Sun 12 Feb 2006

Once the Vision and Objectives are in place (see 'There is more than Strategy') the firm must decide how it is going to move forward towards the Vision (Where); in accordance with the Objective (When).

This is the province of Strategy. Strategy is the route the firm will take as it moves towards the Vision.

Because of the nature of professional services, firms can only grow and develop in a limited number of ways:

Develop existing people by creating and developing existing and new skills and optimising the quality and quantity of the work they produce.
Recruit new and better quality individuals.
Recruit teams of individuals.
Acquire another business as a going concern
Merge the firm with another business which may be smaller, similar size or larger.

The question is how much of each to do, when and how.

SETTING THE STRATEGY
Consider:
Where do you and do you want to compete?
Who are and will be your key clients?
What range and depth of services do you and will you provide?
How will you gain competitive advantage?
How will you differentiate yourself?
How will you add value to your clients’ business?

MARKET POSITION
Consider depth and scale of expertise. This will be driven primarily from a review of clients and their expectations and also a review of which type of client the firm is seeking to service and with what products.
Other factors may include an existing reputation for expertise but potentially a lack of scale.
The strategy may be to become highly specialised in a particular area and have in depth knowledge rather than a range of services as the prime driver of the strategy.
It is equally possible that a firm may have a combination of strategies for differing areas of specialisation within the practice.
In some cases the strategy may be primarily focused on market share in others, on quality.

COMPETITION
As with any business you need to know who competes in your existing and potentially new markets and understand their strengths and weaknesses. You need to understand the basis on which you will compete in your markets.

CRITICAL FACTORS
What resources do you need to achieve the objective? Resources will almost certainly involve Human resources, IT resources, premises, marketing and underpinning all of these, finance.

ON GOING REVIEW
The process is iterative and needs to include regular reviewes and redefinition of objectives based on actual experience. It may also be necessary to review the plan against changing economic circumstances.

SELECTING THE RIGHT OPTION
Issues include:
Size - Is the objective merely a requirement to increase capability in numerical terms?
Time constraints - Is there a key objective to achieve progress at least on some fronts quickly?
Quality of service -Is the requirement highly dependent upon quality rather than size or numbers?
Practice Culture -Is the culture that exists a positive attribute that may be diluted if the numbers recruited are too large?

The options are not mutually exclusive and it is possible to pursue more than one solution at a time.
It may be important to deliver certain immediate short term results before commencing the major strategic objective. In all cases where parallel strategies are followed it is important to agree the relative commencement priority for each to ensure there are no conflicts with the core strategy later.
In many cases the eventual strategy is determined by the ‘art of the possible’ as there may well be crucial issues that are not capable of resolution in the short term.
Key among these is often the lack of resource and project management skills to deliver the strategy.

IMPLEMENTATION
It must be clear:
Who is to be in overall charge of the project implementation?
How will key decisions be taken?
How often will the programme be reviewed and by whom?
Have you considered integration and assimilation issues?
How and when will you communicate developments to existing staff and partners?

Facilitating the process

There are many occasions during the process when independent input and opinion can greatly assist in the successful outcome of a project.

Examples include:
· Where there is a lack of resources or expertise to develop a strategy
· The process requires an Independent review of the firm’s position
· Where the process requires an independent assessment of targets
· Where the deal reaches a critical stage and Negotiation is required to resolve outstanding issues this is best handled independently.
· Post deal integration and rationalisation