The essentials
- A United Kingdom professional services firm with several offices, a people lead structure separate from project delivery, and consultants who work on a series of client engagements through the year.
- Evidence at the end of the engagement, not the end of the year.
- Continuous feedback is the change that matters most.
In a professional services firm the work is the engagement, and the person who saw it was the project lead. By the time the review comes round, that lead has finished three other projects and the detail has gone. This is how one firm runs performance review in New Dynamics.
The firm has asked us not to be named. We publish a customer's name, and the numbers behind a story, only once they have approved both in writing.
The organisation
A United Kingdom professional services firm with several offices, a people lead structure separate from project delivery, and consultants who work on a series of client engagements through the year. Most people are reviewed by someone who has never worked with them directly.
Before New Dynamics the firm ran a careful process on documents. The weakness was timing: project feedback was requested at the end of the year, about work finished eleven months earlier.
What the process had to handle
Evidence at the end of the engagement, not the end of the year. This is the whole problem. Feedback gathered when a project closes is specific. The same request in December produces a paragraph of generalities.
Two roles, clearly separated. A people lead owns development and the career conversation. A project lead describes the delivery. Confusing the two produces a review that is neither.
A busy quarter will always win. Any process that depends on people finding time in a client crunch will not complete. Reminders have to do the work.
Development that is actually about progression. In this sector people want to know what the next grade requires and whether they are close to it.
The process they run
Continuous feedback is the change that matters most. A project lead records a short, specific view at the close of an engagement, while the detail is still there. By review season the evidence already exists.
Multi-manager reviews keep the people lead and the project leads in separate, defined roles, with each contribution attributed, so the development conversation is informed by delivery rather than replaced by it.
Goals and OKRs carry objectives that span engagements, including the development goals that decide progression, and stay open as the client portfolio changes.
Workflows define the stages, participants and reminders, and run the end of engagement request automatically rather than relying on someone remembering.
Recognition records the internal contribution that no client ever sees: the proposal written over a weekend, the junior who was properly coached, the methodology somebody finally wrote down.
Org charts hold the people lead structure and the project relationships side by side.
The cycle through the year
Start of the year. Objectives agreed with the people lead, including the development goals tied to the next grade.
At each engagement close. The project lead records a short, specific view. This is the single most important step in the cycle.
Mid-year. A development conversation with the people lead, built from the feedback already recorded.
Year end. The review, with every engagement of the year represented and each contribution attributed.
Calibration and after. A consistent view across the grade, then development actions carried forward as goals.
What is measured
- The proportion of engagements with feedback recorded at close, which predicts the quality of every review that follows.
- Completion by office, grade and stage.
- Preparation time for people leads, which in this firm is time that would otherwise be chargeable.
Frequently asked questions
When should project feedback be collected?
At the close of the engagement. Feedback requested months later is vaguer, kinder and less useful, and it puts the burden of recollection on someone who has moved on to other clients.
How do you separate the people lead and the project lead?
Give them different questions and a defined contribution each. The project lead describes what happened on the work. The people lead owns development, the career conversation and the overall assessment.
Does this track utilisation or chargeable hours?
No. Those stay in your practice management or finance system. New Dynamics holds goals, feedback, recognition, reviews and onboarding, and the review can refer to figures held elsewhere.
How do you keep a cycle running through a busy quarter?
Move the effort away from review season. If the evidence is recorded as the work closes, the remaining task is a conversation rather than an act of reconstruction, and reminders handle the rest.
Talk to us about your engagement cycle
Bring your review form, your grade framework and the way your people lead structure works. We will work through how the cycle would run around client work.
Turn the guidance into your next conversation.
Choose one action from this story, agree who owns it and set a date to review what changed. To explore how your process could work in New Dynamics, bring your current workflow to a demonstration.
