Editor's Note: Losing Their Religion

There are two numbers that have long separated the big guns from the small ones inside the clubbish world known as partnership. They are the numeric figures that best answer the questions: How much business do you bring in? And, How chargeable are you?
David Maister, author of Managing the Professional Services Firm, today insists that the accountability of partners in most firms has now been reduced to these two numbers. Those partners who demonstrate a keen ability for team-building or supervising consultants, but a limited propensity for bringing in business, should be advised to find another career — the fruits of partnership belong elsewhere, explains Maister, in an exclusive Consulting interview.
Just as astonishing, perhaps, is Maister's charge that up to 70 percent of the partners at Big Five and other large consultancies today are "cruising," or coasting along, with little ambition to advance their career beyond the plateau they now dwell upon.
But what exactly is that plateau? The rewards of partnership are not what they used to be, and neither are most firms' accountability measures. Just what's been short-circuiting partnerships inside the consulting sector has everything to do with the talent wars, says Maister — consultants are abandoning their partner tracks for shorter paths to future riches, he explains.
As a result, some of the consulting sector's largest partnerships have begun to adopt more of the motivational mechanisms used by corporations to reward their people and make them more accountable. And nowhere is this more visible than inside the offices of KPMG Consulting and Ernst & Young, where the conversions from partnerships to publicly held corporations are now underway and supplying more than enough timely text for this issue's cover story entitled, "Losing Their Religion."