Thought leader

I recently debated with two senior partners the respective merits of their firms when it comes to decision making. The smaller one described the difficulty of getting 40 people around a table to make decisions. However, he was sure that the larger international firm would find decision making easier, as the management team would be left to get on with things.

Apparently not. Despite having over 300 partners, this major international firm has weekly partner meetings, by conference call, and regular international partner meetings to ‘debate issues’.

I asked him how useful such gatherings are. “Not very,” he replied. “We never seem to know what to discuss.”

An outsider would surely find it extraordinary that such global enterprises feel inclined to cling to a decision-making model that most organisations ditch when they grow to more than five people. If you want to put a positive spin on such consensual governance, you might say that a one-firm approach and a strong brand depend on partners meeting regularly. However, as anyone attempting to run these firms knows all too well, such meetings are less about decision making than they are a show of strength in the face of the enemy, that is, management.

Gracechurch has recently published a strategy study drawing on the collective expertise of a dozen experts who worked together to describe the attributes of the successful firm of the future. One of the key conclusions in the Legal Futures report is that to be successful, firms will have to be more strongly managed – and for most firms, that will involve a strengthening of central management.

That sounds like what most people mean when they say ‘more corporate’. But, in every growing firm, there is a paradox. Partners know that this is the direction the tide is flowing but cede autonomy with monumental reluctance.

Part of this is cultural and the other is economic. When times are good, we like democratic processes akin to the ancient Greeks. Everyone can go to the marketplace to have his voice heard. In tough economic times, however, or when the nation is under attack from hostile forces, we prefer to elect strong leaders.

Of late, law firms may not have been at war – but the bumper harvests seem to be a thing of the past. Consequently, firms want and need stronger leadership. But talk to any managing partner that I know and they still feel like the leaders of a band of guerrillas. The economic drivers may be militating stronger management, but cultural stumbling blocks abound.

Many are deep rooted in the very nature of professional services. The professions tend to attract people who have a high need for autonomy. Most of these people chose their career precisely because they didn’t see themselves taking directions from others in a Unilever or an IBM.

Moreover, professionals by the nature of their job, spend their lives dispensing advice. So much so, that by the time they become partners in their firms, they find it almost impossible to convince themselves that they actually don’t have anything useful to contribute to decisions about any and every aspect of their firm’s operation.

If firms wish to be more corporate in their management approach, it must be done as a coalition of the willing. I believe that firms need to bring partners together to have an open debate about what it is that they want to achieve as a firm – and what style of leadership and management are necessary to get there.

I was struck during a recent workshop I ran by how few managing partners could claim that they had discussed with their partners the type of firm that they want to be and what collective goals they share.

Without such a mandate, and the delegated authority to pursue these aims, what is the managing partner left trying to achieve? The answer, of course, is that many managing partners are unable to move much beyond number crunching – looking at chargeable hours and debtor days. Important as they are, they are not the stuff of leadership.

When firms talk about moving to a corporate approach to decision taking, most are still tinkering at the cosmetic level. More radical measures require a closer look at the norms in corporate-management approaches and a more open debate within the partnership as a whole on whether this is indeed what partners want in the future.

Steve Blundell is a director at Gracechurch Consulting. He can be contacted at slwb@grch.net.