Highlights
Queensland Law Society (QLS) is the peak professional body for Queensland’s legal practitioners. With more than 7,500 members, QLS assists legal practitioners to improve their services and monitor their practices to ensure required standards are met.QLS also assists the public through liaising with government bodies and providing access to legal resources.

BDO Kendalls was initially engaged by QLS to perform an audit of their member records department. Among the recommendations to QLS was the need for a whole of business strategic plan.

The approach taken by BDO Kendalls was to inform the QLS Senior Management Team and Council about organisation alignment: to connect strategy to growing the value QLS delivers to its membership.

The challenge area
QLS sought the following from BDO Kendalls:

• assistance with identifying change within QLS to increase the value QLS delivers to its membership.
• a concise strategic plan that identified four year and one year goals, and that provided a framework to move forward and implement immediate strategic projects for QLS to invest in; and
• a process that was both consultative and collaborative across the Senior Management Team and Council, satisfying the council’s responsibility for setting the Society’s strategic plan and performance indicators.

How we helped 
As a membership body, QLS has a very clear reason for being: to add value to its members. BDO Kendalls worked with QLS using balanced scorecard methods to identify how it should align its structure, people, processes and systems to increase and deliver value to its membership.

Specifically this was achieved by:

• Education: BDO Kendalls conducted an initial education session with the Senior Management and Council members on the purpose, approach and outcomes of strategic planning.
• Information gathering: BDO Kendalls conducted individual interviews with Peter Carne - CEO, Megan Mahon - President, and all of the QLS Senior Management Team and Council Members to capture their understanding and thoughts of the Society’s current and longer term status.
• Workshop: BDO Kendalls facilitated a tailored series of workshops with the Senior Management Team and Council members to form the framework of the Society’s whole-of-organisation strategic plan.
• Delivery: BDO Kendalls worked with the Senior Management Team to prioritise identified goals and develop Q1 strategies to focus on in FY08/09.

Client thoughts
Peter Carne, CEO of the Society has attributed the Pulsevo strategic plan to bringing to the Society the focus it needed to make sure the organisation was ‘aligned to serving the members it represents’.Peter launched the plan to his staff at Brisbane’s Jade Buddha bar and has had excellent feedback on the positive impact the planning and outcomes are having for the Society.

For the future
BDO Kendalls continues to work closely with QLS to provide expert implementation assistance across a range of business issues to help the Society move forward to meet its strategic objectives. BDO Kendalls continues to work

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Download - Queensland Law Society