Steven Forth is a co-founder of TeamFit. See his TeamFit skill map here. See also The ROI on Skill and Expertise Management: Part 1 Win More Work and The ROI on Skill and Expertise Management Part 3: Engagement and Retention....
Steven Forth is a co-founder of TeamFit. See his TeamFit skill map here. See also The ROI on Skill and Expertise Management Part 2: Utilization and The ROI on Skill and Expertise Management Part 3: Engagement and Retention. Investing in skill and expertise management...
How does your company win projects? If you are like most companies, relationships play a big role. Somebody knows someone who has worked together on something and had a good experience. Relationships are important. And in the absence of...
Many professional services companies are focused on optimizing the utilization ratio. They are focused on making sure that all billable staff are at work on customer projects at least 70% of the time (the actual target varies from company...
Back in the 1960s US fighter pilot John Boyd was known as ’40 second Boyd’ from his standing bet that starting from a position of disadvantage he could get himself into a winning position in 40 seconds or less. It...
TeamFit is a skill management platform for professional services companies. We spend a lot of time speaking with the leadership of different companies to understand their strategies and the business pressures they are under. A surprising number of these...
“Differentiate for your clients, not from your competitors” Understanding strategic differentiation is critical to the leaders of professional services companies. In a hyper-competitive world, companies without differentiation quickly find themselves pushed down into commoditized roles where it is hard...
Your skill profile is as unique as you are, but unlike your fingerprints, your profile adapts with experience and you can intervene to shape these changes. Skills are the new currency of work. This is especially in the professional...
Over the past decade, HR in professional services has become increasingly complex. There is a need for new tools that give deeper insight into people’s real skills and how they are being applied on projects. The payback for HR...
Professional services companies depend on leadership for success. This is true for all companies of course, but it is especially true for companies that rely on the skills of their people to succeed. If you are the CEO of...
Almost all of us have some leadership role to play today. Knowledge workers are generally responsible for their own performance and for supporting their teammates. At TeamFit, any team member can take on a leadership role, depending on the...
What does this mean for your professional services firm and more important for yourself as an individual? Dan Pink introduced the case that mastery, autonomy and purpose are the key drivers for business performance. What does this mean for...
We know that the most valuable skills for an individual or an organization are the differentiating skills. The skills that make you different from the competition are the ones that give you an edge in winning work and getting...
Most of us use hundreds of different skills in our work. But not all of these skills are equally important. Our research has found that the most important skills for an individual or an organization are differentiating skills. Core...
Back on August 14 Gary Golden wrote a fascinating post on Techcrunch “Why LinkedIn should kill the résumé and replace it with the experience graph.” He makes the basic point that the résumé as it currently exists does not...
Value-based pricing is a strategic tactic where setting price is based on the benefits your service or product provides to your customers. It is the ability to charge based on the value you offer. On the other hand, cost-based...
I am a big fan of Roger Martin’s cascading choices. A must-know for anyone involved in driving business growth. The choices cascade from an organization’s aspirations, to Where to Play and How to Win and then asks what Capabilities...
2015 was a year of change for many people. The impact of the contingent economy on professional services companies became a common theme, as was the need for these companies to become agile and make better use of the...
For professional services firms long-term value comes from just two things: client relationships and firm capabilities. Both of these are built on trust. It is pretty obvious how client relationships rely on trust. They are built up over time...
Some professional services firms are proud that they use only employees for projects. They think that this is the best way to control quality, deliver consistency and optimize utilization. Other firms are making a strategic choice in favor of...
I’ve been following SPI (Service Performance Insight) Research for sometime and I would recommend their research and materials for anyone involved in leading strategy and execution within a professional services organization. Last week, I had the pleasure of hearing Dave...
When I was managing a professional services organization I sometimes felt like the Cat in the Hat! It was fun as long as long as I kept everything balanced but sometimes things would come crashing down. ‘Look at...
TeamFit is undergoing a skill review at the moment. We are looking at the skills we have in the company and what skills we need to deliver on our goals. We are also trying to look out six months...
The United States is gearing up toward election time, and that means certain newsworthy changes that affect the economy are used as battleground for the candidates vying for position. One of these topics that has gained heat most recently...
Professional services companies can only win on the basis of differentiation. What does differentiation mean? You have an impact on some specific aspect of your client’s business that no other firm can deliver. That is it. Sounds simple, but...
What are the most important skills to think about when it comes to building relationships with clients? I did a quick straw poll with a half dozen business leaders at professional services organizations. The responses came in three buckets:...
Unit economics are critical to understanding how your business will scale. They tell you which levers to pull to improve performance. There has been a lot of good work on unit economics for subscription businesses (see for example David...
Many of us like to claim a lot of skills. Active users on the TeamFit platform typically claim 50 or more skills, and most people have the maximum 50 listed on their LinkedIn profiles. The typical project on TeamFit,...
Over the past weeks, we have been conducting a number of open conversations as well as one on one conversations with several PMs. TeamFit is interested in understanding the challenges that PMs are currently facing, the roles that PMs...