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BUSINESS Business Profiles
To increase its success, the team at BKD changed its business model. Senior partners agreed to share their clients with younger members to help train the upcoming team members.
To spur growth, one young accountant made a bold move that paid off. Today, that move still serves as the backbone of the BKD business model. BY TOM CARLSON
In the 1960s, much like today, most professional firms of lawyers and accountants had a standard business model. The senior partners — the rainmakers—had the client connections and made most of the money, and the younger partners did most of the work. In company parlance, there were finders and grinders. But this model bears the seeds of its own destruction. Senior partners, having worked their way to the top, want to slow down. Their strength is their client base, and they tend to guard those contacts jealously. Then there is the perspective of the young associates and, in particular, the hard-working ones. They work 55-hour-plus weeks but will only continue at that pace if they believe there will be a payoff. If those prospects dim, the best talent leaves
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the centennial
the firm for greener pastures. The result: Many firms end up with worn-out senior partners and associates who are only B-Team contributors. Nearly 60 years ago, Baird Kurtz & Dobson (now BKD LLP) was a regional accounting firm with many of these issues. The eight-partner firm generated less than $500,000 annually. Today, BKD LLP is the 13th-largest accounting firm in the US, and has annual billings of more than $600 million with 40 offices in 18 states. The four-story office building at the corner of Saint Louis Street and John Q. Hammons Parkway houses the Springfield office and the national headquarters. The firm has about 2,700 partners and employees; 250 client-service personnel based locally and another 100 located in its national headquarters. CEO, Ted Dickman, commutes to Springfield from Indianapolis.
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[Ambler] truly believed that if you put two and two together, you could make five.” —Bill Kirkman
Photo courtesy BKD, LLP
THE BKD WAY
