Evaluating Your Managing Partner

Source: CPA Trendlines

The following includes excerpts, reproduced with permission, from an article by Marc Rosenberg. Rosenberg, CPA and author of CPA Firm Management and Governance, offers guidance on conducting an effective performance evaluation of the CEO. The article includes a sample Managing Partner Evaluation Form.

The process for conducting a performance evaluation of the managing partner is really an upward evaluation. Like all upward evaluations, evaluation of the managing partner should be limited to those in a position to offer informed input.

At firms of fewer than 10 to 15 partners, all the partners will probably want to participate. But once a firm gets beyond 10 to 15 partners, an increasing number of partners may not be in a position to respond to the evaluation factors listed on the form. Firms with management or executive committees may wish to limit the evaluation to the partners on those committees.

Once you have decided who will be allowed to participate in the evaluation, each partner should complete an evaluation form. Then, someone should tabulate the forms and summarize the results. The evaluations should be done on a semi-anonymous basis. Partners' names should be on the forms so that the coordinator of the review process can go back to people for clarification and amplification of responses. But the managing partner should not have access to who said what.

There should be some sort of filtering of negative comments coming from poor-performing partners. Partners who consistently fail to perform in certain areas (staff relations, collecting receivables, turning in timesheets, etc.) will more than likely feel that they are in the managing partner's “doghouse” and may be unfairly hostile to the managing partner in his/her evaluation.

The process should be concluded with a meeting between the managing partner and a small group of people (no more than three) charged with delivering the results and engaging the managing partner in a discussion about what his or her goals should be for the next 12 months.

For the original article, read “21 Questions for Managing the Managing Partner.”

From CPA Trendlines, April 3, 2013, http://cpatrendlines.com.