The ‘Skills Paradox’ for Working Owners Of Professional and Skilled Service Businesses

Most professional service firms and technical skills services-based business are established around the skills of the initial founders and then evolve their offerings further based on the skills of key staff. These are highly intelligent and technically skilled people.

However, there is a problem here in that the skills developed and practiced to deliver the professional ‘technical work’ that the business delivers are quite separate and distinct from skills required to build and grow the business

Skills Paradox

I call this the ‘Skills Paradox’. More specifically the ‘Skills Paradox’ observes that there is an inverse correlation between the level of professional technical skills undertaken and the existence of skills required to build, develop and sustain a successful ‘skilled services’ business.

Of course, the concept of getting beyond the trap of working ‘in’ the business rather than working ‘on’ the business has been trumpeting around since the emergence of Michael Gerbers’ watershed work the ‘E-Myth’ what seems like many moons ago. 

But for professional and high skilled based service businesses, this challenge is magnified, multiplied and very much more significant.

The greater the level of professional or technical skill required to be delivered to the client, the greater the likelihood that the most senior people in the organisation are focused on delivering technical work for clients.

This is ok at in the initial ‘enterprise development’ phase, but if it continues as a fundamental tenet of the culture, structure and operational function of the business then significant impediments to necessary evolution and growth are in place. Impediments which often represent barriers which may never effectively be overcome.

Critical Matters

If for example the partners of an accounting firm spend all of their time doing urgent ‘technical work’ there is little time or even ‘mind space’ for the critical matters of developing coherent strategy and delivering it.

Critical matters of generating revenue, critical matters of developing people and other critical matters of evolving the business effectively to accommodate the needs of today’s fast changing environment are left unaddressed (of course this equally applies to engineering, law and other professional services firms, as well as IT, electrical, mechanical and other skilled services businesses).

The result can be a dangerous myopia where blind-spots to external opportunities and threats leads to organisational stagnation. Internally, the danger is a proclivity to look upon change as a threatening monster where any change is piecemeal and marginal, as well as a disengaged, ambivalent culture where staff are under informed, overloaded and uncommitted.

And the chief reason’s that it’s so hard not to get taken into doing too much technical work are:  

1.     The technical skills are what the people at the top of the business have spent their career developing - it’s great to do what you know and what you’re good at; and

2.     The key skills required to develop the business – increasing revenue, building people up, developing efficiencies and creating (and delivering) coherent strategy - were not part of professional technical education or experience. 

It’s not the fault of the Owners – Partners – Directors of these specialised skilled services business that they have not developed these skills; each of these skill sets are specific domains in and of themselves.

Below is my Skills Paradox model – for now just focus on the three ‘core’ circles.

The Way to Nirvana..

Well maybe not ‘Nirvana’ but a sure pathway to a better place. The first place to start in addressing the Skills Paradox is in freeing up some time of working owners in order that they can dedicate some mind space and time to the critical matters of building and evolving the business. 

Simply making the ‘commitment’ to do this is the first step. The next is to examine the existing resources in order to allocate three hours of present weekly technical work load to create the space for important strategic matters.

‘Yes’ this is an uncomfortable notion, ‘yes’ this is even a little scary; but when in the history of mankind has growth come without discomfort? 

More on the Skills Paradox and how to beat it coming soon!

Director and Founder of Formula 1 For Business  and co-author of the internationally published book of the same name, Simon Frayne works with ‘working owners’ of professional and skilled service-based businesses to achieve controlled and sustainable growth.  As well as 'business people' he helps 'sports people' to achieve sustained high performance. He presents keynotes and training on controlled business growth and  ‘sustained high performance’ around Australia and beyond.  Keynote highlight this year include the Australian Project Management Institute WA, HLB Man Judd and Sportspro International.