Bramwell Surveyors: One firm, two structures, two cultures

Structural causes.

• Two structures bolted together, not integrated. Separate ledgers and separate month-ends mean there is no single version of performance, so the centre cannot manage what it cannot see, and both finance teams spend their time reconciling rather than supporting decisions. Support functions were never merged, only co-located.
• Excessive centralisation and escalation. A board approving nearly every fee above 15,000 pounds is doing operational work. Combined with a five-layer chain inherited from the city practice, a client acceptance decision now travels through several hands and a monthly meeting. That is the direct arithmetic behind 3 days becoming 11.
• Loss of autonomy in the regional office. Two layers became five; people who previously decided locally now refer upward. 'Watched but not heard' is an accurate description of a structure where the centre monitors but has no upward channel.

Cultural causes.

• The city practice looks like a role culture: defined jobs, hierarchy, rules, billable hours as the measure of worth. The regional firm looks like a task culture with person-culture elements: multidisciplinary working, autonomy, social ties.
• The regional staff have had their autonomy removed and their informal status eroded, while the city practice's billable-hours metric now measures them on something their work pattern was never designed around. That is a breach of the psychological contract, and a 22% leaver rate among exactly that group is the predictable result.
• What is emerging at the top is a power culture - decisions concentrated around the board - which matches neither legacy culture and satisfies neither group.

The connecting insight. Culture is following structure. Because the centre kept control, the regional firm experienced takeover rather than merger, and behaved accordingly.

Functional (organised by service line, e.g. building surveying, valuation, project management). Advantages: professional depth, consistent technical standards, clear career paths, and a single quality and risk framework - all important in a regulated professional practice. Disadvantages: silos, cross-charging friction, and service lines competing for the same client.

Divisional (organised by geography, city and regional). Advantages: local client focus, clear accountability, faster local decisions, and a good fit where the two markets genuinely differ. Disadvantages: duplicated support functions, sub-scale units at 180 people, and - decisively here - it would institutionalise the very split the chief executive wants to erase.

Recommendation. A functional structure by service line, with a regional management overlay for client and people matters in each office. The services are similar, the clients overlap, and the firm is too small to carry genuine divisions of 90 people each with their own finance and HR. A full matrix should be avoided at this size unless decision rights are written down, because a matrix without clarity is exactly the ambiguity that produced the 11-day approval.

Centralise: one finance function and one ledger with a single month-end; IT; HR policy and grading; quality and risk; professional indemnity and client money; brand.

Decentralise: client acceptance below a stated threshold; fee negotiation within an approved band; staff deployment across service lines within an office; local marketing and community relationships.

Sequencing point. Do not attempt all of this within a year. Merge the ledgers first, because until there is one set of numbers the board cannot delegate by threshold with any confidence that it will see exceptions.

On the board. Raising the threshold is right in principle but dangerous if it is done alone. The board currently sees almost every fee, which means it sees the business by accident. Remove the volume without replacing the information and the board becomes blind, not strategic.

Do all three together:

1. Replace the threshold with a delegated authority matrix that states who may approve what, at what value, and with what referral triggers (new client type, unusual fee basis, high-risk sector).
2. Keep visibility by exception: the board receives a monthly schedule of approvals made under delegation, sampled and reviewed, rather than approving each one.
3. Reserve board time explicitly for strategy, risk, performance against plan and succession. Freed capacity that is not reallocated will simply be refilled with operational items.

On retention, act quickly and visibly. The 22% loss is not a pay problem; it is an autonomy and status problem. Credible steps: restore a local decision forum with real delegated authority; put regional staff on the integration working groups so they shape the new structure rather than receive it; harmonise job titles and grading promptly, since uncertainty over status drives exits faster than the answer itself; and run structured exit interviews now, because the leavers are the best available diagnosis.

Closing judgement for the chief executive. A single structure within the year is achievable for finance, IT, HR policy and grading. It is not achievable for culture, and announcing a deadline for culture will make the retention problem worse.