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Phil's Weblog: People & Performance in Professional Service Firms
What will the law firm of the future look like? Eversheds has published an interesting report 21st Century Law Firm (you will need to register) based on interviews with 50 law firm partners and 50 clients (in house counsel). The findings are perhaps not ground-shaking but the report is well worth reading nonetheless. Here are a few of the headlines:
Imagine being invited to the premiere of the movie version of a book, only to find nothing more than the words of the book projected onto screen. It would be about as exciting as watching a teleprompter. Or imagine going to the theatre, and seeing the actors’ words projected onto a screen for the audience to see. It would be even worse if the screen were centre stage with the performance off to the side. Yet isn’t this what most presenters are doing in the way they overuse and (mis)use Powerpoint? The norm has become to have bullet points after bullet points after bullet points. The presenter becomes nothing more that the narrator of a dull slideshow. Here are some tips on using Powerpoint effectively:
Remember, you get the staff you deserve:
Sign in a restaurant: “If you find our staff unhelpful, you should see the manager.”
Treat staff as though they were volunteers: Because they are.
You pay handsome salaries for people to come to work. But they volunteer their enthusiasm, their initiative, their professionalism, their pleasantness, their commitment to clients, etc...all the things that really add value. To get these you need to give your people what they want in return: usually fulfilment, fun and a future. So to get the best from people, ask not what they can do for you, but what you can do for them.
This week I was asked to review and where necessary update a section on Talent Management that I wrote last year for the Law Society’s HR Toolkit. The only amendment I saw fit to make was to add the following section on managing talent in an economic downturn: As the economy enters a downturn, some practice groups (or even whole firms) will suffer a decline in chargeable work and will be faced with a choice about how to respond. Should they lay-off staff to reduce unnecessary overheads and so minimise the impact on profitability? Or should they ride it out, utilising the increased non-chargeable time of their fee-earners in different ways? Of course, there is no simple answer to this. Firms are businesses and they have to make decisions based on the business realities they face. However, in making these difficult choices they should be in no doubt that the decisions they make, and the way they implement them, will have an impact on their wish to attract and retain talented professionals once the economic cycle takes a turn for the better. If a firm’s judgement is that reducing headcount is unavoidable, that decision should be implemented with as much humanity as possible, minimising the financial and emotional impact on those directly affected. However, it would also make business sense to minimise the negative impact on those who remain. They will be keenly aware of what is happening and their loyalty to the firm will be adversely affected if they see their former colleagues treated unfairly. As the economy recovers, some of those who remained will feel more empowered to move away from a firm that has been seen to treat its people merely as variable resources. As an alternative to laying-off staff, a temporary downturn can allow people precious time for valuable activities that are generally neglected when everyone is busy. Investing time in effective client care, business development, knowledge management, training, and mentoring can reap substantial returns. By retaining staff, firms not only build loyalty amongst their people but will avoid the wasted costs associated with releasing and then subsequently recruiting staff when the economic cycle turns. Perhaps I will be able to delete the section in the 2009 edition
If you had to sum up today’s UK budget speech by Chancellor Alistair Darling in a single word, what would your word be? The Chancellor hopes you will say “stability”. That is why he used the word (stability or stable) 30 times in his speech. Now I am reluctant to hold up Alistair Darling as an example of good public speaking. His budget statement was, as opposition leader David Cameron remarked, “delivered with all the excitement of someone reading out a telephone directory.” And yet Darling’s repetition of his key theme makes good sense. Repetition gets remembered. It is a skill he has perhaps learned from his boss, Prime Minister Gordon Brown. In one of his budget speeches he used the word “prudence” even more times than Darling used “stability”. The label stuck and he became known as “the prudent chancellor”. So let me say this once more, repetition is a good thing when you want your point to be remembered.
What do you do if you (or your organisation) suffers from a maligned image in some respect? Answer: implement a simple action that clearly demonstrates that the perception could not possibly be true. BBC Radio 4's Today programme interviewed the President of the Institution of Occupational Safety & Health (IOSH). He was there to defend the premise that Health & Safety has gone too far (amidst public cries of "health & safety has gone mad"). Inevitably, interviewer James Naughty raised that old chestnut (sorry) of 'conkers bonkers' - the story (a myth apparently) that health & safety officers require children to wear goggles before embarking on the largely harmless playground game of conkers. Recognising that this was damaging it's image, rather than simply issuing denials, IOSH chose to sponsor the World Conker Championships. That simple action does more for me than any amount of denials.
Congratulations to Kysen PR on their Legal Marketing Award as PR Agency of the Year.
Kysen work exclusively for professional service firms and, indeed, they have done some excellent work on my behalf. If you are seeking a PR agency I can highly recommend them.
Associate salaries have been rising rapidly in what might be misguided attempts to attract and retain talented lawyers (see my earlier post Whatever you do, don’t follow Allen & Overy.
Now a survey by Altman Weil shows that clients look askance at these spiralling salaries for new associates, which may prove even more costly than firms realise. The survey shows that 58% of the general counsel described the latest round of increases as “outrageous”. Perhaps the most startling finding was that 84% of clients felt that their law firms should have contacted them to discuss the implications of the increases. Yet not a single law firm did so. Whether you agree with the clients that they should be contacted, there is clearly a yawning gap of unmet expectations.
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Phil Gott
Welcome from me Phil Gott to this web site on People and Performance in Professional Service Firms. Please log in or register below, or click the following links for more information....
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