The Examiners: Carol Flaton on Professional and Personal Support

What factors can make restructuring a difficult field in which to balance work and family obligations, and what should professional firms be doing to help employees? 

Any client service or advisory business is primarily driven by the client’s expectations about transaction pace, responsiveness and ultimate outcome. Service providers are subject to those expectations regardless of their own competing time obligations—personal or professional. In restructuring land, the often unforeseen but urgent deadlines exacerbate the challenge of balancing “work-life” demands. Can professional firms help employees manage those competing demands? As it relates to the primary cause—averting a looming operational or financial crisis—probably no. The uncertainty of crisis is why the professional firms have been hired in the first place.

External factors aside, a restructuring firm can support its staff by ensuring that it is managed to the benefit of the entire practice. Making sure that practice leaders and senior staff communicate and share information laterally and vertically, so all team members have the same visibility as to expectations, outcomes and timing, provides a good foundation. Properly allocating resources across the firm’s mandates and managing to real deadlines can also help. On the home front, employees must have a reliable “infrastructure” of support that can readily accommodate the parade of crises that can unfold in any restructuring.

Most restructuring firms have a cultural identity that has been shaped by their actions and leadership over time. Individuals interested in working in restructuring should understand the key differences among firms to make sure they choose the best fit.

Carol Flaton is a managing director of Zolfo Cooper, a global financial advisory and interim management firm, and is based in New York.