The Right Way to Manage Change in the Law Firm

Bruce MacEwens's recent post on transformation change was a reminder that morepartnerincome.com has not address the important issue of change managment recently.

Change is hard. Playing the 800-pound gorilla that is going to force change down everyone’s throat isn’t exactly an approved management approach to change. Sometimes it will work. Sometimes it will not! With forced change you can’t predict success. That kind of change (“Do it because I said to”) is unmanaged and the outcome is unpredictable. It may work, it may not.

Business, like life, is a journey and change is constant along that path. You cannot be an effective leader without understanding change and how to manage it. Law firm leaders must always be at work inventing a new law firm for a new future. The axiom “If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it”, doesn’t work. Everything ages. It wears out. It becomes absolute. It goes out of style. People leave, get old, become sick or die. Practice areas become commodities. New laws create new opportunities and shut down others. If it isn’t broken, it is in the process of breaking and management’s role is to fix it before it breaks—not afterwards.

I should add that progress is only achieved through change. You either change up or you are changed down! Without change initiated to improve effectiveness and efficiency, negative change is occurring. Expenses rise to meet income, and work (non-billable work) expands to use available time. You have to be constantly at work simplifying and eliminating — changing practices and procedures in pursuit of excellence and more partner income.

In order to manage change, you first need to understand its behavior. While we implement change to improve, to move from one level of performance or benefit to a higher level, the first impact of change is a downward spike in performance. The benefits of change are not immediate and do not follow a smooth linear line of improvement. The graphic below illustrates the impact of change on performance:

 

The initial impact of change results in a downward spike in performance. The change curve turns upward only over time. What makes the difference? What does it take before the curve makes its upward turn and then continues upward to reach the new targeted level of performance? The magic ingredient is “KASH”. KASH stands for new Knowledge which, when combined with the right Attitude, results in new Skills, which, through use, become Habit

Management’s first opportunity to make change successful is to tailor change so as to reduce the size of the downward spike. To put it another way, the right way to implement change is incrementally. The smaller the change, the smaller the downward spike. If the change is small enough, the downward spike will be imperceptible and the disruption to the business insignificant. Thus, it follows that a series of smaller incremental changes to achieve an end objective will be more likely to succeed and have less negative impact due to a downward spike in the change curve.

The next opportunity involves management push and pull. These are steps you can take to push against the downward spike in order to make it shallower and so as to pull upward encouraging the downward spike to begin its upward journey more quickly:

Form a change group. People resist change they don’t understand or change that is “done to them”. By forming change groups to help prepare and plan for the change, you give people the opportunity to buy into it. That makes the change and the plan for making it successful their own, and that supplies the key ingredient of successful change—Attitude.

Create a new Knowledge handbook. Formalize the process of giving those involved with the change or to be impacted by the change with the needed new knowledge. Don’t short change training. Involve the change group in development of the training plan and in the dissemination of the needed new information throughout the firm.

Practice Ceremonialism. Just as early weight loss reinforces your goal and encourages you to stick to your diet, so can early accomplishments of your firm’s planned change. For that to happen, however, management has to take the effort to recognize early achievements and accomplishments of the people involved. Rewards, certificates, office-wide announcements of accomplishments—all contribute to a climate that encourages the upward movement of the change curve.

Provide Extra Management Attention. Give the areas affected by the change extra management attention until the desired improvement has been achieved. That means taking steps to measure progress and report it frequently. It means communicating the goal of the change frequently and how that goal will benefit those being affected by the change. It means clearly exhibiting management's support of the change. Increased attention alone (the Hawthorn effect) has a positive, if short term, impact on performance, thus flattening the downward spike of the change curve.

Give change a chance. Remember, it takes time for new skills to become habit. Businesses that do not understand the change curve are often observed reacting to the natural downward spike by implementing more change. This slot machine style of change results in a continuous swirling down of the business to lower and lower levels of performance. The lucky businesses going through slot machine change will fire the culprit manager before the business is destroyed. The unlucky ones will not act in time.

 

Morepartnerincome.com is sponsored by Juris®. For information about Juris products and services for increasing law firm performance and partner income contact Juris National Sales Center:

877/377-3740, e-mail info@juris.com or go to www.Juris.com.

 

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