Moving to a More Corporate Structure

Governance and Organisational restructuring engagement for a 46 partner (600 people) professional firm in North America. This group had more than doubled its partnership numbers in the last ten years and – recognising that the group should move towards a corporate structure – had constituted a management committee and hired an external chief executive. In practice, however, the partners still were clinging on to the ideal of consensus management and insisted on every decision being approved by the whole partnership. We recommended a number of incremental plans to strengthen the management committee, to streamline the decision-making processes and to assist with better consultation and communication. We also drafted roles and responsibilities at various levels, including a partners’ code to help gain better accountability and buy-in.