Thought leader

By Robert Halton, global chief people officer at DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary

THE NEED for business planning within law firms is now widely recognised across the profession, as is the acceptance of business professionals who do not have a legal background. The best management teams invest time in the discussion and agreement of strategy, the development of plans, and the management and leadership focus of the business.

However, well-written strategic plans will remain aspirations unless they are turned into integrated, aligned points of action. They need to be ‘living’ documents, which are broken down into achievable goals at office, product group and individual levels across the firm. Unless there is investment in the performance management of the firm’s people, these plans will not be achieved. Senior management should set aside time for communicating objectives and managing performance – not merely fit such processes in when they have a spare moment.

In the professional-services sector, people have a direct impact on the performance of their organisations. The quality of the product they deliver to clients influences not only future business, but also the reputation of the individual and the firm as a whole. As individuals, we need to know how we fit in, what is expected of us, how we can improve performance and work to the highest possible standard. Most firms will have appraisal systems but these can tend to be backward, rather than forward, focused. Although appraisals are important, forward planning and agreeing objectives with each individual member of the team takes precedence.

Time needs to be invested in developing the individual objectives required for the effective, overall performance of the entire team, which, in turn, contributes to the performance of the office or product group and, therefore, the entire firm. Making clear to individuals and teams what their contribution needs to be, along with involving teams and individuals in determining what is actually achievable is, therefore, vital.

In most cases, the more senior an individual is within an organisation, the greater the access they will have to management information. All too often this means that vital business information does not cascade down through the ranks, so people do not know what the firm’s key-performance indicators (KPIs) are. They do not understand the relevance of these to their own performance, so can hardly be blamed when the targeted KPIs are not met. Getting information to flow is not easy and should not be left to chance.

Firms need to invest more time in getting people to understand what the key levers of the organisation are and ‘what success looks like’. Giving people access to financial data across the organisation is of critical importance and explaining why the organisational levers are so important is essential. If you cascade performance-management goals throughout the firm, you produce clarity on what is important, you break the strategic plan down into achievable and meaningful units and you have far greater likelihood that your plans will be achieved, if not exceeded.

Robert Halton is global chief people officer at DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary. He can be contacted at robert.halton@dlapiper.com