Daily Archives: January 7, 2014

Passion. Succession. Growth.

See the complete 2014 Roundtable

By August Aquila
Creating the Effective Partnership

Analysis

The biggest issues that I am seeing revolve around partner engagement (commitment), succession issues and growth. The economy has been pretty much in a no-growth environment the last 12 months.

Markets are becoming saturated by the national and super-regional firms. Many secondary markets now have five or more of these players going after the same clients. The result is that this competition drives down fees and we are training clients to constantly go out for bids.

Outlook

I personally don’t see a lot of change in the economy in the near future. Succession, growth, commitment will continue to be major issues for a lot of small to mid-size firms.

READ MORE →

Next-gen leapfrogging. Aggressive pricing. Widening gaps.

See the complete 2014 Roundtable

By Jeff Pawlow
The Growth Partnership

Analysis

The demographic tsunami is upon us with firms finally being forced to face what the successor generation is going to look like. Loyal technicians are next in terms of tenure, but I see many next-gen practitioners leapfrogging these long-term managers / non-equity partners and landing in key firm leadership roles instead.

Opinions are mixed when it comes to the overall economic outlook. The recession may be falling behind us but Main Street doesn’t seem to have recovered as quickly or as deeply as in the past. As a result, we continue to see very aggressive pricing in the market, which is placing pressure on some long-held client relationships.

Outlook

Anecdotally, we see the business development and leadership development areas of our practice growing, which suggests a deeper level of engagement by most firms in these areas going forward into 2014. READ MORE →

Mandatory retirements.

See the complete 2014 Roundtable

By Allan Koltin
Koltin Consulting Group

Analysis

First — People, people, people. I believe the white gloves have officially come off when it comes to recruiting talent from other firms in our industry. I’m seeing much more sophisticated strategies in terms of how firms target talent and, more precisely, go after that talent. READ MORE →