Feature

posted 25 May 2006 in Volume 9 Issue 1

Pulling together: A business-partner approach to management

Differences and competition between support departments can seriously harm business strategy, especially in the years immediately following a merger. For Addleshaw Goddard, the solution lay in a firm-wide infrastructure-review programme. By Amanda Rose, HR operations manager, Addleshaw Goddard.

Following the merger of Addleshaw Booth & Co and Theodore Goddard in 2003, it became evident that the firm’s infrastructure needed to change and develop in order to deliver higher, more sophisticated levels of support as Addleshaw Goddard continued to evolve. Optimising infrastructure performance was a key element in the achievement of the firm’s growth agenda, so an infrastructure-review programme was instigated.

The infrastructure areas at Addleshaw Goddard include: human resources (HR); learning and development (L&D); facilities; marketing and business development; IT; central operations; and, information services and finance.

Collectively, these are known as the business-services directorates. External benchmarking data and feedback from new lateral-hire partners and fee-earner teams provided information about the changes that needed to be implemented in these areas.

In addition, anecdotal and performance-review feedback, along with data from the firm’s first opinion survey, showed that there was a gap in understanding between directors and management teams in some business-service areas. Interpretations of new service-delivery expectations and requirements, and individual roles in supporting the business, varied. This sometimes resulted in directors being sucked into too much of the day-to-day operational and transactional delivery, leaving them less time to focus on the strategic development of their functions in line with the requirements of the firm-wide strategy.

The HR review team also felt that senior management (and the managers and supervisors in their teams) would benefit from an enhanced awareness of their own preferred influencing, communications and learning styles – and how these could be developed in line with the strategic business needs.

Some management tools and skills updating was also required to enable them to manage the performance of their teams more effectively. Most importantly, this group required a clear understanding of why their job functions and technical expertise were important in adding real value to the achievement of the business strategy.

Infrastructure review objectives

The review commenced early in 2005. During the process, it became apparent that HR needed to sit alongside the business throughout all the stages, in order to identify and address the people issues arising from the strategic need to effect change. A core objective of the review process was to significantly improve the level of client focus and service-delivery capability of the support directorates. It was also essential, however, to lead the directorate team smoothly through the required change process and, also, for them to be able to accept and buy in to the necessary developments to make the change as quick and effective as possible. As the review progressed, it also became apparent that we needed to:

Enhance the management and leadership capabilities of the senior and middle-management teams. This group was critical in effecting the necessary changes within operational teams, and in creating the required high-performance culture;
Spend some time on team-building initiatives to support the management teams in bringing the directorates through the change process.

Common goals and vision were essential, as was a sense of shared ownership and mutual support. The infrastructure review plan for the directorates was developed with five key strands of activity:

Define excellent client service (the vision for all areas);
Identify and rectify service gaps (structural review);
Develop existing, and recruit new, staff (management-development programme);
Launch support-competency framework and key-performance indicators (performance management);
Launch and embed ‘The AG Way’ (the firm-wide supporting values programme).

The focus for year one of the programme was: ‘To lay the foundation for the creation and acceptance of an environment of high performance, continual growth, development and change that is absolutely aligned to the firm’s strategic aims.’ Demonstrable service-delivery improvement could only logically follow once the appropriate culture and values had been embedded. Importantly, the business needed ‘the right people on the bus’ to effect the change. Another core aspect for year one, therefore, was to recruit new key-management staff and to exit some others.

We also needed to work on changing some mindsets within the directorates. There was a perceived inequality between management staff and the fee-earning part of the business. In some cases, a lack of professional confidence among managers was resulting in little challenge to directorates, to add further value to the business.

Business partnering

A modular management-development programme for senior and middle managers within the directorates was developed and managed with support from the Portland International consultancy. It was as a core element of this programme that the concept of ‘business partnering’ was launched across the firm.

The management-development programme aimed to support managers through the ongoing change process by extending their management skills and giving them a regular opportunity to network and share ideas. It also provided them with a toolkit and common language, through which they could better lead and support their teams.

The programme challenged managers to review their activities on a continual basis. Were they spending time on the right things – supporting the achievement of the business strategy – or, were they drowning in the operational treadmill? Were they absolutely focused on improving their team’s performance and capabilities – did they accept that this responsibility for people was a critical part of their role as a manager?

A business partner represents a ‘true’ partner of the business in strategy execution, who is increasingly able to derive strategic value from their skills and actions. They are also a fully flexible resource – commercially aware, proactive and responsive towards change – and able to add value across the business, irrespective of original technical specialism. A more in-depth definition of our business-partner model is illustrated in figure one.

The business-partner module of the management-development programme set out to improve participants’ ‘emotional intelligence’, initially, by creating a better knowledge of themselves (using the Thomas International DISC profiling methodology1). By understanding more of their own preferences in terms of working and communication styles, managers could then begin to spot others’ styles and preferences more effectively.

The basic premise was that, through a better understanding of yourself, you could manage your relationships and interactions with others more efficiently. In turn, this removes some of the interpersonal barriers and enables people to focus more on the business activities that add real value and support the achievement of the strategy. The module also aimed to:

Extend self awareness and, therefore, self management, social awareness and empathy;
Help people to define a better, stronger vision of themselves;
Improve understanding of individual development needs and preferred methods of learning. Much of this comes from acquiring more feedback from others.

Course structure

The overall format of the module aimed to increase delegates’ knowledge of the business and improve their management skills and resources. It would also enable individuals to establish clear and strategically aligned action plans to work to, going forwards. The core module was one and a half days in duration and was held off-site to avoid everyday distractions. All directorate senior managers were invited, and the attendee list for each module was deliberately multi-directorate, to facilitate networking and sharing of ideas.

In advance of the module, DISC profiling of all delegates was followed up by one-to-one feedback with a course tutor, to raise self knowledge and awareness. Following the feedback, delegates were asked to construct personal action plans with initial objectives for their self development.

The managing partner opened the core module, which was well received across the firm. His presentation delivered a categorically clear explanation of the firm’s strategy and how the directorate functions could best support it. The importance of the directorates’ role within the strategy was also made clear, along with the value they could add if they performed well.

The opening was followed by an opportunity to ask questions and take part in group discussions. The aim here was to start to reduce the ‘silo’ mentality that can exist between different directorates and to start to derive more cross-functional and commercial benefit for the business.

The skills areas covered in the first module included ‘influencing styles and communication styles’. This detailed how to recognise the different types and then vary your own style, to get the best out of your interpersonal work relationships and improve your team’s operational performance. The module also covered some basic coaching skills.

An overview of the skills concepts was presented, followed by discussion groups, where teams worked on real-life scenarios and coached each other.

The added value of this approach was that the delegates had an opportunity to reflect on, debate and share ideas.

All participants were then asked to finalise their initial personal action plans and deliver a ‘stump speech’ to the rest of the group. These speeches had to outline the key messages and tools that they were going to take back to the office and put into practice, including what they were going to do differently in future, to operate as a better business partner.

The module was followed six weeks later by facilitated video-conference sessions (held at lunchtime) for all attendees. This provided the opportunity for the senior managers to report on their progress and share further ideas about how to continue to develop the business-partner approach.

More short-skills development workshops have been run to extend the management toolkit and to keep reinforcing the concepts. The first, on ‘situational leadership’, was well received and the next planned session is on ‘time mastery’.

Further development modules are planned. The business-partner philosophy will continue to underpin this important development programme.

Benefits to the business

Clearly, the introduction of business partnering at Addleshaw Goddard has been a fascinating journey and has provided the HR and L&D teams with an ideal opportunity to put the skills and concepts into practice. But, what about the benefits to the bottom line?

Have we achieved what we set out to do in terms of the original objectives for the infrastructure review? Has service delivery and client focus demonstrably improved? Is the business partner approach really helping us to achieve this? The early indications and results are positive:

The business-partner concepts, and the development programme in general, have been enthusiastically received, with good attendance on all the modules and positive follow-up sessions;
Among senior managers, there is an appetite to do things differently – to think about how they allocate their time (whether everything they do is clearly aligned to supporting the strategy). This has been evident in follow-up sessions and feedback from directors;
There is inter-directorate networking between senior managers, delivering enhanced processes and services to the business in a more ‘joined up’ and integrated way. For example, the IT and facilities teams now communicate more closely on projects that require input from both disciplines;
Managers are thinking more carefully about how they manage and lead their teams, as well as putting some of the management tools covered within the development programme into practice. There are some examples of improved influencing and communication skills being demonstrated, which is positive.

Measurable improvements to individual and team performance, with enhanced service delivery to the business are, however, the true measure of our achievement. This is not yet qualitatively tested, with the exception of anecdotal feedback, which does indicate improvement in several areas. The firm is conducting its second, firm-wide opinion survey in May 2006 however, and the results from this, together with some further specific analysis, are eagerly awaited in terms of what they will tell us about the full impact of the business-partner programme on directorate performance.

What is clear from our experience is that a high degree of focus on how best to lead, manage, develop and engage the infrastructure teams within an aspirational and continually changing business is essential if the required improvements to internal customer focus and service-delivery levels are going to be met.

HR as strategic business partners

On this project, HR and L&D worked as business partners to facilitate a key, organisational change linked to the strategy of the firm. This has led to an ongoing programme of change, focused on continuing to develop the capabilities of the directorates.

In doing this, we have learnt how to put core business-partnering skills into practice and, also, some of the challenges in doing this consistently (most notably time), which the other directorate managers have also faced. We believe that this mutual learning process will provide clear benefits to HR, the directorates and the entire firm going forwards.

Reference

1. Based on the work of psychologist William Moulton Marsten, the DISC personal profile system uses a four-dimensional model of normal behaviour, which assesses individual levels of dominance, influence, steadiness and conscientiousness.

Amanda Rose is HR operations manager at Addleshaw Goddard. She can be contacted at amanda.rose@addleshawgoddard.com