Collaboration in the professional services matrix

Client Talk
3 days ago
5 min read

Collaboration may feel like a modern buzzword, but it’s far from new. What is new is the renewed focus on it within professional services, where recent approaches and market pressures have pushed it back into the spotlight. This article explores whether professional services firms are truly designed for collaboration, or whether the matrix structures they rely on actually create a paradox between their intended purpose (to unlock expertise quickly) and the friction they often introduce.

Smart collaboration

Heidi Gardner’s now decade-old research into professional services firms showed that multidisciplinary collaboration is essential for professional services firms. She showed how collaboration drives innovation, profitability and talent retention. For her, Smart Collaboration is needed to break down silos and combine expertise. Smart Collaboration is the disciplined act of bringing diverse experts together to solve problems no single specialist can solve. It is not “more meetings.” It is choosing the right minds for the right moments, then removing the barriers so they can create value together.

Research done almost a decade later reinforced, and importantly extended, the principles first established in Gardner’s Smart Collaboration. It shows how the collaborative behaviours espoused by Gardner must be proactively embedded into business development itself. In a recent Harvard Business Review article summarising research conducted by DCM Insights, we heard that partners who excel (today’s true rainmakers) share three behaviours: they commit to regular business development, connect widely across clients and colleagues, and create value by collaborating early and often.

What this tells us is that collaboration has evolved from being something that happens within delivery teams to becoming a defining capability in the go‑to‑market model. In other words, rainmakers are no longer just experts who collaborate when a matter requires it, they use collaboration as the engine of growth, opportunity spotting, and client expansion. This evolution shows that embedding collaborative, proactive business development is not just culturally desirable; it can materially increase revenue, broaden client relationships, and differentiate firms in an increasingly competitive and less loyal market.

External research consistently highlights the commercial upside of collaboration: firms that collaborate more effectively see higher billable hours, greater volumes of work, and increased originations, alongside cultural benefits such as stronger engagement and greater innovation. And when we speak to clients, we hear the same message echoed back, they actively prefer multidisciplinary practices, because in theory these teams should unlock broader insight for them.

So far, so good. But this is where the paradox sits for professional services firms: the very matrix structure that makes multidisciplinary practices possible, and, in theory, positions firms to deliver broader, more integrated value, is the same structure that can complicate collaboration.

Why matrix structures complicate collaboration

Matrix management introduces dual (and sometimes multiple) reporting lines and shared accountability, and without deliberate design and the right skills, it can slow decision‑making and blur responsibility. This isn’t a new insight. As far back as 1978, when matrix structures were still considered innovative, GE described the model as a “complex, difficult, and sometimes frustrating form of organization to live with.” The challenges identified back then still resonate today:

A drift toward anarchy: a formless state in which people are unsure who their “real” boss is.
Power struggles: competing priorities across dimensions of the matrix.
Mistaking the matrix for consensus: assuming everyone must decide everything together.
Navel‑gazing: managers becoming so internally focused that they lose sight of the marketplace.

Fast‑forward to 2025, another article, more research, and many of these issues continue to surface, especially in professional services firms, where an additional tension emerges:

Silo pull: partners optimise for their own P&L, origination credit, practice group, or office rather than the client’s full need, a dynamic intensified in partnership models where autonomy, book‑building, and personal reputation are deeply ingrained.

The result is a structural paradox. The matrix is designed to enable collaboration, yet it can just as easily inhibit it. Collaboration does pay, but only when firms intentionally design for it and actively develop the behaviours and systems that make it possible.

Making collaboration work in practice

If the matrix creates friction and the research confirms that collaboration pays, the real question becomes: how do you make collaboration stick in the day‑to‑day reality of a professional services firm?

The answer lies in shifting collaboration from an aspirational value to a practised capability. Structures and incentives matter, but they only take you so far. What truly closes the gap is developing the soft skills, behavioural habits, and team disciplines that allow partners and fee‑earners to operate collaboratively inside a complex matrix.

At its heart, collaboration is a human performance challenge. Partners must learn to navigate ambiguity, create clarity where none exists, hold productive tension across practices, and build trust fast in ever‑shifting teams. These aren’t technical skills; they are relational, conversational, and behavioural. They include the ability to frame problems collaboratively, listen across boundaries, give and receive challenge without defensiveness, and create psychological safety so that teams can disagree productively and learn in the open. In other words, matrix failures are often soft‑skills failures, not structural ones.

That’s why firms that collaborate well tend to invest not just in systems and incentives but also in developing their people. Collaboration in a matrix depends on behaviours such as shared goal‑setting, mutual accountability, and the ability to engage in constructive conflict; skills that teams can intentionally cultivate through practice. Similarly, partners and senior fee‑earners often need support to build the soft skills that enable them to work fluidly across service lines, spot opportunities together, and engage clients proactively. When firms focus on strengthening these human capabilities, collaboration stops being something that occurs only in ideal conditions and instead becomes a repeatable, scalable way of working that supports both client value and commercial growth.