Professional service firms can offer their most senior people something that is increasingly rare in organisational life: substantial autonomy. But autonomy comes with obligations.

This was one of the themes I explored recently with Bruce Daisley on his Eat Sleep Work Repeat podcast. We talked about the peculiar politics of professional firms, collective leadership, and what it takes to sustain high performance in organisations populated by powerful individuals.

Autonomy without responsibility

At the heart of many professional firms is a tension between individual freedom and collective responsibility. Senior professionals may control important client relationships, generate substantial revenues, and expect considerable freedom over how they work. Yet someone still has to take responsibility for the organisation they collectively own and supposedly lead.

As I put it to Bruce:

“Senior professionals often want the power without the responsibility. But, if you want autonomy, you have to recognise that someone has to be responsible for the collective success of this firm.”

Generating millions in fees does not remove that responsibility. Senior professionals also need to contribute to the health and longevity of the organisation itself. Understandably, some high-performing professionals respond: What, you mean I have to attend committee meetings as well? To which my answer is:

“Well, yes, so we've got to fix those committee meetings to make sure they're worth attending.”

When collegiality becomes complacency

But there is another price to be paid for belonging to a successful professional firm. We tend to assume that a strong culture is characterised by belonging, pride, and collegiality. And certainly all of these matter but, as I explain in the podcast, they can also be a clue to organisational decline:

“You can have an incredible sense of belonging, pride in the firm, a sense of togetherness, and watch yourself slip slowly down the league tables due to complacency. Meanwhile far hungrier, more aggressive, and frankly, more unpleasant organisations are eating your lunch.”

The uncomfortable challenge is to sustain collegiality without allowing it to become complacency. Professionals need to believe that theirs is “a club worth being a member of” and that they are fortunate to belong to it. But membership of an elite organisation necessarily involves some insecurity. Standards need to remain high, and continued membership cannot become an entitlement. Otherwise, the organisation risks just becoming just “a bunch of folks hanging out”.

Competition therefore matters, but so does the form it takes. When a colleague performs exceptionally well, the response should be: How do I do as well as that? How do I do better? It should never become: How do I succeed at the expense of my colleague? That is when healthy competition descends into bad politics.

Leadership is a collective responsibility

These tensions ultimately bring us back to leadership. Collective leadership can be slow, political,   and frustrating. At times, as I say in the interview, it can look like “a big fat mess”. Yet the alternative is not   necessarily a strong individual leader who takes responsibility for sorting everything out. I have seen leaders almost broken by the burden of trying to rescue their organisations single-handedly.

By taking too much responsibility, leaders can inadvertently allow everyone else to take too little. In extreme cases, they risk “infantilising” their organisation, allowing powerful colleagues to shirk their own responsibilities as leaders.

Discover more

The tensions we discussed are ones I encounter repeatedly, both in my research and in my work with the leaders of professional organisations. Understanding why they arise is important, but helping professionals recognise their own contribution to these problems, and take collective responsibility for addressing them, is where the real challenge lies.

You can explore more of my research on collective leadership and leadership and culture, including how I draw on this research in my advisory work.

You can listen to my conversation with Bruce Daisley on Eat Sleep Work Repeat, or hear more conversations about the realities of leading professional organisations on my own podcast series, Leading Professionals.