If you’re making progress on client satisfaction, skill building, productivity, and getting better business, you’ve got all the strategy you need.

The central issue, I have learned, is that, in most firms, billable time is carefully monitored, but marketing time is considered “extra.” Marketing activities represent an investment, requiring nonbillable time to be spent with uncertain, long-term results, and few firms are well organized to manage their investment activities. Billable time has a

Or, in another case, the professional may invest significant amounts of time and effort in dealing with unforeseen contingencies but, because the client did not expect the contingencies, he or she is irritated by the extra delay and expense rather than thankful for the abilities of the professional.

The only piece of documentation that matters in this process is that listing action commitments: who will do what and by when.

Only increased fee levels or leverage move the firm forward. All else is hygiene. It is the nature of the work brought in, not just its volume, that contributes to profit health.

The professional service firm that is adept at projecting a caring image, and that backs the image up with a substantive reality, will do well in the marketplace.

Yet it is only by understanding the profit per partner of different practices, services (and even engagements) that the firm can manage its “equity investments” (partner time) wisely.

Since few professionals like to be told what to do, the manager must act through persuasion and cajoling, even where the manager sees the way clear. Living with the frustrations of building consensus and resisting the temptation to just act are a permanent struggle.

What is noticeably different at the best firms is a characteristic variously described as energy, drive, enthusiasm, motivation, morale, determination, dedication, and commitment.