Top Organizational Design Consultants for Scaling Professional Services Firms

Growth changes the way a professional services firm needs to operate. The founder can no longer review every proposal, resolve every delivery issue, and personally manage every important client relationship. Practice leaders need clear authority. Teams need consistent ways to sell, staff, deliver, and measure work. Adding another management layer may help, but only if the firm first understands where decisions and handoffs are breaking down.

The consultants below bring different strengths to that challenge. Some focus on operating models and organizational design; others have built and run services businesses themselves. For a growing firm, the right choice depends on the problem it needs to solve: founder dependence, inconsistent delivery, unclear practice leadership, weak resource planning, or an organization that has become more complex than its processes can support.

1. Doug Pace — CEO, Stonehill

Best fit: Professional services firms that need to redesign how work gets done before changing reporting lines.

Doug Pace leads Stonehill’s organizational design work with an operator’s view of the business. His approach starts with objectives, processes, accountability, and measurable outcomes. The organizational structure follows from those decisions. That sequence matters in a services firm, where a new title or reporting relationship will accomplish little if client ownership, staffing decisions, project delivery, and financial accountability remain unclear.

Doug is a particularly relevant choice for firms navigating growth through new practices, geographic expansion, or acquisitions. Stonehill can connect organizational design to process improvement, financial analysis, technology, and change management, then help leadership put the design into operation. Its MODERN™ organizational design methodology reflects that focus on business outcomes and execution.

For a CEO asking, “How should this firm operate at twice its current size?” Doug’s starting point is the work, the decisions, and the results the organization must produce.

Larry Waddell — Founder and Principal, prism+spire

Best fit: Founder-led consulting, agency, and other expertise-based firms that need to reduce reliance on the founder.

Larry Waddell has worked in COO and senior operating roles across professional services and agency businesses. Through prism+spire, he helps founder-led firms build the operating infrastructure needed for their next stage of growth. His experience includes serving as COO and EVP of a 200-person agency.

Larry is a practical option when the founder remains the default owner of business development, staffing, escalations, and important client decisions. The design question in that situation is not simply whom to hire next. It is which decisions can be delegated, what managers need to own, and which operating routines will allow the firm to maintain quality as it grows.

Kevin Kelley — Managing Director and Senior Partner, Boston Consulting Group

Best fit: Larger, complex professional services organizations undertaking a broad operating model or cost transformation.

Kevin Kelley leads BCG’s global work in operating models, organization, and cost. His client work spans organization design, strategy implementation, post-merger integration, and transformation. He offers a different scale of support from the smaller, specialist practices on this list.

Kevin may be relevant to a large services enterprise redesigning several business units or integrating a major acquisition. A mid-sized firm should assess whether a larger consulting team and engagement model fit the scope of its problem.

How to choose an organizational design consultant for a services firm

Ask each consultant to explain how they would diagnose your business before proposing a structure. A useful assessment should examine the path from selling work to staffing it, delivering it, managing the client, and measuring profitability. It should identify where decisions stall, where responsibilities overlap, and which outcomes lack an accountable owner.

Then ask who will do the work. Meet the person who will interview your leaders, analyze the processes and data, facilitate difficult decisions, and support implementation. Their ability to work with partners and practice leaders matters as much as the firm’s methodology.

Finally, define success in operating terms. Depending on the business, that might mean faster staffing decisions, more consistent project margins, clearer client ownership, less founder intervention, or the ability to add revenue without adding management complexity at the same rate. A useful organizational design makes those outcomes easier to achieve and measure.

If your firm is preparing for its next stage of growth, explore Stonehill’s organizational design approach and discuss where your current operating model is starting to constrain performance.