Turning Rainmakers into Managers
In an interesting post on the real estate brokerage industry, Sean Purcell describes a problem common in the professions: A successful rainmaker builds a team to handle all of the work she generates, only to find the time required to manage the team comes at the expense of rainmaking.
The most common solution to this problem at professional services firms is for the rainmaker to ally herself with another senior professional on her team who is good at management, but less so at rainmaking. This works well, often for many years, until the rainmaker leaves the firm. The successor chosen to run the practice is then often the succesful manager who has developed team members to deliver all the work generated by the rainmaker. But, who then is to make rain? Crisis follows years of success in many cases.
Among the reasons we run the Harding & Company blog is to help firms avoid this crisis
