In this lens, I will share my insights after years of practice on how you, regardless of your career, can focus on passion, people and principles to improve your own professional life and your business practice.
The great advantage today of the Internet is the oppportunity to create dialogues, and not just one-way pontifications. I invite you to join the discussion in my blog, to pose challenging new questions, and suggest emerging topics.
I look forward to continuing our conversation.
David
david@davidmaister.com
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conversations
my discussion with business world thought leaders and innovators
- An Entrepreneurial Journey
- Software services engineer Geoff Considine retraces his career, reflecting on how he built "Maisterisms" into building his own successful firm. Geoff feels these are the most important guidelines that he has learned - often inspired, he says, by my work:
- Be worthy of trust.
- Everyone knows that you are smart - don't try to prove it.
- You are there to help, not to be right.
- Be a concierge - if it needs doing, do it.
- Develop services and products that are worth paying a premium price for.
- Do business as if you were working with a good friend.
- An Innovative Law Firm
- 29-year-old Christopher Marston just launched innovative law firm Exemplar, convincing all new hires (from a recent graduate to a 30-year veteran bank executive) to defer compensation until his experimental model pays off.
If your company competed against an organization with Martson's commitment to client-centricity, what would you worry about? - Setting Knowledge Free: A Conversation with Steve Rubel about Blogging
- Steve Rubel and I discuss blogging best practices, blogosphere culture, and the philosophy of setting knowledge free.
recent popular articles
- Adventures in Modern Marketing
- This article is about some of the lessons I have learned (or relearned) about marketing in an Internet world, through my own recent marketing activities. I hope others will benefit from my experiences at what (for me, at least) feels like the frontier.
Among the topics I will address are:
* Helping busy people search
* Online tracking systems
* Nurturing the core community
* Helping people help you
* Gathering input
* Becoming a more valuable resource
* Word of mouth
* Website navigation
* Serving multiple constituencies
* Participating in the broader marketplace
* The role of traditional off-line marketing - Why (Most) Training is Useless
- For much of my professional life, I have been paid to do training. It has been very well received in the sense that I have (usually) obtained high ratings, and clients not only paid their bills, but invited me back to do it again and again.
However, I now believe that the majority of business training, by me and by everyone else, is a waste of money and time, because only a microscopic fraction of training is ever put into practice and the hoped-for benefits obtained. - Strategy Means Saying "No"
- This article explores the difficulty that most businesses have in sticking with their strategy in the face of opportunities for off-strategy revenues. I conclude that this inability to focus creates a credibility problem that must be addressed by the top executives of the firm.
David Maister's Business Masterclass
my free podcast masterclass on business series
Are you a CEO or Managing Partner who wants to stay in touch with current business thinking? A junior professional who wants to fast-track your career? Leading business author, global consultant and former Harvard Business School professor, David Maister presents a career-spanning summary of cutting-edge business theory on managing, strategy, client relations and careers in this series of advanced seminars.
Building on the foundations laid by his previous podcasts, Lessons I've Learned, David Maister's Business Masterclass podcast shows how you can apply professional business principles to be more effective in your professional life and business practice.
You can listen to the seminars with the player on the Business Masterclass podcastpage, where you will also find shownotes and related resources. You can also subscribe with to our RSS feed, or through iTunes, Yahoo Podcasts or Podcast Alley.
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- David Maister Business Guru
- An interview with Business Management Assistant Editor Jonathan Edgely about how to correct past mistakes in choosing managers, and choose and retain great managers moving forward.
- The Art of Blogging
- An interview with Dutch management consultant Coert Visser on how blogging helps us make progress and increase productivity.
- Are Business Schools Ready for Romance?
- An interview with Professor Milenko Gudic of the Central and Eastern European Management Development Association (CEEMAN), in which I am pessimistic both about the ability of business school professors to act in unison to develop strategies for their institutions, and about their true desires to engage with real-world business.
Passion, People, and Principles
latest posts from my blog
I hope you'll visit my blog and join in the discussion of Passion, People and Principles.
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Managing The Professional Service Firm
This is a collection of 32 articles on a wide variety of managerial subjects written over the previous ten years. It is still used as a general textbook or outline guide to the broad topic of managing firms, although it also includes some personal topics like growing your career and how clients choose.
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TRUE PROFESSIONALISM : The Courage to Care About Your People, Your Clients, and Your Career
This second collection of my articles (21 of them, written between 1993 and 1997) tries to be a "call to arms". Its themes are captured in the subtitle: "The courage to care about your clients, your people and your career".
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The Trusted Advisor
Written with Charles Green and Rob Galford, this book is alone among my books in that it is written for the average practitioner, not just for the manager. Anyone who serves a client must wrestle with the issues it explores: what (beyond technical expertise) it takes to serve a client well.
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Practice What You Preach : What Managers Must Do to Create a High Achievement Culture
This is two books in one. One half of the book presents the results of a rigorous statistical analysis of 130 professional businesses showing that the firms that make money are those that best excite their people. The other half is 9 in-depth profiles of superstar managers who have created these high-achievement cultures.
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First Among Equals: How to Manage a Group of Professionals
Coauthored with Patrick McKenna, this book is designed to cover a broad variety of very practical subjects in being a manager, at any level in the firm but particularly in running an operating group. It provides both insight and practical suggestions on how to be an effective coach to one's peers.
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contact me
David Maister
90 Commonwealth Ave
Boston, MA 02116
david@davidmaister.com
Telephone: (617) 262-5968
Fax: (617) 262-7907
