the skills of individuals. Such firms must therefore compete not only for clients but also for talented professionals. Drawing on more than ten years of research and consulting to these unique and creative companies, David Maister explores issues ranging from marketing and business development to multinational strategies, human resources policies to profit improvement, strategic planning to effective leadership. While these issues can be complex, Maister simplifies them by recognising that 'every professional service firm in the world, regardless of size, specific profession, or country of operation, has the same mission statement: outstanding service to clients, satisfying careers for its people and financial success for its owners.'




The Oxford Handbook of Professional Service Firms


Book Description

Over the past three decades the Professional Service Firm (PSF) sector has emerged as one of the most rapidly growing, profitable, and significant in the global economy. In 2013 the accountancy, management consulting, legal, and architectural sectors alone generated revenues of US$ 1.6 trillion and employed 14 million people. PSFs play an important role in developing human capital, creating innovative business services, reshaping government institutions, establishing and interpreting the rules of financial markets, and setting legal, accounting and other professional standards. The study of PSFs can offer insights into the contemporary challenges facing organizations within the knowledge economy, and deepen understanding of more conventional organizations. Despite their significance, however, PSFs have until recently remained very much in the shadows of organizational and management research. The Oxford Handbook of Professional Service Firms marks the coming of age of PSF scholarship with a comprehensive and integrative exploration of current research and thinking on PSFs, featuring contributions from internationally renowned scholars in the fields of organizational and management studies. It is divided into three distinct sections - the professions, the firms, and the professionals that work within them - and covers subjects from governance and leadership to regulation, entrepreneurship, and diversity. Bringing together a broad range of empirical and theoretical perspectives, the Handbook offers many potentially important insights into the contemporary challenges of organizations in the knowledge economy and suggests new lines of inquiry that may shed further light on the activities and performance of PSFs and the professionals who work within them.




Building Professional Services


Book Description

Coverage includes: chartering, organizing, and establishing metrics for professional services; addressing the unique challenges faced by professional services in traditional product companies; and managing a professional services business at every stage of its lifecycle.




The Seven Principles of Professional Services


Book Description

This book details the prerequisite knowledge every consultant must master when delivering complex professional services. Coupled with the author's and his industry colleagues' real life examples of success and failure, these principles provide every consultant with actionable guidance to improve their service quality. Professional services consultants are walking a dangerous high wire between the success of their customers and the ongoing success of their firm. To maintain balance and walk this tightrope successfully, a consultant needs a strong set of principles that can be relied upon in the heat of a customer engagement. Through detailed analysis of his own experience as a consultant, a customer, and a professional services executive, Shane describes in detail the seven principles of professional services that have led him and others to repeated success. If you have been a consultant for ten minutes or ten years, this book will help you assess how well you deliver your service today and enable you to identify ways to elevate it in the future. Doing so will benefit your customer, your firm and your career.




The Definitive Executive Assistant and Managerial Handbook


Book Description

From best-selling author and expert Sue France, The Definitive Executive Assistant & Managerial Handbook is the ultimate guide for anyone who wants to take their career development to the next level. Placing special emphasis on personal leadership development as well as practical skills, you will learn how to manage a small team, climb the career ladder to gain more responsibility, negotiate effectively and confidently manage a project. It will teach you how to recruit and induct staff, make decisions fairly and consistently, build a productive team and environment and get noticed at work. For ambitious Assistants who want to continually improve their skills, The Definitive Executive & Managerial Handbook is an indispensable guide, helping you to maintain your professional image and achieve resounding success.




Productize


Book Description

Many professional services businesses want to create more scalable services and solutions but they often lack the tools and capabilities to successfully transition from a customized services model to a scalable solutions and products model. Productize outlines the unique pitfalls that professional services organizations face when they embark on a strategy of creating more scalable, often tech-enabled, products and services and it provides you with the tactics and tools to overcome these pitfalls. It is designed to be a practical playbook for any leader of a professional services business who wants to successfully accelerate growth.Productize draws on the 25+ years of experience that Eisha Armstrong has in successfully creating, launching and growing productized services. Eisha knows what works and what doesn't and she is passionate about making sure organizations learn from each other and avoid reinventing the wheel.Productize includes real-life case studies and stories featuring professional services leaders who have successfully led their organizations to create more scalable services and products. It also includes more than two dozen tools and templates to help your team implement the tactics so you don't have to start from scratch.In this book, you'll learn:1) How to turn shift your culture to embrace a product mindset2) The capabilities you to be successful and whether or not you should acquire them or grow them internally3) How much money to invest in exploring and building more scalable solutions and products4) How to ensure there is a viable market for your product idea5) How to sequence investments in new product development6) How to successfully source and work with developers and data scientists7) How to inexpensively test your ideas before investing in development8) How to win the hearts and minds of your sales team to ensure your new products are commercially successfulBonus: Key point summaries at the end of each chapter to help you lock in what you learnBonus: More than two dozen tools and templates to help your team implement the tactics so you don't have to start from scratch.




Handbook on Responsible Leadership and Governance in Global Business


Book Description

Reading these various non-technical articles is undeniably valuable for any person (teachers, executives, students) who is concerned about the behaviour of major companies managers in the context of globalisation and economy liberalisation. Gestion 2000 A profoundly important book for scholars and leaders alike that makes a vital timely contribution to the behavioral perspectives on leadership and governance. Doh and Stumpf, along with their world-renowned contributors, apply solidly anchored academic wisdom to offer fresh ideas on restoring faith in the integrity of American enterprise. Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, Yale School of Management, President and CEO, Chief Executive Leadership Institute and author of Leadership and Governance From The Inside Out Ethics, social responsibility, leadership, governance. These terms are heard in the classroom, in the boardroom, and viewed on the front page of newspapers and magazines. Yet serious attention to the relationships among these concepts is lacking. Although commitments to leadership, ethics, and social responsibility are evident, individuals and companies are falling short in combining these duties into policies and cultures that guide behavior and decisions. The missing element is a broad-based and integrated approach to responsible leadership and governance. This volume provides the leading thinking on these issues and includes a discussion of emerging areas that require future attention. The contributors leading scholars in the fields of leadership, governance and social responsibility summarize the state of the literature, identify complementary insights and perspectives, discuss areas of conflict and disagreement, and include a provocative and stimulating agenda for further investigation. They point up practical consequences of these perspectives in light of developments that have exposed the shortcomings in practice. Several contributors focus specifically on the challenges faced by global companies in developing and maintaining leadership and governance practices that are responsive to different national institutional and cultural settings. Thorough coverage and insightful discussion make this an essential reference for scholars and students of leadership, corporate responsibility and professional ethics, as well as for all those directly responsible for establishing the ethical codes and practices of their organizations.




ASAE Handbook of Professional Practices in Association Management


Book Description

A new edition of one of the flagship books for CAE preparation The ASAE Handbook of Professional Practices in Association Management covers the core functions of association management at a high but practical level, making it a go-to resource for professionals who are leading and managing membership organizations and those preparing for the Certified Association Executive (CAE) credential. Now in its third edition, this core text in the ASAE association literature offers practical, experience-based insights, strategies, and techniques for managing every aspect of an association or membership organization. Organized into 35 chapters and presenting information based on experience and proven research into the skills and knowledge required for successfully managing an organization of any size, this book covers governance and structure, leadership processes, management and administration (including finance and human resources), internal and external relations, programs and services, and much more. This new edition incorporates increased emphasis on the c-level judgment required of Certified Association Executives and CEO-aspirants, as well as more comprehensive coverage of essential functions such as planning. Covers the range of functions essential to managing an association Serves as a flagship handbook for CAE prep and is one of only five designated "CAE Core Resources"; new edition is applicable to prep beginning with the May 2015 CAE exam Information is relevant and applicable to students and professionals alike Edited by the founding editor of Professional Practices in Association Management and a CAE instructor with more than 30 years of experience in preparing CAEs Put the experts to work for you with this essential resource—written by association professionals and experts with 300 years of cumulative experience!




The Essential Handbook for Effective Human Service Professionals


Book Description

The Essential Handbook for Effective Human Service Professionals is written by the same author that brought you The Essential Handbook for Human Service Leaders, which is a national best-selling book used by thousands of human service managers and organizations across the country. Tim Nolan is a nationally recognized leadership expert in the human services. The Essential Handbook for Effective Human Service Professionals is comprised of 21 vital competencies that any direct service worker (i.e. case manager, family services worker, child protective investigator, juvenile probation officer, etc.) needs to excel in their respective position. Further, this book helps to fulfill a critical need in the field due to the lack of support and training available for human service professionals. Each chapter of The Essential Handbook for Effective Human Service Professionals is written in a concise manner that provides a wealth of information and proven strategies designed to provide immediate impact for workers and organizations looking to maximize staff performance, retention, commitment and high quality client care. This is a must-have resource. Visit www.HumanServicesLeadership.org for free newsletters, book reviews, feedback from prior trainings and upcoming trainings in your area. Tim is also available for agency-specific trainings and consultation.