Eleven Ways Partners Lead

Source: Partner Insights

The following contains excerpts, reproduced with permission, from an article by August Aquila and Rob Lees. 

How do firms ensure the partner group sets the right example and consistently delivers the performance the firm needs to be successful? Put simply, the partners have to lead.

Being a leader means partners must:

1. Make a personal economic contribution. All partners have to ensure their assignments are profitable and that they manage the firm's cash flow.
2. Bring in new business. Not all partners are effective operating in an environment where they have no pre-existing relationships, whereas some find it easy. The key for any firm is to use its resources where they will achieve the best return rather than expect everyone to be good at everything.
3. Bring the firm's resources to their clients. Partners have to trust that their fellow partners will do as good a job as they do if they introduce them to their clients.
4. Pass work to colleagues. Partners must find opportunities to ensure that, when one of their colleagues has the more appropriate experience, they are confident in their decision to pass the work to him or her.
5. Develop people's capabilities. Professional services is an execution game, so if a firm develops its people faster and more effectively than its competitors, it gains a competitive and economic advantage.
6. Persuade people to join the partners on the journey and to play a part in building a better firm. Effective partners continually engage with their people, regardless of their level and role.
7. Help their colleagues and, through them, the firm. Increasingly, firms recognize that they have to create a more collective culture. Part of that cohesiveness is a willingness to help others.
8. Live the firm's values all day, every day.
9. Never be satisfied with second best.
10. Be role models for high performance and judgment.
11. Stand up and be counted. In our work, we hear about too many partners who don't play a part in what the firm is doing. 

For the original article, read “What it means to be a partner.”

From Partner Insights, Aquila Global Advisors, LLC, October 2013, www.aquilaadvisors.com.