At Lotis Blue, we help professional services firms navigate the complexities of the modern business landscape. Whether it’s optimizing client relationship management, enhancing leadership team effectiveness, or designing firm strategies, we offer fresh insights that may not be immediately apparent from within the organization.
With a keen eye for detail and a deep understanding of industry best practices, we use an outside-in approach that is particularly beneficial when evaluating leadership team efficacy, partner performance, partner compensation models, firm strategy design, or identifying reasons for missed or lost revenue.
We’ve partnered with leading firms across the globe to drive growth, resilience, and operational excellence, including:
Firm Strategy Design
Through a comprehensive analysis of market dynamics, consumer behavior, and competitive forces, Lotis Blue’s professional services consultants illuminate paths that firms might not have seen on their own. We engage in a deep exploration of the firm’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats to tailor a strategy that is both actionable and aligned with the firm’s vision.
To reach a strategic plan, we aim to answer the following questions:
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- What is our vision and measurable goals?
- Where will we focus?
- How will we differentiate?
- What capabilities are required?
- How do we execute?
Lotis Blue’s approach is rooted in decades of professional services consulting experience, blending data analytics and behavioral sciences. By using data analytics to identify undetected patterns, firms become more fact-driven, confident, and unbiased in their decision-making. Our depth in behavior science enables us to develop strategies that plan for and overcome typical implementation hurdles to capture the intended value.
Leadership Team Structure and Operational Effectiveness
Lotis Blue’s professional services consultants employ a nuanced strategy to evaluate leadership team effectiveness. This exploration goes beyond a simple evaluation; our consultants pinpoint opportunities where targeted improvements can significantly elevate performance and operational efficiency. This approach focuses on role and leadership team design tailored to the firm’s DNA and competitive landscape, along with a thorough analysis of the team’s Focus, Mechanics, and Dynamics.
Focus
Establishing a clear strategy and shared purpose, ensuring alignment and commitment to firm goals, defining roles and accountabilities, and emphasizing both individual and shared accountability for results.
Mechanics
Implementing clear processes for managing production and support functions, establishing forums for decision-making, developing processes for resourcing, and measuring and reporting against objectives.
Dynamics
Promoting psychological safety and trust by setting shared norms, encouraging collaboration and healthy conflict, and ensuring balanced participation. Feedback on team interactions strengthens cohesion and reinforces positive behaviors.
The strength of our approach lies in its ability to generate bespoke recommendations that address ineffective leadership decision-making. By identifying the team’s unique hurdles and capabilities, we craft strategies that enhance transparency, accountability, and collective problem-solving.
Partner Performance and Compensation
Effective partner and leader performance and compensation models are designed to motivate the behaviors that drive firm performance. By clarifying each type of partner’s best and highest contributions and meticulously assessing those contributions, our models align with the organization’s overarching goals. Our professional services consulting team works with law, accounting, and consulting clients on compensation systems that establish goals and expectations linked to industry best practices and specific needs to achieve strategic objectives.
Tools we use for partner and leader compensation and performance:
Partner Collaboration and Input
We gather insights through interviews, surveys, and consistent conversations.
Current System Assessment
We conduct a deep dive into current systems, historical data, and market analysis to build a “fact base” for informed design decisions.
Design Principles
We establish agreed-upon guidelines to ensure the final design delivers the desired business outcomes.
Contribution Profiles
We define clear expectations of contributions aligned to roles.
Design Workshops
We use a collaborative approach to design the model.
Scenario Testing
We analyze potential changes to assess the degree of impact the model represents.
Implementation Roadmap
We create a plan to bring the model to reality.
Lotis Blue supports clients in fostering a culture of accountability and continuous improvement among partners. This approach aligns partners’ efforts with the firm’s strategic direction and helps prevent barriers to collaborative value creation. This alignment is crucial for sustaining growth, enhancing client satisfaction, and maintaining a competitive edge.
The Partner Compensation Playbook
Professional services firms can spend weeks or months finding a solution to partner compensation, only to discover that no one is satisfied. The key to successful partner performance management and partner compensation is ensuring the two are tightly linked and focused on the future.
Organizations that rely on simple formulas or year-end criteria to divide profits are missing the mark. Achieving key expectations requires thinking of a “performance model” rather than a “compensation system.” A sustainable performance model integrates solutions across five areas: roles, contributions, metrics, mechanics, and performance management. The best models connect individual performance, firm goals, and coaching to support the achievement of both.
We have experience advising Executive Leadership and Boards at most of the 30 largest accounting firms and numerous AmLaw 20, AmLaw 50, and AmLaw 150 firms.
Productivity Leakage Diagnostic
Identifying and addressing productivity leakage requires a sophisticated approach, one that Lotis Blue’s professional services consultants are particularly skilled at handling. Through a tailored productivity leakage diagnostic, we dissect an organization’s operational framework to uncover inefficiencies that often go unnoticed but significantly impact performance. This process involves a granular gap analysis of sales opportunities, scoping, allocation, reality, and conversion. The diagnostic is both analytical and collaborative, involving stakeholders at various levels to ensure a comprehensive understanding of the organization’s operational dynamics.
The benefits of a thorough gap analysis and subsequent deliverable include strategies that:
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- Increase business development production from partners, principals, and directors
- Create higher utilization and leverage ratios, easing pressure on recruiting and hiring
- Decrease discounting and lead to higher net-effective billing rates
- Increase commitment to and use of firm resources (e.g., technology, off-shore, business support)
- Reduce pressure on billing and collections teams
The good news is, this leakage is preventable, and we know where to look!
Make Bold Moves
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