Shark Free Waters

1. Their business models are ancient. Most firms still structure themselves the way law firms of centuries ago were structured.
2. There is generally a lack of transformation in terms of making firms hospitable to women. This would mean finding solutions to issues such as childcare, working remotely, dawn meetings etc.
3. There is generally a lack of understanding of how powerful it can be to have men and women understand the ways in which they think and act differently and harness these differences in the workplace.  Female attorneys will only get ahead when they are able to act like their male counterparts.
4. Many law firms have embraced the trend of having values – yet like many companies, do not know the first thing about living their values.  They have no idea how to ensure all their policies and procedures from remuneration to billing clients, are aligned with their values. This means the values just make good wallpaper.
5. Law firms are mostly oblivious to the fact that as a result of their restrictive and hierarchical cultures, only a certain type of person will be able to thrive in a law firm. This means that of the 10 graduates who join a firm, after a decade only those whose personality profile is very similar to all the attorneys higher up the chain, are likely to still be around. This makes for homogeneous attorneys and is not actually good for business or the profession.  The line up may look diverse – some men, some women, different races but in terms of personality profile, they’ll probably represent only 10% of the population. If that.

PS the photo I found on Google. It’s an Aussie firm I believe. I might be sued for using it without permission. It just seemed too perfect an illustration of point 5 to resist. I’m gobsmacked. Are those women in uniforms? Or did they get a memo saying “black skirt suit, 3 cm above the knee, white shirt, black peep toe heels”?. Notice only the woman on the far right is able to wear sexy boots. Because she’s been there for 20 years, she earned the right to show her individuality. Just the boots mind you. Frightening stuff.  This is just my personal opinion.

How does one choose between the thousands of emotional/ social/ relationship/ multiple intelligence tools aimed at corporates? Many are trademarked and most are expensive.

I came across Relationship Systems Intelligence™ this week.  You can download an article on it here. It’s got me thinking about the proliferation of this stuff on the market and how one can assess it.

I’m still forming my thoughts about this but so far I think the effectiveness of any training will depend on:

1.  the level of consciousness of the facilitator
2. the participants’ willingness/ readiness to learn the tools being offered.

Of course “consciousness” is a complex term. I’m trying to find some way to capture the concept of multiple intelligences here, rather than using the word “intelligence” because I’m not referring to cognitive ability. There are plenty of smart people useless at facilitating or teaching. My old maths teacher was one of them. Clearly she understood the maths, but most classes she looked at us in bafflement and said “what do you mean you DON’T understand?”.

On the one hand I applaud the multiplicity of new products!  Rather than roll our eyes at another seminar or tool that develops emotional intelligence, we should celebrate the fact that a term like “emotional intelligence” has become mass market. Yes, it is a GOOD thing. Yay for Daniel Goleman! Sure he may have got rich in the process, but his books (bless the publishers) are on the shelves of some of the most neanderthal managers and headmasters out there!   Emotional intelligence is being ever-increasingly recognised  as a vital aspect of successful relationships, and of corporate life, even of government decision making and this is wonderful.

I suppose my “distaste” is the capitalist aspect of trade-marking various products for commercial gain. Billions of leadership courses, values courses, psychometric testing tools – all with clever names and acronyms and the little TM sign…the cynic in me says the sign stands for “we want money for this, even though we’ve kind of just taken a lot of thinking out there and re-packaged it”. But the cynic in me is tempered by the idealist who is aware that many of these tools create leaps in consciousness for many people personally and for the organisations in which they work. This is good for us all – it is good for humanity, it is good for our planet.

So what am I saying? Perhaps we have to examine the integrity with which these products are created.  But integrity is a nebulous concept,  so hard to measure or define – how can you look at a new product or programme and evaluate its integrity? I think as a civilization we haven’t evolved to that point yet – so I would probably use good old common sense and intellect to determine whether I believe a product has integrity (very subjective, yes) and then maybe use kinesiology to calibrate the product’s consciousness.

Whoa, yes, I lost some people there. Applied Kinesiology is considered way out or “new age” now, but could quite possibly be in common use in 100 years time. Only once humanity stops thinking we can figure everything out through our senses. But I don’t want to get lost in a discussion of that now.

I’ve spent some time looking at different organisational development consultancies and each has their own products though many are very similar. Perhaps it’s just an aspect of how this industry functions within the legal constraints of today’s business environment. You’re not allowed to use others ideas so everyone is forced to re-package and make a “new” product.  It’s all about marketing.

I admit that my thinking today is influenced by the wonderful lecture I attended recently by Prof Henry Mintzberg, and also by the week-long facilitation course I’ve just completed. The course included a 200 page manual, repeating stuff from a bunch of books on facilitation. Both have, in different ways, inspired me to eschew mediocrity and continue to question whatever is put before me.

So my advice, if faced with a smorgasboard of tools that will enhance employee engagement and develop leadership potential is this:

1. read it, learn it, absorb it. Reflect.
2. See what else is being offered that is similar.
3. Don’t believe the hype “our product has been proven 78% more effective than all our competitors”. Mostly it’s bollocks.  This stuff is highly subjective.
4. Choose the smartest, most switched on, conscious facilitators for any programme you do decide to offer – you cannot solve a problem using the same level of thinking as that which created the problem.
5. Have a look into Spiral Dynamics – it may help you meet your employees where they are. There are many boardrooms where any mention of meditation or kinesiology will have eye balls rolling so far back you’ll think you’re in a roomful of Zombies.  Assess the culture and worldview of your employees and pick a product that’s aligned.

PS when I try to sell your company my DEEP (Deeply Engaged Employees Programme*) next month, don’t laugh. Just go back to the 5 points and decide for yourself!

*real name withheld to protect programme’s identity.

** this is a joke. I don’t have a programme…YET.

This is a blog post by Pennington Hennessy which you can find here:

http://www.penningtonhennessy.com/blog/bid/16851/7-Reasons-why-Developing-Leaders-in-Law-Firms-is-Difficult

Alan Hodgart recently spoke to a group of Law Firm Learning & Development Professionals about the challenges facing law firms – particularly leadership.  His analysis was sound but he offered few practical ways for addressing them.

I can think of 7 reasons why developing leaders in law firms is more difficult than in many other fields.

1. A typical partner’s psychometric profile is very different to that of a senior corporate executive.
2. Lawyers are atypical leaders, for whom traditional models require adaption.
3. Lawyers rarely want to lead.  Most law firm leaders would be happy if they reverted to client-facing work.
4. There are few role models, and leadership is “caught” as much as “taught”.
5. Leadership development is left late (30 years +) compared to the corporate model.
6. The rewards for leadership in a law firm are not always obvious.
7. Few lawyers have corporate experience outside the legal function, so they haven’t experienced people who just want to lead.

The solutions are harder to find, but possible.  Key aspects are:

1. Developing leaders, not training them.
2. Leaders are grown, not made, so it requires a joined-up, firm-wide effort to develop leaders.
3. New leaders learn by leading.

I came across the consultancy called Edge International that fixes law firms around the globe in a previous incarnation as a highly strung young candidate attorney. I found some copies of Edge the magazine they publish somewhere in my law firm and thought it had some great ideas. Never one to be a wallflower, I promptly emailed the senior partner of the firm with my suggestions for improving various systems in the firm, based on what I’d been reading. Surprisingly, and to his credit, the senior partner was pretty receptive. (Most senior partners would have swatted an upstart like me away without a further thought!) It turned out that he had worked with Gerry Riskin, the creator of Edge International, somewhere along the line and had a lot of respect for him.

Once I’d made the decision to leave the law firm after completing articles, I started desperately wondering what I’d do next. As I had noticed what a significant proportion of my time in the firm was spent figuring out how to change things, I wrote to Gerry Riskin about possibly joining Edge International.   And he wrote a kind response. When I again contacted him at the end of 2011 and referred to this exchange of emails in 2005 –I was impressed he still had them and knew what I was on about.  It’s not clear how this will unfold but I would like to work Gerry someday.  I want to work with him because he is a man of whom someone said:

“When Gerry speaks, he reaches parts of your mind that have never been used before.”
–Sue Stapely, Solicitor and Media Professional; London, England

If you’d like to find out more about Gerry, he has his own blog called Amazing Firms, Amazing Practices. The website for Edge International is also a wonderful resource. There is much I could say but for now I just want to mention what it says under their “values” section.

Our guiding philosophy is “to provide clients with more than they are paying for, more than they expect and more than anyone else would provide under the same circumstances.” We live that philosophy by extending to you our “satisfaction guarantee” that allows you to always measure whether our fees match the results being achieved, and by our very serious undertaking to provide ongoing support even after the formal assignment has concluded.

Edge International’s work is unconditionally guaranteed to the complete satisfaction of the client. If the client is not completely satisfied with the services provided by Edge International at any stage of this engagement, we will, at the client’s option, either completely waive our professional fees or accept a portion of those fees that reflects the level of satisfaction.

Wow.

Imagine if more law firms had values like this? What a different sort of place the world might be. I think it’s possible.  I want to work with lawyers and law firms that believe it is possible.