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A tailor-made virtual academy with resources from the world’s top experts, specially selected for law, accountancy and professional service firms. For better quality learning and reduced training spend.
360 Degree Feedback 
Our 360 degree feedback process helps partners and senior professionals pinpoint perceived strengths and areas for development and is an excellent catalyst for performance improvement, either as a one-off or as part of an ongoing performance management process.
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Phil is a member of the Winning Firm Alliance a group of leaders in their respective fields who share a passion for bringing about positive change in professional service firms.
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 Mark Sanborne has an interesting blog post about heeding wisdom in which he reminds us of 7 levels or stages that people go through in learning and changing behaviour:
- We don’t know (we are ignorant).
- We know but don’t believe (we don’t think a particular truth applies to us or our situation).
- We know and believe but still don’t do it ( we lack conviction because it’s difficult, inconvenient, or unnecessary).
- We know and believe, and we would if we could (we lack the skills to do it).
- We know and do it but inconsistently (we get lazy or forgetful or distracted).
- We know and do it consistently (we’ve formed a good behaviour that we consciously cultivate).
- We know and make it second nature (it’s become part of who we are, a good habit).
I find that when I am training partners and professionals in skills such as leadership, communication and business development, I rarely need to start from stage 1. Usually they know what they should be doing.
For example, when it comes to giving constructive feedback to staff, most professionals know they should do it (ie they have got past stage 1) but relatively very few have made it through to stage 7. Many get stuck at stage 3. If they ever get past that, stage 4 isn’t much of a problem but stage 5 can become a sticking point.
Whenever we are trying to create behavioural change, I think Mark’s 7 stages are a useful guide to help in bringing about change.
Those in positions of leadership within professional service firms serve two masters – their clients and their people. Both are essential for a firm to exist and both must be kept happy for the firm to thrive.
Client Relationship Management has taken hold as a process to help ensure that firms keep their valued clients happy. CRM processes and principles help to ensure that the needs of clients are identified and that the firm positions itself to meet and exceed them. It is, of course, not an altruistic approach. CRM benefits the firm but it does so by placing the emphasis firmly on building strong relationships with clients.
HRM, on the other hand, stands for Human Resource Management (rather than Human Relationship Management) and there is a direct emphasis on squeezing value from those resources for the benefit of the firm (rather than indirectly by meeting and exceeding people’s needs and aspirations).
Now, of course, the relationship a firm has with its clients is different from the relationship it has with its staff. However, I suspect firms could benefit by applying some good CRM principles to the people side of the business. Effective but under-used processes such as career mapping and job sculpting would take on much more significance, and feedback through employee opinion surveys and 360 degree feedback would be taken much more seriously.
 It is rare to feel a sense of shock and loss when someone I have never met dies, but Steve Jobs is an exception.
So many times have I quoted him when training, shown videos of him presenting, and used Apple as a stand-out example of best practice.
How would professional services change if an Apple-like firm were led by someone with the vision and courage of Steve Jobs? The new regulatory regime for lawyers – parts of which come into effect today – are supposed to free up the profession to competition and change. Yet without real leadership, of the Steve Jobs kind, little will really change.
 In the same way that firms should find out what their clients want, they have to become better at finding out what their people want too.
When we carry out employee opinion surveys on behalf of professional service firm clients (they really have to be administered by an objective 3rd party if they are to be of value) they tend to indicate that what professional people want is:
- Fulfilling work that gives them a sense of purpose, real responsibility and a feeling that they are making a difference. The opportunity to handle quality work is a key driver for ambitious professionals
- A firm that will help them to succeed, by their definition of success (for example, not all professionals will see partnership as a desirable goal)
- To be rewarded fairly for their contribution – usually it is not the absolute level of reward that matters most, but a sense of fairness in comparison to others within and outside the firm
- To feel good about their work – this is most likely to be influenced by the way they are managed by their immediate supervisors. Good management skills throughout a firm are therefore important
- A work/life balance that reflects their needs and the stage they are at in their lives and their careers.
However, these are all generalities and it would be wrong to make assumptions. It was David Maister who said, “One of the most dangerous sentences in any language is one that begins, ‘What clients want is …’, for no matter how you finish that statement you will be wrong.”
I think the same is true of your people. The only way to find out what your people want is to ask them. Benefits of carrying out a survey include:
- Improving the relationship between partners and staff by showing staff that the firm respects their views
- Uncovering any difficulties which, if left, could grow into major problems that might affect motivation or cause people to leave unnecessarily
- Giving management an insight into the minds of partners and staff, so helping to manage the firm more effectively
- Generating ideas from partners and staff which, when implemented, could lead to greater efficiencies and other business improvements
- Positioning the firm as a forward-thinking employer and helping to attract people.
Asking people for their views also has the advantage of involving them; a crucial element of effecting change in organisations.
 The best form of performance management is self-management. This means that people understand what is expected of them, are committed to achieving it and seek feedback, guidance and support to help them do so.
Performance management systems that remove responsibility from individuals are bound to be less effective. The processes put in place – whether formal or informal – should therefore be designed to encourage self-responsibility.
In addition to financial indicators, it is possible to develop imaginative metrics – a more balanced scorecard – and to measure performance against those metrics for such aspects of performance as:
- Client development (using client service feedback, for example, and measures of the breadth and depth of the relationship a partner or professional develops with clients)
- Marketing and business development (looking not just at new business wins, but at the number and quality of contacts being developed)
- Leadership (using feedback from staff about the way they are led, and measuring group leaders not on their individual achievements but on the success of the group they lead).
What gets measured tends to get done. If firms measure the wrong elements, they are likely to have a wrongly-directed organisation.
Putting systems in place to track performance will help individuals manage their own performance. This kind of feedback is essential to help people perform to their full potential. Without useful feedback, people are likely to carry on doing what they have always done.
 I have long been sceptical about the effectiveness of financial incentives. Now research from MIT shows that for anything other than physical tasks, not only are financial incentives ineffective, they can lead to lower performance. View this presentation from Daniel Pink (superbly animated by RSA).
So if financial incentives do not work, how do you get your people engaged and performing to a high level? Three things:
- A sense of purpose: involve people in doing worthwhile work. (Incidentally, hitting financial targets or contributing to profitability do not constitute a sense of purpose.) I have found that, when facilitating team development programmes, nothing is more effective than engaging a team in discussing their shared sense of purpose.
- Self-direction: give people control over their actions and decisions. I have long believed that so many managers of people could benefit from empowering their people much more and that the best form of performance management is self-management.
- Mastery: encourage and support people in achieving excellence. When we carryout employee opinion surveys this comes up time and again. People want to keep learning and improving themselves (and they usually rate this as more important than financial rewards).
The answer seems to be to pay people enough so that financial reward is no longer an issue and then use these more effective motivators to raise performance.
Good leaders know this but not everyone who manages people is a good leader.
When helping people to learn, should you just tell them the answer or allow them to come up with an answer for themselves?
This blog post by Aman Basanti of the Age of Marketing describes research which shows that people will be more committed to ideas that are their own rather than those offered to them.
Interestingly, Basanti also shows just how easy it can be to reap the benefits of having people think an idea is their own (for example, by simply having them reorganise a group of words or, in the case of adverts, drawing a conclusion from a visual image).
The hit sci-fi movie ‘Inception’ involved a team of master dream thieves carrying out an elaborate scheme involving a dream within a dream within a dream to plant an idea in someone’s head that ‘I should sell my dad’s business’. It might have been just as effective to get him to un-jumble the phrase ‘Should I Business Dad’s My Sell’, though that might not have made such a block-buster movie.
 In another useful post , Jane Hart emphasises that Learning & Development departments can move away from their traditional role of delivering formal learning, towards helping people do their jobs better.
Jane puts forward 5 points to achieve this:
1 – Consider how people are going to use content; People no longer want just-in-case learning, but just-in-time learning; when they need it. Adult learners are becoming increasingly frustrated at being treated as idiots in how they are expected to use online courses.
2 – Focus on performance outcomes – what they will be able to “do” as a result of using the materials (rather than learning outcomes what they will “know” or “understand”).
3 – Keep the materials short and as simple as possible; people want quick answers to their problems.
4 – Ensure resources are readable in mobile devices.
5 – Think in terms of job aids rather than courses!
This makes good sense and it is the approach we have taken in designing Firm Academy which serves up just the information and learning aids that individual users need, when they need it. Tip sheets can be downloaded as a reminder and learning is achieved in short activities that provide a drip feed.
 In a recent blog post , lawyer Gerry Riskin (Amazing Firms, Amazing Practices) tells how one of India’s most sophisticated law firms communicated to new recruits the importance of trying first and only then asking for help. To paraphrase the way the firm communicates this:
‘In the game ‘Angry Birds’ you have to shoot birds at structures (and at a pig) and make points to go to the next level. At each level, you can try any number of times but after 2 attempts (and failures) it asks if you want to connect to the internet and see how it is done. If you view the link, the task suddenly becomes easier (not easy – but significantly easier).
Like angry birds, in Juris Corp too:
- Please try for yourself to get the results – try once try twice but if you don’t get it by then seek help (ego and stubbornness have little place in a knowledge-based industry)
- The reason you must try yourself is because you may come up with a better way of doing something than the internet or ‘online help’ version will show you
- The reason you must take help after a few tries is because you owe the Firm and the Client a quick turnaround (so it is not acceptable that you try and try and try till you succeed)…etc.’
This seems to me like an excellent message to send to new recruits. I often hear stories from lawyers of juniors and trainees who come to them with a constant stream of questions without first trying to find a solution for themselves. In contrast, I also hear of stories of juniors who waste too much time struggling with a problem before asking for help. The Juris Corp policy seems to get this just right (try twice and then seek help).
The other thing I like about this is the use of the Angry Birds metaphor to communicate the policy. Most such policies would lie uncommunicated or at best forgotten in a policy manual. By relating this to the Angry Birds game (even if, like me, you have never played it) makes the message more engaging and more memorable.
 Does your firm operate an up-or-out career policy?
A Yes
B No
C Don’t know.
There is no right answer to this question, but C is the most wrong. It is also the most common.
My old firm Andersen’s definitely operated an up-or-out career policy. If at any point in a career someone was not seen as having the potential to progress to partnership, there was no place for them and they were ‘encouraged’ to move on. The firm was proud of this approach, and everyone was aware of it and knew where they stood. McKinsey has a similar flow-through approach to careers and those who leave often move to, or become, clients of the firm.
Other firms are quite happy to find a place for good professionals who are not able or do not wish to progress to partnership. They are allowed to plateau, given a title that reflects this and, so long as they continue to contribute, everyone is content.
Yet many, and perhaps most, firms fall into neither of these categories. Instead the issue is fudged and no-one really knows where they stand. When asked if they want to progress to partnership, professionals are likely to say that they do, fearful that if they are honest they will be seen as uncommitted or will not be given good quality work. If they then choose to leave, their departure comes as a surprise and causes disruption to the firm. It is the worst of all approaches to careers.
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Mark Sanborne has an interesting blog post about heeding wisdom in which he reminds us of 7 levels or stages that people go through in learning and changing behaviour:
