by Bruce | October 23, 2019 | Articles, Cultural Considerations, Law Schools, Question of the Month
The following column is by Janet Stanton, Partner, Adam Smith, Esq. Maybe lawyers didn’t go on play dates when they were little. (Maybe they didn’t want to.) And, once they get through law school, any shred of esprit de corps has been beaten out of them. This may...
by Bruce | October 10, 2019 | Articles
For those of you who may have read our series “The Client Seat,” we have the Very Last Chapter:
by Bruce | September 29, 2019 | Articles, Client Relationships, Cultural Considerations, Marketing, Practice Group Management, Strategy
We would flatter ourselves to believe that even occasional readers know we believe fervently in basing our work on data and research, not just hunch and intuition. So we warmly welcomed it when PwC’s often useful “strategy + business” published a little bit ago an...
by Bruce | September 24, 2019 | Articles, Cultural Considerations, Practice Group Management, Question of the Month
Returning from a hiatus, our Question of the Month appears refreshed and in the pink. You know what to do. Use the comments box for editorial embellishment. [poll id=”18″] Thanks for being a voter!
by Bruce | September 13, 2019 | Articles, Business Models, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Globalization, Latin America
The following column is by Antonio Leal Holguin, Director of Latin America for Adam Smith, Esq. I recently spent three days in Lima. A metropolis of close to 10 million people, Peru’s capital is one of Latin America’s most vibrant cities and a famous culinary...
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...
by Bruce | June 14, 2019 | Articles, Business Models, Client Relationships, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Leadership, Marketing, Partnership Structures, Strategy
Let’s open this third and final installment with the #1 question we’re most frequently asked about this model: Can one firm excel at being both a Maroon and a Gray? No. Or in the very best of circumstances, it’s extremely hard to do and it’s...
by Bruce | June 9, 2019 | Articles, Business Models, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Leadership, Partnership Structures, Strategy
At the end of installment #1, we promised you we’d discuss what happens if you apply Porter’s famous “five forces” to the Maroons and the Grays. Shall we? Insight from Porter’s “Five Forces” In 1979, Harvard Business School Professor Michael...
