Several years ago I was consulting to the founding partner of a professional services firm in New York City. The firm built an established presence in its niche for at least two decades, and had a sizable team of employees well into the hundreds, but it was struggling in both employee morale and retention. During my initial session with my client, I asked him what he felt his purpose or mission was for his firm. “To provide an income to me and the other shareholders.” I asked him if he felt that mission inspired his employees. “Probably not. But it’s not their job to worry about that. It’s their job to get back to work and do their jobs.”
I think we found the reason for the morale and retention problem, I thought to myself.
This client wasn’t the most open-minded individual I’ve ever come across, but finally through several sessions I was able to get him to see how morale, retention, and even operational performance were directly tied to the emotions the employees felt about the impact of their work. If they felt that the only reason they came to work everyday was to fill the pockets of a few rich older guys, then they would eventually quit and go to work at a place that offered more meaning.
My client soon learned that his employees didn’t come to work for everyday for him. They came to work for themselves. We looked at how he offered long term value to his clients, and re-focused the mission of the firm to offer value to others and articulated that among the team.
In the legal world, a managing partner needs to ask similar questions: What is the mission or purpose of our firm? Why do we exist? To practice law, they might say. Well, any law firm can practice law. If that’s all you can see that your firm does the you need to look a little bit further down the road at the impact of what you do, and then search for the meaning behind that. How does your law practice make the lives of others better? How does it make a difference in the lives of those whom you serve?
Kevin Fitzgerald, the managing partner of Troutman Sanders’ office in Washington, DC, says that he leads his office with an approach of building an environment where attorneys become the key trusted advisor to their clients. Through their expertise and counsel, they become indispensable resources for their clients. Because he bridges this gap and articulates that among his colleagues, it infiltrates the culture of the firm and helps to create meaning and purpose in the practice of law. In building this type of practice, Fitzgerald encourages his team to spend non-billable hours to build agenda-free relationships with clients so the relationship is enhanced and authentic and the client is served through that relationship.
When I would consult to my corporate clients, I would always begin my consulting relationship by asking this question: “What business are you really in?” We’re in the staffing business, they might say. One client of mine, a large regional staffing company, found that their entire industry had trained their clients to purchase services purely on price. Their client prospects would purchase staffing services from those companies who charged the lowest. I helped this client to evaluate its purpose, its true value to clients, and uniqueness as a company, and use that sense of unique purpose as a tool to not just add meaning to the the work of their staff, but as a tool to impact their sales process and culture. They found that when their sales team believed in a calling to their work more than just profit margin, they became more passionate in the belief of their work and probed for more opportunities to add value in their client’s companies. The result was that they consistently won business away from cheaper competitors. The whole exercise didn’t just impact employee morale, but it transformed their sales team from price quoting to selling on value.
When you look past what you do and focus on how that benefits others, then you’ve reached a whole new level of organizational performance. If you can align the hearts and minds and energies of your team with a higher calling, a worthy purpose or mission, then you will witness with your own eyes the long term transformation of morale, performance, and retention among your team.
In the next few posts on this blog, I’m going to offer a simple and step by step model that law firms can use to improve their practices. My series of posts will be posted each Tuesday and Thursday of each week until I run out of ideas. Check back for updates. If you have questions about a post I wrote, please email me at scott@attorneysearchgroup.com.