by Bruce | January 15, 2020 | Articles, Branding, Business Models, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Leadership, Strategy
This article is co-authored by Bruce MacEwen, President, Janet Stanton, Partner and Antonio Leal Holguin, Director – Adam Smith, Esq. Lots of folks have their “Year of….” custom, often retrospectively, but here at Adam Smith, Esq., we’re more...
by Bruce | December 13, 2019 | Articles, Business Models, Cultural Considerations, Leadership, Partnership Structures, Practice Group Management, Strategy
Not to name names, but does it strike you as it does me that we’re in the midst of a global surfeit of senior leaders behaving badly? Almost every domain of human endeavor seems tarnished, or worse, by malfeasance, broken trust, power abused, or even...
by Bruce | November 13, 2019 | Articles, Business Models, Cultural Considerations, Leadership, Strategy, Technology strategy
Ten years ago (five?) the role of “Chief Innovation Officer” was almost unheard-of. Now hardly a week goes by without a firm announcing the appointment of so-and-so to that role and title. But what exactly Is a “CINO” and where do (where...
by Bruce | August 26, 2019 | Articles, Business Models, Client Relationships, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Leadership, Partnership Structures, Strategy
Has our first (and really only) answer to the question, “What is a corporation’s purpose?” been wrong for the last, oh, 40 or 50 years? The answer, pace Milton Friedman [see note at end], has of course been “shareholder value!” And now...
by Bruce | July 26, 2019 | Articles, Business Models, Cultural Considerations, Leadership, Partnership Structures, Strategy
In our third and final installment of the Maroons/Grays segmentation analysis, we presented this: Here’s a simplistic way of thinking about the two types of firms and the consequences for each of strong or of weak management. Maroons Grays Superbly run Steady as she...
by Bruce | June 27, 2019 | Articles, Finance, Leadership, M&A, Partnership Structures, Recruiting, Strategy
Ask almost any Managing Partner or office leader this question and odds are about 98% that the answer you’ll get is, “It depends.” Indeed. We wish there were reliable, consistent, industry-wide data on laterals’ success ratios, but we’ve...
