How to Structure your Team for Tomorrow - Pyramids and Diamonds

Objectives

Knowing what your firm’s team and client propositions will look like & knowing your firm’s succession plan will give you a strong guide to as to how your firm might best be structured. Knowing whether your firm is best structured as a Pyramid or a Diamond will provide the best platform to support the partners’ vision for their future

Key topics

• How to go about understanding your team's goals. Once we know our goals, we can start to think about the skills and experience that our team members need to have in order to achieve them.
• What is the ideal size of our team? The size of our team will affect the way we structure it. If we have a small team, we may be able to get away with a more informal structure. However, if we have, or intend to have, a large team, we will need to have a more formal structure in place in order to keep everyone organised and on track.
• The current talent market and whether to recruit trainees or experienced team members. Why some firms are choosing to recruit experienced team members (or even tempt them back from retirement) and create a ‘diamond’ firm structure, with school leavers or other types of trainee coming in for future succession purposes.
• Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of our team members allows us to think about how to best utilise their strengths and minimize their weaknesses. We may, for example, conclude that we need to outsource or offshore to cover certain skills and facilitate personal development of certain team members.
• Knowing our own culture affects the way we structure your team. If we want a culture that is very collaborative, we might want to have a more flat structure. However, if our culture is more hierarchical, we might best be served to have a more traditional pyramid structure.

The best team structure for us will depend on our specific needs and goals. By considering the factors above, we can start to develop a structure that will help our team achieve its goals and our practice to thrive.

Above all, the 4 disciplines of execution will provide a framework for success.

Who should attend

Partners in practice who are interested in team motivation and a successful client proposition.