Guess when the firm is no longer small enough: we need to find a way where people connect to each other. I don't know how powerful the One Firm philosophy of McKinsey is in actual practice - but for a firm thriving on the intellectual capital of its people, it is most critical that people are - and feel! - connected.
In my mind, one-off home office days are of limited use, esp. if what one wants to share / showcase is also the work done by the case teams. I don't think the new joinees of the family feel the "family touch" to the firm. I might be seeing too much of the family thing, but if you read my farewell mail, you will realize that the biggest sense of association that I have with the firm is that in its people I have found huge variety which I can connect at different levels. It is this association that makes me feel comfortable with them. And hence, planning to watch a cricket match with a partner even after resigning is something I can do with ease. It is very important to build in that sense of comfort for every member of the family. It is very interesting to see how the family evolves. This needs deep thought - and preparation against the same.
As any firm grows bigger, what will start becoming important are processes: processes for people to share information, processes for people to share experience, processes for people to "know" each other. Immediate pain points are becoming obvious. As it grows, processes become stricter as also the norm. I am not saying that having strong processes in place is a bad thing per se. However, what it does is it creates an over-bearing sense of structure and bureaucracy in the system - the very shackles we want to be free from and the ones that take away the sense of being in a family.
Pain points in terms of people not leveraging each other's knowledge / experience are not so obvious now. I, for example, don't know what I can leverage the 2005 cohort (SAs/Cs/PLs) for? What contacts do they bring, what experience do they have, what passions they might have, etc etc. I guess we will never ever know any person fully - but then the system should have enough knowledge that the right person for the right objective is leveraged at the right time. Is there a process that we can develop? Are there forums that we need to define?
I think the big reason firms that are regarded as having a people touch are regarded as thus, is that they have a legacy of being "small". Being small helps the informal networks in the firm grow stronger, which provides a strong support system to all in the company. Hence, when a presenter talks about his company, he can relate to his life in the company where he finds a strong friendly environment. What quickly happens if you don't know what your cohort mate is doing is that you begin to develop a sense of unease with the person and the situation: Is he doing better than me? Am I upto the mark? And since you are anyways not in a social position to talk to him about his successes and failures, you are unable to get answers to your questions. And then comes the feeling of competition which brings with it the touches of aggression and politics. Is that why the BIG firms have the reputes of being aggressive, is something that I can only conjecture.
I think it will be a bad loss for any small firm if this spirit of camaraderie is lost!
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