By Di Burton, FCIPR, FCIPD, founder and managing director of Cicada Communications

At a time when many of the world’s best known corporations – from Lehman Brothers to Woolworths – are succumbing to the global financial crisis, it was somewhat of a relief to find that Harvard, the first and oldest corporation in North America, remains as strong as ever.

It is consistently ranked number one in international college and university rankings, and has the largest financial endowment of any non-profit organisation except for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, standing at $38.7 billion as of 2008.

So it is safe to say that there is no better academic institution in the world where I could add to my personal body of knowledge and training, and as I settled in to my flight to New England, I wasted no time in making a start on the masses of background reading that needed to be done before my seven-day course began in earnest.

I was there to learn more about ‘Leading Professional Services Firms’, secure in my belief that the wealth of information I would be accumulating over the coming days would be just as relevant to me as it would to my fellow delegates. Those in attendance had travelled from around the world and held all manner of posts in organisations which differed in size, sector and discipline.

So, most importantly - what did I take from the course, and was it of value to me and the way I operate a communications consultancy?

It’s impossible to distill what I have learned into just a few sentences, but suffice to say that all professional services firms suffer from the same issues relating to managing their business.

A number of things struck a chord with me:

 Leaders are good producers, and we tend to spend too much time producing at the expense of managing. Leaders need to frame an agenda, not simply create ‘to do’ lists.

 All ambiguous leader behaviour is interpreted negatively.

 The best professional services firms are those which align their strategy, organisation, culture and leadership. The key to alignment is to be crystal clear. 

 Only hire the best people – you are who you recruit. But be careful of hiring stars – rather grow them.

When it came to the much talked about global downturn, it was comforting to know that even the world’s brightest financial minds do not have any idea how it’s all going to end.

We heard from Robert Kaplan, former deputy chair of Goldman Sachs, who predicted that there will be a further decline in the Dow Jones, and that the US would get a $700bn stimulus in January, which is likely to be spent on welfare reform and infrastructure.

He also predicted massive downsizing in the financial services industry, with between 20%-50% of hedge funds disappearing in the next six to 12 months.

He emphasised the fragility of the USA’s economic infrastructure, and stressed the pressing need to stimulate demand – which is no mean feat since the US consumer is massively overleveraged.

It wasn’t all doom and gloom though – growth sectors worldwide include pharmaceuticals, health, public services and energy.

Encouragingly, many professional services firms are adapting to the crisis by moving away from commodity work to knowledge work such as CSR and sustainability consultancy.

One of the most obvious – but often overlooked – points was that in overcrowded, struggling markets, differentiation remains key.

I came away with masses of information and principles that I can directly apply to my consultancy, and I will soon be sitting down with my senior team to discuss the way forward around the three key themes of Leadership, Alignment, and Recruitment and Compensation.

Unsurprisingly, the ‘Obama effect’ didn’t pass us by – the President-elect changed the face of political campaigning through his use of new technologies, especially SMS. He is the Internet President. And apparently there is so much hope in the US now that when Americans get to Heathrow, they don’t have to pretend to be Canadian anymore!