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I Just Want to be Appreciated

11/4/2012

1 Comment

 
In the early stages of working with Law Firms, one of the things we always do is talk with the existing staff and ask them to list three things they love about working for the firm and three things they dislike.

We do this because most of the gripes tend to be small things that can be fixed quite quickly and cheaply and when staff see that “things are happening” they tend to come forward with other, bigger suggestions and before you know it, a lot of the problems are fixed.


But no matter the size of the Firm or where they are located, the things that staff like or dislike tend to be the same, or very similar things.

The list they create can be anonymous by handing in notes on a bit of paper or made in an open forum, such as a small group. But no matter which way we use, the outcomes are nearly always the same.

The results are that they nearly always like who they work with. They like the social events, such as last year’s Christmas party and they might also like being located in town.

However, when it comes to the “dislike” list they nearly always put down the first dislike as; “underappreciated”.

In a recent Gallup Poll  71% of workers are “not engaged” or “actively disengaged” in their work, meaning that only a third contribute to their work in a positive manner. I would say that from our anecdotal surveys it’s probably higher than that.

But let’s take that one step further and see what it really means for the Firm or business these disgruntled people work in.

By asking the people who listed “underappreciated” exactly what they mean, we discovered that the knock-on effect of this was enormous and had a big impact on the whole business. 

For example, when we hear comments such as “The partners don’t appreciate me and don’t really value the work I do” we ask how that makes them feel and how does it manifest itself on a daily basis.

It means they arrive as late as possible and leave exactly on time. They don’t go the extra mile on anything. They make no real effort to help others. They don’t provide the kind of service they would if they felt appreciated. This ripples through and affects overall productivity, leading to negativity and low morale which inevitably leads to increased staff turnover; all at a time when many firms are struggling to survive.

And yet, the remedy is easy to implement.

Why?  Well, when we ask the partners if they appreciate their staff, guess what? They do. 

They just don’t tell them.

So the simple solution is to tell them.

Telling them can be done in a variety of ways but often the simplest solution is the best one such as saying “Thank you. Your contribution makes a difference” or better still, writing to them, emailing them or by creating some service awards or as many of the staff say…by giving us a pay rise!

The partners do actually want to give a pay rise, but until some things change, that might not be possible. So what else can be done?

Well, the army is not the place you would ordinarily look to in matters of staff appreciation. They also have other names for it such as man-management and its counterparts, motivation and leadership.

You might think that an army has nothing much to do with a law firm, but let me give you some examples of their thinking and see if any of it could apply to a law firm.

Field Marshal The Viscount Montgomery of Alamein defined leadership as “The will to dominate together with the character which inspires confidence.” He went on to say that “…a leader has got to learn to dominate the events which surround him; he must never allow these events to get the better of him; he must always be on top of his job and be prepared to accept responsibility.”

Wouldn’t it be good if a few partners demonstrated these abilities?

General Sir John Hackett said “…when speaking of leadership I do so in the context of a leader in battle; in battle, pressures are high and the problems of leadership stand out. But while battle may be unique but the problems it exposes are not. Leadership is concerned with getting people to do things willingly when it is most keenly needed, when difficulties, doubts and dangers are at their greatest.  Successful leadership is impossible without the leader’s commitment to the group in his care.”

There is no doubt that the Legal Services Act, ABS’s, the recession (it IS actually a depression but won’t be called that for at least 5 years) all combine to make it feel as if we are in a battle.  Difficulties, doubts and dangers are at their greatest.

So are you as “leaders” committed to your group?  You almost certainly appreciate them, but do you tell them?

If not, what’s stopping you?

(Oh, and the other two dislikes on the list?  IT systems and pay…nearly always those two)

1 Comment

Perceived Expertise

5/5/2011

2 Comments

 
If you've ever read Malcolm Gladwell's book "Blink" then this blog article might strike a chord with you.

Blink is essentially about thinking without thinking.  An expert can look at a statue and tell if it's a fake or not.  He doesn't know why, he just feels it; even if some other "expert" has tested the statue through carbon dating or using some other method and found it to be genuine, the "real expert  just knows"...it's an intuitive thing.

There's another book out right now called "Moonwalking with Einstein" by Joshua Foer  subtitled, "The Art and Science of Remembering Everything" which is a book about Memory and how to train your memory.

The book suggests that we all have the capacity to memorise and remember incredibly complex things such as strings of random numbers and mixed decks of playing cards.

All we need to know is the technique.

Memorising is something that all lawyers have had to do.  In fact anyone who has taken an exam has to memorise all the appropriate information.  Some teachers even say, "You can forget about it all afterwards, just as long as you pass the exam!"

In fact this was said to me by one of my law tutors.  He also said that the more cases you can put into an exam question the better.

About the time of my second year law exams ( I scraped through first year!) I was determined to do better and I bough a book about memory techniques.

In a nutshell, the system was "Imagination, destination"  The idea being that you use your imagination to mentally enhance images and you set each image at a geographical spot you know well. 

So for example if you want to memorise a list of 10 or 20 or 30 shopping items, mentally, you start off in your house, lets say the kitchen with item 1 - Cornflakes. 
Instead of a static image you imagine it raining cornflakes all over you in the kitchen, they crunch under your feet.  Item 2 - toilet roll in the hallway.  There's a giant toilet roll blocking your way and flapping in the wind and so on through the other rooms in your house and out the front door and down the street.

I used this technique to remember legal cases.  For example (without looking up my notes) I remember lots of cases from Consumer  Law such as Beale v Taylor 1967 and the case of a cut and shut Triumph Herald car.  I used a local shopping centre (Consumer Law after all) and in the car park there is a Triumph Herald car broken in two with Ian Beale from Eastenders being measured for a suit by a short man with a measuring tape in his hand and round his neck - a taylor.

Stupid, but it worked.

In each exam after I learned the technique I wrote down about 35 cases for each question.

Needless to say I passed with distinction and was wheeled out by the tutor to explain to the rest who I did it.

Anyway enough of memory techniques, what's this got to do with the title of the blog?

Well, after only a few hours training, I was perceived as an expert.  Some fellow students said it was genius to be able to remember all these cases.

Wrong in both cases.

It was all to do with technique. A quickly learned skill.

However, using the same technique or skill over time would propel anyone into expert status...and in fact in law and in practising law, most customers (or clients as some prefer)  perceive lawyers as experts...not just in the law, but in saving their business or marriage or in some cases their very liberty.

Becoming an expert comes from experience. But it depends what the experience is in.

Doing lots of years of law, widely recognised as 10 years or more, matches the definition of an expert as  "...a person with extensive knowledge or ability in a given subject."

Someone with perceived expertise can then look at a situation, and like the character in the book "Blink" , can almost instantly see the answer in a way that is difficult to put into words.

As Frome says in his book, "Experts, home in on the information that matters most, and have an almost automatic sense of what to do with it."

A lot of older lawyers and partners that I have met have this in abundance when it comes to legal matters, but fall tragically short when it comes to looking after their staff or running their legal business!

So my question to the lawyers amongst you is; bearing all this in mind "Why then do you refuse help from entrepreneurs or business consultants when it comes to running and improving your legal business?"

Entrepreneurs or business consultants with suitable years of expertise in running and operating businesses have the expertise to home in on the problems, they also have the techniques to improve the bottom line.  In many cases they have the marketing skills necessary to propel the business forward, yet many partners don't recognise these "skills" and somehow feel they can do it themselves.

If an entrepreneur wanted to prepare his own lease or shareholders agreement there would be an obvious "raising of eyebrows" or shaking of heads from the lawyers.

Yet on a daily basis, lawyers and partners are doing their own marketing, setting themselves up as HR experts and forming their own strategies with nothing but their own "skills" to see them through.

And they wonder why turnover is down and they've not made a profit....again.

2 Comments

Perceived Expertise

5/5/2011

0 Comments

 
If you've ever read Malcolm Gladwell's book "Blink" then this blog article might strike a chord with you.

Blink is essentially about thinking without thinking.  An expert can look at a statue and tell if it's a fake or not.  He doesn't know why, he just feels it; even if some other "expert" has tested the statue through carbon dating or using some other method and found it to be genuine, the "real expert  just knows"...it's an intuitive thing.

There's another book out right now called "Moonwalking with Einstein" by Joshua Foer  subtitled, "The Art and Science of Remembering Everything" which is a book about Memory and how to train your memory.

The book suggests that we all have the capacity to memorise and remember incredibly complex things such as strings of random numbers and mixed decks of playing cards.

All we need to know is the technique.

Memorising is something that all lawyers have had to do.  In fact anyone who has taken an exam has to memorise all the appropriate information.  Some teachers even say, "You can forget about it all afterwards, just as long as you pass the exam!"

In fact this was said to me by one of my law tutors.  He also said that the more cases you can put into an exam question the better.

About the time of my second year law exams ( I scraped through first year!) I was determined to do better and I bough a book about memory techniques.

In a nutshell, the system was "Imagination, destination"  The idea being that you use your imagination to mentally enhance images and you set each image at a geographical spot you know well. 

So for example if you want to memorise a list of 10 or 20 or 30 shopping items, mentally, you start off in your house, lets say the kitchen with item 1 - Cornflakes. 
Instead of a static image you imagine it raining cornflakes all over you in the kitchen, they crunch under your feet.  Item 2 - toilet roll in the hallway.  There's a giant toilet roll blocking your way and flapping in the wind and so on through the other rooms in your house and out the front door and down the street.

I used this technique to remember legal cases.  For example (without looking up my notes) I remember lots of cases from Consumer  Law such as Beale v Taylor 1961 and the case of a cut and shut Triumph Herald car.  I used a local shopping centre (Consumer Law after all) and in the car park there is a Triumph Herald car broken in two with Ian Beale from Eastenders being measured for a suit by a short man with a measuring tape in his hand and round his neck - a taylor.

Stupid, but it worked.

In each exam after I learned the technique I wrote down about 35 cases for each question.

Needless to say I passed with distinction and was wheeled out by the tutor to explain to the rest who I did it.

Anyway enough of memory techniques, what's this got to do with the title of the blog?

Well, after only a few hours training, I was perceived as an expert.  Some fellow students said it was genius to be able to remember all these cases.

Wrong in both cases.

It was all to do with technique. A quickly learned skill.

However, using the same technique or skill over time would propel anyone into expert status...and in fact in law and in practising law, most customers (or clients as some prefer)  perceive lawyers as experts...not just in the law, but in saving their business or marriage or in some cases their very liberty.

Becoming an expert comes from experience. But it depends what the experience is in.

Doing lots of years of law, widely recognised as 10 years or more, matches the definition of an expert as  "...a person with extensive knowledge or ability in a given subject."

Someone with perceived expertise can then look at a situation, and like the character in the book "Blink" , can almost instantly see the answer in a way that is difficult to put into words.

As Frome says in his book, "Experts, home in on the information that matters most, and have an almost automatic sense of what to do with it."

A lot of older lawyers and partners that I have met have this in abundance when it comes to legal matters, but fall tragically short when it comes to looking after their staff or running their legal business!

So my question to the lawyers amongst you is; bearing all this in mind "Why then do you refuse help from entrepreneurs or business consultants when it comes to running and improving your legal business?"

Entrepreneurs or business consultants with suitable years of expertise in running and operating businesses have the expertise to home in on the problems, they also have the techniques to improve the bottom line.  In many cases they have the marketing skills necessary to propel the business forward, yet many partners don't recognise these "skills" and somehow feel they can do it themselves.

If an entrepreneur wanted to prepare his own lease or shareholders agreement there would be an obvious "raising of eyebrows" or shaking of heads from the lawyers.

Yet on a daily basis, lawyers and partners are doing their own marketing, setting themselves up as HR experts and forming their own strategies with nothing but their own "skills" to see them through.

And they wonder why turnover is down and they've not made a profit....again.

0 Comments

Why a Partnership may Not be the Best Model for a Law Firm

19/1/2011

2 Comments

 
As you may know from reading some other articles in this blawg, I'm not a great fan of Partnerships.

Let me qualify that by saying, I'm not a great fan of partnerships where they involve more than say, 5 people.


I never really knew why, but for me there was always something sluggish about using a partnership as a way to conduct a modern business – and despite the incessant carping of some older lawyers, a law firm IS a business.

Using a partnership model seems to delay decision making akin to wading through treacle.

Anyway, I came across a story about the old proverb, Too Many Cooks Spoil the Broth.  The short story was in an old Reader's Digest that I was flicking through whilst sitting in the Dentist's waiting room. 

I don't have the date of the article as I left the magazine behind and it was only after a few days that things began to gel for me.

The story was about a murder that took place in New York in 1964.

The gist of the story is this: on 13th March 1964 a young woman called Kitty Genovese was walking back to her flat in Queens, a borough of New York City, when she was attacked and stabbed by a total stranger. 

She managed to break away and scream for help but the attacker came after her and attacked her again and stabbed her to death.

The whole attack allegedly took 30 minutes.

Two weeks later on 27th March the New York Times printed an article describing how a large number (apparently as many as 38) of respectable, law-abiding citizens had seen this attack and done nothing about it. 

No one had called the police and on investigation, the police were unable to understand why so many witnesses had done so little.

The story was picked up by other journalists and of course grew arms and legs and the conclusion was that people no longer cared enough to get involved and was a damning indictment of modern society and an example that society was breaking down etc etc proper Daily Mail stuff.

However, when I searched online to remind myself of the details of the murder, I simply searched under the name "Kitty Genovese" and up popped lots of links referring to what psychologists call The Bystander Effect but is also known as Genovese Syndrome.

The Bystander Effect is a psychological phenomenon that refers to cases where individuals do not offer help in an emergency situation when other people are present.

The probability of help has in the past been thought to be inversely related to the number of bystanders; in other words, the greater the number of bystanders, the less likely it is that any one of them will help.

In the last 30 years or so there have been numerous experiments to demonstrate the Bystander Effect in a variety of settings and the conclusion is nearly always the same; the more people there are, the less likely it is that the victim will get help.

So how does this impact on how a partnership works?

Well, with the information provided so far, it doesn't.  But after a little bit of digging into some other aspects of the Bystander Effect, you might begin to agree with me.

There are many reasons why bystanders don't react to emergency situations, but social psychologists have identified two major factors;

(1)     The principle of social influence; and

(2)     Diffusion of responsibility

Social influence is when people monitor the reactions of other people and where they work out in their minds if it's necessary for them to do something or nothing. 

Since most people do nothing, the conclusion is that it's better to do nothing.  Psychologists call this "social proof" or more imaginatively "pluralistic ignorance".

Diffusion of responsibility is where everyone assumes that someone else will intervene.  There is a hierarchy effect where people think that someone more suitable or better qualified (in their minds) will act or intervene.

And as someone else is probably going to step in then there's no reason to do so. Feeling less responsible means that they can refrain from acting.

Other obstacles to acting – bear in mind that this all happens in a split second in a bystander's mind – is that there are inherent fears;

The fear that someone better qualified might appear and therefore acting quickly could cause them to lose face.

They may also be afraid of being superseded by a superior helper, offering unwanted assistance, or facing the legal consequences of offering inferior and possibly dangerous assistance.

Out of all of that, the phrase I like best is "pluralistic ignorance".

In pluralistic ignorance, people privately disdain but publicly support a norm or a certain belief, while the false consensus effect causes people to wrongly assume that most people think like them, while in reality most people do not think like them and only on rare occasions will they express their disagreement openly.

Thus no one may take any action, even though some people privately think that they should do something.

When I talk to a number of partners of law firms, quite a lot of them say that they would prefer changing to a Limited Liability Company but they think that the other partners would disagree.

The reality is that they could all be struck by pluralistic ignorance.

2 Comments

Find Something Worth Changing.

14/7/2010

0 Comments

 
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    Author

    After many years paying lawyers,I became one in 2005 Just in time for the largest upheaval in the law since records began. Brilliant. Exiting times ahead.

    Disclaimer.  The thoughts, ideas and comments on this Blawg ("Blawg - a legal Blog) are my own and not to be confused (unless otherwise stated) with anyone else and certainly not of anyone in the Firm where I used to work and they are not the views of the firm where I used to work.

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