August 10, 2005
Opportunity Focused Law Firm Management
It is August heading into September and October and more law firm “business plans” get finalized during these months than any other. So it is a good time to touch on a couple of important management concepts:
× Opportunity Focus
× Management Judo
Today’s posting deals with the first of the two, “Opportunity Focus”. It is simple to say and very hard for law firms to stick to:
Excellent managers are neither problem nor risk focused. They focus on opportunities and they minimize risk and problems.
Attorneys spend most of their time solving problems for clients so it’s hard to shift gears when it comes to the business of the law firm. But in business, solving problems simply puts things back like they were supposed to be to start with. Typical problem-solving approaches don’t usually move the business forward. Excellent managers ask questions such as “what opportunities do we have to improve our client’s satisfaction with our billing procedures” versus “I want a list of every problem we have getting bills out and collecting our money." There is a difference in the approach and a difference in the result.
The same applies to the firm as it lays out its plans for growth. One approach is to say, “Let’s identify the weaknesses and the problems we have in keeping clients and fix them." The opportunity-focused approach says, “Let’s identify what our clients and prospects want from their law firm and develop strategies for being the best at it.” Two different approaches and I assure you there would be two very different results.
You can look for an explanation of “Management Judo” in tomorrow’s post.
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Filed under Firm Culture, Management by Tom Collins