Section III

The Organization: Attracting and Retaining the Best Professionals

Organization Structure

Frank Ribeiro

Quality is the result of a carefully constructed cultural environment. It has to be the fabric of the organization, not part of the fabric.

-Philip Crosby1

The quality of an organization can never exceed the quality of the minds that make it up.

-Harold R.McAlindon2

This chapter identifies and defines the primary ways in which professional services firms are organized and discusses how different types of organizational models can enhance or impede the success of the firm. Because the most important asset of any professional services firm is its employees, it is critical that its organizational design allow people the freedom to operate effectively while supplying needed structure as well as checks and balances to keep the firm on track. This balance can be difficult to achieve.

Most professional services firms are made up of talented and intelligent people who are eager to develop new ideas and methodologies and have little patience for complex organizational structures that hamper their creativity. Yet, for a firm to be successful as a business, it must have a mechanism that forges the talent and intelligence of its professional staff into a cohesive whole. The organizational model must create and reinforce the alignment between the companys external and internal strategies, support the firms chosen image and branding strategy, and be flexible enough to respond quickly to changes in the business environment.