The Hindu Business Line : Knowledge in good company

PROFESSIONAL service firms differ from other business enterprises in two distinct ways: first they provide highly customised services and second, they are highly personalised, involving the skills of individuals. Such firms must, therefore, compete not only for clients but also for talented professionals. That is from the back cover of David Maister's Managing the Professional Service Firm. Read on:

In any professional service there are three key benefits that clients seek: expertise, experience, and efficiency. However, even within the same practice area, the relative priority that a given client places on these elements can vary dramatically. For instance, a client with a large, complex, high-risk, and unusual problem will appropriately seek out the most creative, talented, or innovative individual or firm he can find — at almost any cost.

Many professionals appear to associate client service with activities such as having lunch, taking the client to cultural or sports events, and so on. With such a view, it is not surprising that client service is held in low esteem by many professionals, and results in a low level performance in this area.

The health of your career is not dependent so much on the volume of business you do, but the type of work you do (whether or not it helps you learn, grow, and develop), and who you do it for (whether or not you are increasingly earning the trust of some key clients). In any profession, the pattern of assignments you work on is the professional development process — you just have to learn how to manage it.

An example of empowering is found in some accounting firms. They provide low-level staff auditors with laptop computers, which contain in storage the entire audit manual of the firm, together with a quasi `expert' system that allows even the most junior professional to access answers to advanced client questions.

One of the most salient psychological characteristics of those who choose professional careers is the strong need for autonomy. People choose professions (rather than, say, corporate careers) because the work is not routine or rigidly structured. Thus, the professions have more than their share of people with an aversion to taking directions.

Most compensation schemes for senior professionals stress income statement measures — revenues, workload, profits. Few recognise or encourage investment in asset-building activities such as development of new methodologies or transfer of skills.

Bosses can build this book into the perk packages of professionals in their employ.

Unstoppable underworld

GERALD Seymour's The Untouchable is not a book about the downtrodden in the society. It is a story about a crime warlord Packer in London and the Customs and Excise chaps who are after him. Packer rules his manor with a cruel, ruthless fist. And to those around him, on whatever side of the law, he is `the untouchable'. Read on:

The mobile in his pocket warbled quietly. He snapped it on. He listened, then he said, `I'm sorry, but I don't know what you're talking about. You must have a wrong number.' He switched it off and pocketed it. It was what the Eagle told him he should always say when the Crime Squad man called him.

It was a living death. We had no electricity, no water except from the river, no sewage system, no food, no transport, no work. To look forward to, we had only the escape of death. There were some in my block who for three years did not go outside their front door, never went out.

The computers had the power to dig into the registrations of births, property sales, electoral rolls, income-tax returns, council-tax lists and telephone numbers. The trace was done by SQG8 and handed to Dougie Gough.

He saw the gravestones, low, old and poorly carved, that had been used as goalposts. The other stones, which had been near the penalty spots, at either side of the penalty boxes and across the halfway line, had been uprooted and thrown aside. They marked the sidelines of the pitch.

This is the anti-personnel bounding fragmentation mine, which is proven as the most deadly of all those used in the Bosnian war. It has either a trip-wire or a pressure-activated role, but it is more usual in the trip-wire mode. We call it PROM. The lethal radius is 25 metres.

A book you can touch, after the exams.

Evaporating poverty

SURJIT S.Bhalla's book on poverty, inequality and growth in the era of globalisation is interestingly titled: Imagine there's no Country. A few excerpts:

In 1960, the average Asian had an income equal to half that of an African, and one-fifth of a Latin American. In 2000, the Asian had incomes almost double that of an African. Today, Asians make up half of the world's population, and more than two-thirds of the population of the developing world.

The John Lennon song "Imagine" contains the fundamental idea behind the generation of `world individual income inequality' estimates, or W3i for short. What happens if there is no country, only one world?

Together India and China accounted for more than half the world's poor people. Their economies (collectively) annually grew at more than 5 per cent per capita for 12 years (1987-99) — which means an 82 per cent increase through the power of compounding — and yet no dent was made in world poverty? The World Bank itself acknowledge the puzzle.

One major region of the world, sub-Saharan Africa, has been most unfortunate. Poverty rates there are at the same level as in the 1960s — about half the population then, and about 55 per cent in 2000. The reality is even worse. The population has more than doubled during the past four decades, which means that the absolute number of poor people has also more than doubled, to reach about 362 million — more than half of the world's poor people.

No matter what statistic is used, the revealed truth is that we have just witnessed the 20 best years in world history — and doubly certainly the 20 best years in the history of poor people. Yet this is not the perception of most non-governmental organisations to the left of the Cato Institute — which means more than 99 per cent of the world's NGOs. It certainly is not the perception of the media, the liberal press.

Stop imagining, and start reading.

(Books courtesy: Fountainhead, Chennai. E-mail: fhbooks@satyam.net.in)

Tailpiece

"His trousers look so crumpled."

"So?"

"But you say he is at the crease?"

hindubusinessline@hotmail.com

D. Murali

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