The myth of One Firm and what to do about it

By Stuart Maister, Joint MD, Mutual Value

How much does it cost your firm when your teams operate independently, or transactionally with each other, and so don’t bring the full power of the organisation to clients? It was the question we put to a group of senior professionals from large companies over dinner in London, together with our partners Introhive.

It didn’t take us long to develop the list of problems it causes. Here are some:

• We don’t sell everything we can – we play narrow
• Time is wasted through duplication of effort
• Lessons aren’t learned and shared
• Behaviour can be territorial – ‘this is MY client’
• People trust their team but not others
• Innovation is stifled – it’s a product of collaboration
• There’s initiative overload
• Attention is dissipated – different teams focus on different things
• The customer experience is poorer – less joined up thinking

Any of this sound familiar? Imagine attaching $/£ to each of these in your firm and seeing how much it actually costs. We’ve done it with clients and it isn’t pretty.

So, what to do about it? What have you done that works? That was the question we asked the group. The discussion was wide ranging and carried on long after dinner. The answers broke down into these areas:

• Culture
• Reward and recognition
• Reorganisation to change who works with whom

Introhive are launching a new service to track internal relationships and provide real intelligence about who’s working with whom. Mutual Value helps you change behaviours to increase collaboration internally and with clients.

Here’s a short video featuring Ryan O’Sullivan of Introhive, Kevin Vaughan-Smith of Mutual Value and myself reflecting on what we heard. It was recorded in a busy week so Kevin takes part from his car! We’d be interested in your own reflections.

Does this resonate? If so, let’s have an open discussion about what this might mean for your business and what difference it would make for you and your teams to build stronger internal relationships and bring the whole Firm to the client.