August 8, 2006
Law Firm Culture and the Work/life Issue
I have been reading Lauren Stiller Rikleen’s book, Ending the Gauntlet: Removing Barriers to Women’s Success in the Law. She decries the lack of management and points to law firm compensation systems and the billable hour as accomplices behind the problems faced by women in the law firm. But if there were one thing that must change before progress is made, I think she would say it is “firm culture”. Law firms will not be a friendlier place for women lawyers until it is a friendlier place for everyone.
Julie Fleming Brown’s blog Life at the Bar was on the right track in her recent post More on work/life balance…..Is it a fad?
Not all lawyers are cut from the same cloth. Yet, given the culture in most law firms, each is judged as if they were. Within too many law firms, success depends on one’s performance against a single “work ethic” standard.
Perhaps law firms should adopt a page from the cultural notebook of commercial businesses that have made it into the circle of excellent enterprises. Excellent enterprises have accepted that there are “Seven Life Phases” into which individuals can allocate their energies and time—job, family, religion, civic activities, health, recreation and self-development. Each choice competes against all others.
Those choices are respected by excellent companies within certain limits. Those commercial companies also have accepted the notion that, as individuals, each of us has strengths and weaknesses. The question is: Given our particular pattern of strengths and weaknesses, as well as the life choices we have made, are we positive contributors to the organization’s purpose, goals, and objectives? Excellent companies work to make sure all team members understand the concept of Seven Life Phases. They drill home to each member of the team that they cannot judge their peers against their own choices. Each of us is different in how we go about doing our job. The correct single standard by which each of us should be judged is an end-result standard—how well we discharge our agreed-upon role in the organization. Are we achieving or exceeding our expected contribution to the organization’s purpose, goals and objectives?
For some, when it comes to the Seven Life Phases, their job is their life. For others, religious commitments take absolute precedence over work–no work on certain religious holidays or on Saturdays, for example. Yet for others, physical activities to develop and maintain a healthy body have evolved into a fixed routine from which they will not deviate. Some change their choices over time. The arrival of children usually results in a major shift toward the family choice for most women and some men.
Excellent companies accept that some of their team members devote almost all of their energies to their job—always working on and off the premises. Other team members can’t or choose otherwise. Those companies provide work hour flexibility within the individual’s agreed upon job scope. There is no clocking out for visiting the doctor, being called away for a sick child, or breaking away for an occasional golf game or having one’s hair done or cut. The test is accomplishing your expected contribution to the organization—getting your job done. Are you discharging your responsibility for the role you have been assigned?
Now here comes the rub. We are Goal-driven, and we make the choices we make to pursue those Goals. Within any business, each member of the team has a Role to play. There is a relationship between the two. An organization cannot expect people to successfully perform in roles that do not match their goals—you can’t motivate people to succeed in roles inconsistent with their goals without conflict. Likewise, our goals as individuals may not be achievable unless our role in the business is changed. The Roles and Goals must be in harmony.
That means that the seven life choices one makes may limit the role they can play within an organization. It does not mean that the role they can play is any less important or that it is not an important role in the enterprise’s pursuit of its objectives.
The law firm must make a cultural change and recognize the Seven Life Phases as a fact of business and life. It must accept that one’s pattern of choices is neither good nor bad. How each member works is a result of their choices, and the firm should not allow attempts by some team members to judge others by their own particular choices. The only valid issue is:
Given the “Role” one has in the organization, is he/she getting the job done—making a positive contribution to the organization’s purpose, goals and objectives?
To accommodate talented and contributing individuals, management must be willing to vary the “roles”, the “organizational expectations”, available to individuals. It means that “work flexibility” has to be accompanied by “role flexibility.” To provide work hour and workplace flexibility without a matching “role” is simply a recipe for failure. And unfortunately, that conflict appears to be the norm today—law firms that have life/work balance options but still hold success in the firm to the same “job is my life” standard.
As I wrote in a prior post, Roles vs. Goals in Law Firms, leadership requires matching the role you ask people to play against their individual goals. Sometimes the role and goal matching requires that the match be a determining factor in the recruiting or promotion process. However, that will result in the firm passing up some outstanding people—individuals that could have turned out to be your biggest rainmakers, future community leaders, or even the top inspiring leader of your firm. Job-related activities can often be combined with activities of the other seven aspects. A well-rounded person can be more valuable than the individual that devotes an excessive portion of their energy to just their job. It is important that “role vs. goal” screens not simply be a process of measuring recruits and promotion prospects against “my standards." Do that and you will have a bunch of look-alikes and think-alikes who not only share the same strengths but the same weaknesses.
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Filed under Firm Culture, HR by Tom Collins