Bhavya Chowdhury I have known Zoeb Karampurwala for more than two decades. There are a lot of parallels in our careers – though admittedly, compared to me, Zoeb has been many notches higher in the career trajectory. One thing that I have always wanted to do – but never managed to do so far – is to … Read more
If a Pakistan threat defines J and K, Arunachal is a state that is defined by the China threat. More so, because India lost the only real war that she fought with China, in 1962. The seeds of the dispute lie in the Tawang monastery. During the days when Tibet was ruled from Lhasa, not … Read more
Ramesh Raskar was born in Nashik, India and he finished his engineering education in Electronics and Telecommunication from College of Engineering, Pune in 1991. He was an avid photographer in his college days and this interest led him to do a PhD in projector based 3d graphics from UNC, Chapel Hill. Raskar then joined Mitsubishi … Read more
By inviting evaluations of current services, firms create the opportunity to improve. As the Japanese manufacturers say, a “defect is a treasure.” In other words, by eagerly seeking out your “defects” and studying them carefully to identify why and how that performance failure occurred, you get the opportunity to improve. If you avoid feedback from … Read more
My observation of professional firms in general is that they tend to overinvest their non-billable practice development time in categories mentioned first on my list (broadcasting and courting) and, as a rule, under-invest in those activities lower on my list (superpleasing, nurturing, and listening). In large part, I have learned, this is because firms tend … Read more
In tackling the issue of staffing efficiency on engagements, no activity in the office surpasses in importance good management of the scheduling process. Once it has been decided how an engagement is to be staffed (who is assigned, and what portion of the engagement each is scheduled to do), the engagement’s leverage structure is in … Read more
While there clearly are a variety of personal factors at work (“I prefer to do it myself” or “I have more confidence it will be done correctly if I do it”), I have learned that a bigger explanation is provided by the measurement and reward systems of most firms (hence the name systemic under-delegation). First, … Read more
Imagine that a questionnaire was sent to each and every professional in your firm, top-to-bottom, asking the following single question: What percentage of your professional work time is spent doing things that a more junior person could do, if we got organized and trained the junior to handle it with quality? (Obviously, do not include … Read more
Productivity = Fees / Staff = Fees / hour * Hours / Staff = Value * Utilisation Excerpted from ‘Managing the Professional Service Firm’ by David Maister, page 33
Now consider a firm whose practice-mix was made up predominantly of clients who, rather than needing the profession’s most creative talent, wanted to find a firm that had accumulated experience in handling certain types of problems, and would not take an expensive “start with a blank sheet of paper” approach to the problem. The marketing … Read more
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