David Maister - Professional Business, Professional Life

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David Maister - Professional Business, Professional Life

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Until his retirement in 2009, David Maister was widely acknowledged as one of the world’s leading authorities on the management of professional service firms (such as law, accounting, and consulting firms, and companies providing engineering, advertising and executive search services).

For three decades he advised the top firms in these professions, around the world, covering all strategic and managerial issues.

He is the author of the bestselling books:

  • Managing the Professional Service Firm (1993),
  • True Professionalism (1997),
  • The Trusted Advisor (2000),
  • Practice What You Preach (2001),
  • First Among Equals (2002),
  • Strategy and the Fat Smoker (2008).

His books have been translated into Arabic, Chinese, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, French, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Spanish and Turkish.

The Trusted Advisor, in particular, continues to be used extensively and remains an Amazon.com bestseller. Managing the Professional Service Firm is still used by many firms as a guide to their operations, and by universities as the core textbook for courses in this area.

Prior to launching his consulting career, David was a professor at the Harvard Business School for over 6 years, teaching courses in the management of service businesses. He had also previously taught at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, and the Polytechnic of the South Bank, London England.

A native of Great Britain, he received his Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics, economics and Statistics from the University of Birmingham (England), his Master’s in Operations Research from the London School of Economics, and his doctorate in Logistics and Transportation from the Harvard Business School.

(Prior to his specialty in professional firms, wrote or co-wrote seven other books, all now out of print, on a variety of transportation topics, including three books on how to run a trucking company and one on how to run an airline.)

Since his retirement, David has taught course at Beacon Hill Seminars on American and English Humo(u)r, his life-long hobby. These courses are among the most popularly attended at Beacon Hill seminars.

Together with his wife, Kathy, David’s passion is theater. After many years of world travel which allowed regular attendance at theater in London and New York, Kathy and David have now sworn off getting on airplanes, and apart from enjoying Boston theater, they make regular pilgrimages each summer to the Stratford, Ontario Shakespeare festival and the Niagara-on-the-Lake Shaw festival.

David belongs to a number of book-reading and play-reading discussion groups, and is an active bridge player. Until recently, he served on the Board at the Lyric Stage Theater and the Boston Conservatory.

Kathy’s passion is for teaching people how to cook. In 2006 she launched a pioneering website, startcooking.com, which includes more than 60 videos and 350 photo-tutorials, aimed at teaching adult beginners the basics of cooking. It receives more than 1.2 million visitors per month.

David’s articles, podcasts, videocasts and blog archive can be found at www.davidmaister.com.