Over the last several weeks, I’ve found myself in a familiar place with a number of founders we work with and some as members of this community. The plans are done. The year is underway. Teams are executing.
Here is something that happened last week. A prospect jumped on a discovery call with a management consulting firm. Before the call, he typed his problem into ChatGPT. In thirty seconds, he had a strategy framework, three potential root causes, and a recommended action plan. It was not perfect. But it was pretty good. And it was free.
Every firm in the world is trying to make decisions about AI right now.
It feels like progress. New tools. New workflows. Faster output. But underneath the activity is a choice that will matter a lot over the next few years.
I am seeing firms headed down one of two paths. Problem first or tool first.
If Part 1 was “plan via the journey” and Part 2 was “fund the journey,” Part 3 is about putting it all into motion. Planning and budgeting only matter if they lead to results. Execution is where growth happens or stalls.
By January, most firms have their plans and budgets approved. The question now becomes: how do you turn those plans into measurable progress your executive team can see by the end of Q1?
From May through August, most executive teams, whether at brands or professional services firms, are knee-deep in building strategies and budgets for the coming year. But many are using outdated models: departmental budgets created in isolation, growth projections rooted in past performance and plans that treat customer experience as a byproduct rather than a priority.
Most boutique firms don’t lose momentum in March or April.
They lose it in January.
Research from Gartner shows that 67% of annual plans fail by the end of Q1, often because teams enter the new year without clarity or focus. And Harvard Business Review reports that 85% of leadership teams spend less than one hour per month discussing strategy, which means many firms start January reacting, not executing.
For decades, the economic engine of professional services was built on one deceptively simple concept: leverage.
David Maister popularized the term in his classic book Managing the Professional Service Firm. His formula was clear: the more junior professionals a partner could supervise and bill, the greater the profit per partner. The model worked brilliantly for the industrial era of expertise, when value creation depended on human effort.
As boutique firms grow, founders face a familiar tension:
You want to stay close to clients — the very people who built your firm’s reputation — yet you’re pulled into scaling, selling, and systemizing.
For decades, professional services firms have survived, and even thrived, on founder dependency. The founder was the rainmaker, the strategist, the client-saver. Clients bought you. Deals closed because of you. Delivery worked because of you. In Era 1 and Era 2, this model slowed scale but didn’t always kill you. You could grind harder, hire around the edges, and keep going.
In May, I argued that 2026 growth planning has to start journey-first—not budget-first. Map how buyers actually discover, evaluate, and choose you; then align teams and targets to that reality.
One of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever received in professional services:
“Your website is your shop window. Treat it as such.”
Unfortunately, most professional services firms treat their website like an annual checkup. They refresh it reactively—usually when the copyright date at the bottom feels embarrassingly out of date.