Planning Potholes Professional Service Businesses Can Fall into

Or... How Overplanning Can Jeopardise Your Progress

by Tom "Bald Dog" Varjan, Organisational Provocateur

Planning is the process of determining both what to achieve (strategy formulation), how to achieve it (formulation of tactics) and an action plan to actually do it. Most firms have strategic planning retreats for their senior partners at exclusive locations at amazing prices, but more often than not the tactical part and implementation go down the drain.

After the strategy programme they all go back to their offices, get busy and the plan lands in the filing cabinet... again. Or partners come back from their retreats and just instruct their associates what to do, "We have decided..., so we want you to go and get it for us. We have great plans, and we want you do it for us."

Here are some typical planning potholes many professional service businesses fall into

1. Blinded by success - More correctly, blinded by the illusion of success. Believing that the firm is doing good enough, so there is no need for improvement. The message is: "We are not worse than the rest, so why bother to take the risk of trying something new."

2. The bigger the better - Translating growth into more sales. "It's about billable hours, you idiot."

3. Bells and whistles - Trying to compensate for the lack of vision and clear objectives by hiring a few more young MBAs, installing new voice mail systems and re-designing the compensation structure. If passion, enthusiasm and the appetite to learn something new are missing, the rest is just a highway to mediocrity hell.

4. Lack of focus - Trying to do too many things for a far too broad audience. The message is: "We're not really good at anything, so we can poke our noses into everything."

5. Lack of a plan - "Tomorrow we will get organised and develop a plan, but today we are too busy making money." Or even worse: "Today let's help our clients to plan better."

6. Being stuck in their own mud - Being comfortable doing things in a specific way and refusing to change. "Let's not challenge the status quo. Let's play it safe. Let's not risk my pension plan."

7. Ignoring the firm's culture - Dismissing the fact that people want to belong to an existing culture - with certain values, mission, vision and goals - in which they enjoy working and can thrive for excellence.

8. Underestimating the competition - Neglecting the ignorant antagonist who approaches your market from a totally different angle and catches you off guard. By the time you wake up, your firm is dead.

9. Ignoring the competition - Saying "We're the best" or "We've got no competition" are just the signs of blindness. Clients are already solving their problems using some alternatives.

10. Ignoring clients - The message here is: "This is not about romance, stupid, but prostitution. Pretending to be nice and caring, but after getting paid, let's just move on." Many firms are up to their eyebrows with self-aggrandising processes, but fail to truly care about improving their clients' performance. Relationships last from the first meeting to the first invoice.

11. Having the wrong management - Associates who clock in the most billable hours become partners and managers. They are good accountants, software developers, engineers, dentists, web designer, etc. but have no idea how to lead people and manage businesses.

12. Not raising the bar - Being satisfied where the firm is right now. Having no desire to raise the firm to the next level of excellence.

13. Being on even keels - Employing routine-based operation. Doing everything according to the Procedures Manual (which was developed 5, 10 or even 20 years ago)

14. Basing the future on the past - "Last year we grew by 5%. Let's shoot for 5.5% this year. That is good enough and we can do it with very little effort by playing safe." This is the point when young associates suggest some "great ideas", but senior partners rip their heads off: "Young man/lady, some day you will learn how we do things around here. But until then, just shut up."

15. Being overconfident - "We can do that standing on our heads with our eyes closed. We have the best strategy." No. You have a strategy, and the market will decide if it is any good.

16. Being the cheapest - "The economy is tough and client's are looking for low prices. So, we cut back on skill-building and marketing, and reduce our price. We sell cheap crap in large volumes. Let us wait for the economy to improve." Yes, there are idiots who buy based on low price, and even more idiots who try to get by based on low price. Smart buyers buy quality regardless of the state of the economy.

17. Having a "don't rock the boat" mentality - "As long as we can deceive enough idiots to buy our stuff, why should we bother to improve. When it breaks, we'll fix it."

18. Making the numbers - Making certain everyone in the firm makes the target numbers. There is a chronic fixation on the score board (money) and a firm-wide ignorance for the game itself (creating better client experiences).

19. Needing more information - Lacking action due to a perceived shortage of information. More information leads to constipation of information, which leads to paralysis of analysis. At this point lack of action is guaranteed and the firm has just got to a - often permanent - standstill.

The Mothers of All Potholes - The real big enemies

1. Managerial ego - The smaller the firm the more wide-spread this symptom is. It describes megalomaniac business owners with a tendency to domineer over others. For example: "For employment you must talk to HR", "I never talk to salespeople", "I don't take phone calls from people I don't know". Typically, these are the words of workaholics - some of the lowest performing people in the known universe who are busy being busy, accomplishing almost nothing. They often have other personality disorders as well.

2. Bureaucracy - Especially larger firms have heavy bureaucratic structures. They are riddled with internal politics, which they communicate - act out - to their clients too. For example by overstaffing projects with junior associates who learn the trade on the client's dime.

3. Internal politics - "Young man/lady, if what you're saying were a good idea, we would already be doing it. This discussion is only for adults only, so shut up and talk only when asked." If there is disrespect inside the firm, that goes outside too towards clients.

All of these potholes are lethal to professional service firms, but the last three - ego, politics and bureaucracy - always lurk in the background and can fire at you with very powerful ammunition, so if you let them surface just once, you may spend the rest of your life dodging the bullets. So, first deal with these three items, then move to the others.

Copyright 1997-2010 Tom "Bald Dog" Varjan. All rights reserved. You are free to use this article in whole or in part. One favour though: Can I ask you to you include complete attribution, including a live website link. Also, can you please let me know where you plan to publish the article.

The attribution: This article was written by Organisational Provocateur, Tom "Bald Dog" Varjan of Dynamic Innovations Squad, a firm specialising in helping consulting firms to sell their expertise at the highest margins. Get Tom's free Practice Management Black Paper when you sign up for his monthly newsletter, Commando Consulting: Lessons And Practices From The Ultimate Professional Service Firm, The Military. Visit Tom's website at http://www.di-squad.com.

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