What we do

A significant proportion of the firm’s recent work has been in:

• crafting strategy for firms, practice groups and client relationship teams
• facilitating business critical meetings, retreats and workshops 
• making keynote presentations at partner retreats and industry conferences
• conducting strategic reviews of practice groups and business support teams
• mapping organisation culture 
• auditing critical client relationships to drive profit growth
• helping firms increase their yield from their key client programs
• reviewing governance and organisation design
• advising on pie-splitting and partner remuneration arrangements
• delivering high-impact training and development programs.

Strategy in most professional service firms is a blend of 'top-down' firm strategy and 'bottom-up' practice strategy. Firms that just rely on the top-down approach tend to struggle with implementation because there's little ownership at the practice level. Firms that just do bottom-up miss out on new growth initiatives outside the scope of the current practices, and other strategic benefits of operating as one firm.

Barolsky Advisors uses the adaptive planning approach, as first promulgated by Wharton's George Day, to get the best of top-down and bottom-up. This method ensures the firm's strategy is more than the sum of the practice groups, but that the strategy of each team is owned and relevant. Read here for more.

Over the past 30 years, we've facilitated over 1,000 partner retreats, conferences, offsites, planning workshops and meetings (see our blog on advancing a retreat). These events usually have one thing in common: helping the firm's executive or partnership group address their most critical strategic issues.

Our experience includes work with partners, boards, executive teams, practice groups, business services teams and senior associates.

If one deconstructs the phrase "partner retreat", we note that attendees are labelled as partners and not leaders, and secondly, the term retreat (usually unintentionally) implies running away or retreating from problems. We strongly believe that these meetings should be framed as conversations of the firm's leaders and a summit that will solve problems and create alignment around future direction.

Our facilitation work generally falls into six categories:

• Vision and strategy development
• Priority setting, resource allocation and action planning
• Creating alignment and buy-in to strategic initiatives
• Ideation, self-disruption and innovation
• Organisation design
• Optimisation of executive team function and alignment. 

We don't have a "cookie-cutter" approach. Every engagement is highly tailored after extensive client consultation. We try to practice what we preach - see our blog on top 20 tips and secrets to workshop facilitation.

Given Barolsky Advisors' in-depth industry knowledge of the professions, we bring both a content expertise as well as strong facilitation skills. The facilitation often includes injecting the discussion with relevant case studies, benchmarks and conceptual frameworks. It also includes selecting the right tools to gather input from participants.

Given Barolsky Advisors' in-depth industry knowledge of the professions, we bring both a content expertise as well as strong facilitation skills. The facilitation often includes injecting the discussion with relevant case studies, benchmarks and conceptual frameworks. It also includes selecting the right tools to gather input from participants - see table below.