Feng Shui Your Professional Service Firm (PSF)

February 7, 2008 by Mary Wynne-Wynter 

I get wonderful support, collaboration and inspiration from my allies who are service practitioners in industries seemingly unrelated to mine. I differentiate my business from others in the management consulting industry.

My friend and ally Joan is a corporate escapee and now a natural living, health and wellness educator who is sought out for her Feng Shui programs. I joked that what she does with her Feng ShuI is the “space optimization” version of my “content optimization”.

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Joan responded that space optimization is exactly what her business clients are requesting! That sparked a lively conversation through which we discovered that our desired results for clients of our optimization programs are the same: alignment with the ideal and to improve the quality of experience for ourselves, our clients, our clients’ customers and beyond.

Later, I read this HBS newsletter about authors of a new book, When Professionals Have to Lead: A New Model for High Performance. It was just an excerpt, but to me it painted a grim picture of the professional services field from both a manager and employee point of view. The activity and execution-based proposed new PSF framework is largely about setting direction and avoiding counter-direction.

Reading it, I thought: PSFs hunger for it, so where is the creativity..and the Feng Shui? Its not there, and that’s sad. We’re fortunate that as solo’s, we have unlimited opportunities to create and align. Its so important to not waste them.

The dilemma, says HBS professor Thomas J. DeLong, is that the entire PSF landscape is in upheaval. Associates are harder to recruit and keep; competition for clients is increasing from boutiques below and global firms above; the clients themselves are more demanding; and management time is focused on short-term issues rather than long-term strategy.

As DeLong puts it, “In the past, the work of PSFs was a gentleman’s game—and now it’s blood sport.”

Thomas J. DeLong: Professionals in professional service firms are reporting greater frustration, unmet needs, lack of shared purpose, poor morale, etc.

PSFs promise one thing [to clients] and deliver another; clients are asking for more for less. The firms are becoming more global and more complex to lead. The professionals entering these organizations have higher expectations and more suspicion that leaders will treat them like cogs in the wheel.

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