Robert G. Eccles
Senior Lecturer of Business Administration
Tel: (617) 495-8585
reccles@hbs.edu
Career Focus
There are three educational objectives for this course. The first is to develop an understanding of what makes professional service firms successful. There are some particular aspects of these types of firms which make it difficult to use management practices common in corporations, such as how strategy gets set and how leadership is exercised. Second, since the performance of a professional service firm ultimately depends upon the performance of its professionals, the course will address what it takes for individuals to be successful throughout their careers, including at the very early stages, as their responsibilities change.
Early in their careers professionals need to develop the appropriate technical skills and do exceptional work for clients, learn how to work with their peers, learn how to manage teams, learn how to work with partners who have different skills and preferences and fashion a career that will lead to long-term success in the firm or a timely decision to leave. As professionals progress in their careers they become "producing managers" where they must learn to deal with the conflicting pressures that come from managing important client relationships while taking on increasing internal responsibilities regarding the management of the firm. Those professionals who take on more senior leaderships responsibilities-under such labels as "Managing Partner," "Sector Head," "Practice Head," or important committee assignments (e.g., promotion, compensation, governance and strategy)-must learn how to effectively exercise this leadership in situations where many of the formal sources of power and authority that exist in corporations are limited or do not even exist.
Finally, since professional service firms provide services that are critical to a company's performance, it is important to understand how to manage this relationship from the client's perspective. In some cases companies have decided to incorporate professionals "in-house," such as with lawyers and strategy consultants, and so this relationship becomes an internal one that poses some particular challenges on both sides.
Course Content and Organization
This course builds on a half-course of the same name that was offered in the Winter of 2007. As such it will contain a large proportion of new cases that have been selected to illustrate some of the leading-edge practices in professional service firms today (such as the use of technology), as well as some of the significant challenges (such as reputational risk) many of them are facing, particularly in certain professions. Additional insights will be gained from class visits by senior executives from many of the firms these cases are about. We will also have guests from some of the other firms discussed in the course. The course includes a very broad range of professional service firms including accounting, advertising, executive search, investment banking, landscape architecture, law, management consulting, medicine, outsourcing, public relations and venture capital.
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