You are not managing a training function – you are protecting the firm’s future.
The pressures on your role have never been sharper. AI is restructuring delivery models, while Gen Z is reshaping expectations for career progression. Clients are demanding higher standards of thinking for the fees they are willing to pay. Additionally, although your Partners and Managers may be technically brilliant, they were not promoted for their abilities to develop culture, motivate teams, or build lasting client relationships.
The numbers are uncomfortable. Gartner estimates that 55% of all professional development spend produces no measurable change in behaviour, a phenomenon known in the industry as “scrap learning.” This isn’t solely a learning issue; it’s a commercial problem.
The key question that Talent Partners and Managing Partners are increasingly asking is not, “How do we run the next programme?” Instead, it has become: “How do we create a firm where every individual, at every level, performs at their highest potential – and where that performance translates into results that matter to the client?”
Learning on the job and learning from your peers has never been more difficult. With greater time constraints and hybrid working, the learning and development that used to happen by osmosis no longer takes place, and clients expect more because AI can do part of the job. Therefore, you can’t afford not to train your next generation of leaders well.
“We weren’t looking for more training. We were looking for a firm that could work at the level of our senior partners, challenge their thinking, and make the change stick.” – Talent Partner, Global Management Consulting Firm
We understand your challenges because we’ve held senior professional services roles.
Openside is not a generic learning provider. We are a specialist behavioural development firm built exclusively for professional services – consulting, law, accounting, financial services and technology – and we have been since the firm was founded.
What sets us apart is not just our development programmes, but what happens before and after them.
We begin with your strategy, not a course catalogue.
Every Openside engagement starts with a rigorous diagnostic – aligning development scope with your firm’s strategic ambitions, cultural priorities and the specific commercial pressures your people face. We do not propose a programme until we understand what is at stake.
We send experienced practitioners, not trainers.
Our programme leaders have held senior positions inside the professional services firms they now help to develop. When they sit with your Partners and ask challenging questions, they do so with the authority of someone who has navigated the same pressures, politics and client expectations. Your most sceptical Partners will notice the difference.
We measure behavioural change, not satisfaction scores.
Vienna, our proprietary learning technology platform, tracks skills application and links development directly to your firm’s KPIs. For the first time, you can show the board not just that a programme ran – but what changed as a result, and what that change was worth.
We build relationships, not dependencies.
Our longest client relationship spans 25 years. One client celebrated that milestone with us in 2025. These relationships endure because we embed capability rather than create reliance. Our goal is that your people outgrow the need for us – at which point we help you develop the next generation.
What 30+ years of working with the world’s leading firms looks like.
Capability building, from induction to legacy.
Openside works across the full talent lifecycle of a professional services firm – but we are especially valued for the work that matters most to senior buyers: the development of your Partners and the people on the path to become them.
Partner Development
From induction to senior leadership. We develop the mindset, behaviours and commercial instincts your Partners need to represent the brand, embody the culture and secure the firm’s future. Rated 4.9/5 by our October 2025 cohort.
Path-to-Partner
Identifying and accelerating your future leaders before the formal promotion process begins. We reduce the attrition risk at the most critical and expensive transition point in the firm.
Advisory Services
Senior leaders partner with Openside directly – on strategic alignment, culture transformation and the design of your overall development architecture. We work at board level because that is where these conversations need to happen.
Vienna –Learning Technology
Our proprietary platform connects behavioural development to measurable business outcomes. Track skill application, validate ROI, and produce the evidence your board is asking for.
Coaching & Facilitation
Hogan-accredited leadership profiling, executive coaching, and bespoke facilitation for your most important internal conversations. Individual and group formats, virtual or in-person.
Firms that trusted Openside with the work that matters.
Big Four strategy consulting firm
Client Stories
10+ year ongoing relationship. “The most successful and impactful programme in over a decade.” – Talent Partner
Leading global consumer goods firm
Client Stories
€2 million in measurable operational savings attributed to improved analytical decision-making capability.
“Our collaboration with Openside has been more than a transactional relationship. It has been a partnership, a true exercise of Openside as a trusted advisor, an incredibly helpful driver of executive alignment and a key enabler of culture change in our firm.” – Talent Partner, Management Consulting
Every engagement begins with a conversation, not a proposal.
Senior buyers in professional services are not looking for a catalogue. They are looking for a partner who understands their firm’s specific context – its culture, its commercial pressures, its people – and can design something that works for all three.
Here is how an Openside engagement typically develops:
01
Strategic conversation
We speak with you – not a sales team – to understand what is at stake, what has been tried before, and what success would look like for the firm.
02
Diagnostic and design
We map development needs against your firm’s strategic ambitions and design a bespoke programme architecture – including scope, participant levels, delivery format and measurement framework.
03
Programme delivery
Our practitioner-led programme leaders work with your people in the room – virtually or in-person – adapting on the fly to ensure full engagement. No off-the-shelf content. No generic case studies.
04
Embed and measure
Through coached application, eLearning reinforcement and Vienna’s measurement platform, we track whether behaviours actually changed – and what that means for your firm’s performance.
The questions we hear most often from senior buyers.
“Can your facilitators really work at Partner level?”
Our programme leaders are practitioners – they have held senior positions inside the professional services firms they now work with. They have navigated the same political dynamics, the same client pressures and the same questions about legacy that your Partners face. Your most senior and most sceptical people are precisely who we do our best work with.
“How do we know the investment will produce measurable results?”
This is the right question – and the one most providers cannot answer. Our average relevance-to-role score is 92%, against an industry benchmark of 45%. More importantly, Vienna – our proprietary platform – connects learning directly to your KPIs, so you can produce evidence of behavioural change, not just satisfaction data. We will agree a measurement framework before a programme begins, so success is defined in your terms, not ours.
“We have tried external development providers before and it didn’t stick.”
We understand the scepticism – and it is well-founded. Most programmes fail not because the content was poor, but because they were not designed around the firm’s actual context, and nothing happened after the event. Other programmes fail because the content is too theoretical, whereas our programme leaders have the scars and the ‘war stories’ to translate the knowledge into real-world application. Our approach – beginning with strategic alignment, using experienced professional services leaders, and reinforced through coaching and technology – is specifically designed to address the reasons development spend typically produces no lasting change.
“What is the typical scale and duration of an engagement?”
No two Openside programmes are the same, because no two firms are. We have delivered single-cohort partner days and 13-year capability partnerships. What we can tell you is that our engagements begin with a diagnostic conversation – and we will not recommend a scope until we understand what the firm actually needs. We work across 37 countries and in multiple languages, face-to-face and virtually.
How we think about the challenges you are navigating.
We publish Points of View on the issues shaping professional services – AI and the future of the analyst, burnout and resilience, skills-based progression and the future of the Partner model. These are not marketing content. They are the perspectives that inform how we design our work.
If the development of your people is a strategic priority, this is the conversation worth having.
We do not send proposals to inboxes. We have a conversation first – to understand your firm’s context, your priorities and whether Openside is the right fit. If we are, we will tell you exactly what we would recommend and why.
If we are not, we will tell you that too.
Points of View
The grunt work nobody wanted to do was secretly the work that built every great professional.
report
Our research report comparing internal and external roles, and what the shifts mean for firms.
