Idea in Brief
The Problem
Professional services firms can gain a powerful competitive edge if they do complex work for clients that involves partners from multiple specialties. But collaboration’s downsides are immediate, while the benefits accrue slowly, making individuals reluctant to engage in it.
The Research
Research shows that as more practice groups work together on a client engagement, the average annual revenue from the client increases. And as professionals engage in more cross-specialty projects, the more work they will subsequently get and the more they’ll be able to charge for it.
The Implications
Both individuals and leaders can lower the barriers to collaboration—and land high-value work—by de-emphasizing inputs like billable hours and focusing more on outcomes such as greater revenue per client.
Today’s professional services firms face a conundrum. As clients have globalized and confronted more-sophisticated technological, regulatory, economic, and environmental demands, they’ve sought help on increasingly complex problems. To keep up, most top-tier firms have created or acquired narrowly defined practice areas and encouraged partners to specialize. As a result, their collective expertise has been distributed across more and more people, places, and practice groups. The only way to address clients’ most complex issues, then, is for specialists to work together across the boundaries of their expertise.
