Andy Raynor - Beyond the Brief
	Andy Raynor's blog Less Information, More Action Click on the picture for the inevitable.....ok so he said "conversation".....picky.... “You must never forget your roots”. No, I don’t know if Elvis said it. If he was talking about the misty lensed affection with which I remember Barnsley, he may have been right. But if it’s anything to do with remembering the accountant in me when you’re trying to drive a professional services business, he may be very wrong indeed. For a simple reason. One of the things that gets in the way of driving a business is the financial information. For those of you smiling behind your hands at this thought, a word of caution. This is serious. As an antidote to management, most professional services firms bury their partners under a monthly slagheap of statistics that can’t, won’t and shouldn’t help. If I’m a partner and I want to perform, having the full management accounts of the whole firm arrive in my emails on the second Friday of the month is pointless. What I really need to drive my part of the business is the simplest information telling me: what my target is this quarter what I’ve billed what’s in the tank.... ....and who’s paid me and who hasn’t. And that’s it. No acreage of long grass about the rest of the business is going to help me. And as a leader, I don’t want partners looking over the wall – look to your own performance on a monthly basis and I will account to you for the whole business quarterly. When we’ve performed individually, departmentally, we can make comparisons and not before. Like I said, books of data are the excuse to avoid management. So here’s a strategy for performance in your professional services business. Reduce the monthly information you give to partners to the bare minimum they, personally, need to perform this quarter. And then actively discuss it with them. Which will be the greatest surprise? Tell me what you think at andy@andypraynor.com And see what's been said before by looking in the archive:
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