10 lost years? Isn’t that what the politicians say lies ahead of us in the UK? Maybe so – and we all hope they’re wrong, even if expectation says otherwise – but that’s not the decade I had in mind.

I am thinking of the first decade of this century which saw boom times for many professional service firms, especially law firms.

With revenues rising steeply, and profits hitting unprecedented highs, at first sight it may be hard to identify what was lost. That is precisely the point.

In those heady times, far too many firms failed to implement new management approaches, working methods and systems and in so doing failed to recognise that the world around them – the very world that was generating all the fees and profits – was moving on. As a result, many firms entered (‘hit’ might be a better word) the recession ill-equipped in terms of management, processes and systems to face the challenges. That is evidenced in many ways, most notably through declining profit margins in published LLP accounts, deteriorating working capital positions and in the way weaknesses in internal controls have led to unprecedented levels of fraud within firms, as identified by the Solicitors Regulation Authority.

With the prospect of the economic environment continuing to be very uncertain, with the situation changing month-by-month, firms now face a distressing environment for at least another two years, and then the challenges of recovery. I say challenges because previous recessions demonstrated beyond doubt that more businesses fail in the recovery phase than in the downturn. The reason is simple - they run out of cash.

Equipped with a new realism, firms which did not address their management, processes and systems needs during the last decade must urgently prioritise those tasks now, to ensure that their business is fit for the future.

We can help with that and want to help.