Cambridge Business Association
The Professional Service Firm 50
Book

The Professional Service Firm 50

Fifty Ways to Transform Your "Department" Into a Professional Service Firm Whose Trademarks Are Passion and Innovation!

Tom Peters
Knopf, 1999
First Edition: 1999
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Editorial Rating

8

Qualities

  • Innovative
  • Applicable

Recommendation

Tom Peters takes this book’s role in his three-part "Reinventing Work Series" seriously. He urges corporate departments, such as human resources and accounting, to reinvent themselves as professional service firms, and to think of their work as projects and of their companies as clients. He believes this will result in a more energized workforce and higher-quality work that will survive the traumas of the new age. His approach is marked by his now signature "gee whiz" writing style, punctuated by large typefaces, exclamation points, salty slang and remarks like "Amen!" and "WOW!" getAbstract.com recommends this book for its innovative points and no "b.s." attitude, but Peters-bashers will groan at the repetition of ideas and cheerleading expressions. This is a useful, inspiring pep talk, and if it is not exactly In Search of Excellence - which seemed to be written for adults who didn’t need quite so much hip-hip hoopla - that was then and this is now.

Summary

Be a Mini-McKinsey

Despite many management efforts in the nineties, such as "reengineering" and "downsizing," the workplace has not been transformed. Even with the electronic revolution, people still push paper and face huge processing delays. At last, things are about to change. New "enterprise resource planning systems" will reenergize information handling and will lead to greater productivity. To keep pace with these developments, your department should make its work more significant and valuable, and change into a streamlined, processing machine.

Accomplish these goals by transforming your department (or team or company) into a "Professional Service Firm" (PSF). Imagine your department as a company somewhat like McKinsey & Co., providing smart assistance to your client, that is, your parent corporation. As a PSF, you can transform your routine work into sharp, meaningful projects.

The ongoing work revolution - due to globalization, deregulation and the Internet - forces you to be more competitive. Adopt this new model and turn your department into a "Brand You professional service team," staffed with aces. To bring about this transformation, select 10...

About the Author

Tom Peters is the co-author of In Search for Excellence (with Robert H. Waterman, Jr.) and A Passion for Excellence (with Nancy Austin), and the author of Thriving on Chaos, Liberation Management, The Tom Peters Seminar, The Pursuit of WOW!, The Circle of Innovation and The Reinventing Work series, which includes this book, The Projects 50 and The Brand You 50. He is the founder of the Tom Peters Co., with offices in Palo Alto, Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati and London.

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