April 7, 2006
Leadership in the law Firm
One of the blogs I especially enjoy and learn from is David Maister’s Passion, People and Principles. His recent post “Dangerous Rubbish About Leadership” is classic Maister. Maister the contrarian opens the post and the insightful and wise Maister ends the piece.
I agree with his message, at least my understanding of it. Success is not determined by our desire for it. It is determined by how we pursue it. A law firm’s core beliefs about “how” it pursues its activities are what make the difference between the merely competent and the exceptional law firm. As Drucker has noted, competence isn’t enough to survive.
The view of a leader as one who lays out a destination and says “follow me” is an outdated concept that does not work in Maister’s view. It appears that Maister discounts the importance of destination in part because the destination for most law firms is usually the same. However, if you do not know where you are going, any road will do. The law firm that has an organization pulling in many different directions is likely to get nowhere. Someone has to set the course. Sometimes the destination is defined as where the law firm is not going. There has to be focus or concentration. That doesn’t mean that the organization is not prepared to change course, take advantage of opportunities, or benefit from serendipity.
Destinations are temporary targets. Having a destination doesn't result in reaching it. I believe Maister is saying what really drives success is the core belief system that is imparted in an organization by its leader or a succession of leaders. I’m not suggesting people want to be led, but people do need a copy of the playbook. They need to know the boundaries within which they can exercise their own judgment and creativity in pursuit of the organization’s purpose.
We use the shorthand phrase “I65 North” to remind our team where we are headed. It emphasizes that each individual is an independent traveler in that journey. You can drive as fast as you can as long as you are not so reckless as to endanger those around you. You can go as slow as your circumstances require as long as you are not impeding the progress of others. You can get off and get back on. But you can not go south, east or west. As important as our destination is, where we are not going may be even more important. We are going north. If you don’t want to go there, then you need to find yourself another highway to travel.
Maister ends his post with the following statement: “Great leaders (there, I’ve said the dreaded word) get people to focus on the key elements of strategy – the standards on which the firm is going to compete. With a clear ideology to rally around, talented people get the choice of saying ‘I can believe in that. I think I’ll stick around to a part of that and be a member of a society of like-minded people operating together in accordance with common values.’ That commitment, in company after company, has led to service line and market sector choices not no-one anticipated, because they were not the guts of the strategy, but rather the outcome of the strategy – the firm’s own way of doing things. If a leader can create THAT – then I’ll agree to use the term ‘leader.’“
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Filed under Firm Culture, Management, Planning by Tom Collins