Thread by @jkubicki

9 bottlenecks ("BN"), wastes, and delusions law firm business teams (aka. staff or, worse, support staff) create for themselves but struggle to realize and be aware of. And how to remove them.👇🧵 #lawtwitter #biglaw

Many law firm biz teams are conveyor belts, with one big hopper at end labeled “YES". Few use off-ramps to redirect, reject, refine the barrage of requests and demands constantly flowing into the “Yes Hopper.” This creates/supports many unhealthy systemic cultural and org. issues

Yes, you can read that as the Business of Law talent contributes directly to the culture of the firm – good or bad. They are not innocent bystanders.

BN1 - One of the most prolific problems I cont. to see while coaching/advising firm leaders (lawyers and business) is there’s too much “work in progress” that makes everyone busy, but very few executing.

In firms, busy is viewed as a great thing. Busy = working and because the dominant economic model of firms is counting + billing minutes, busy suffices. Not necessarily quality or output. Yes, the billable hour emphasizes busy so much; business talent behavior is influenced.

BN2 - When business teams are swamped saying Yes to all things, they don’t spend time understanding, shaping, or considering the work they do. It is just “get busy” applied equally across the board with no sequencing, prioritizing, or coordinating.

With no research or discovery effort to better understand requests – the sheer volume of Yes, turns each business team into a delivery team where specialization and specific skills are diluted by caring more about being responsive and available - saying Yes.

BN3 - This makes it crazy hard for teams to “demonstrate their unique value” as they are so overcommitted and misaligned between their key skills and their work that they simply struggle to even deliver on the lowest value of the requests coming it.

BN4 - firm leaders and partners see only the lowest value of delivery coming from these teams, so they won't see them as specialized with unique resources – rather they are viewed as fungible humans (e.g., “staff”) willing to do anything asked regardless of ability or capacity.

BN5 - Lowest value of delivery contributes to the predictable turnover/recycling of biz talent in the market – where firm leaders ultimately lack an investment thesis in a specific function (see Innovation teams) so they don’t know how to invest – they simply switch leadership.

BN6 - As a result, the "busyness" by these teams, chokes & prevents them from seeking high-performance or distinction based on measurable business impacts. Rather sadly, most biz folks are then trained to crave anecdotal quality of measures like “a partner said I did a good job.”

This creates a vicious cycle of biz talent not seeking new skills or knowledge but rather focusing on collecting partner remarks and “atta-boys!” and “atta-girls!” None of which can be used to demonstrably prove a positive impact to the business of the firm.

All of this makes it super hard to motivate biz teams stuck in this loop, and it’s even harder to recruit and retain the best talent. Apathy, nervousness, and insecurity take hold as the team calculates its worth based on hearsay, hyperbole, and politeness (or not) of partners.

This is why I have been driving the notion of saying “no” for so long when working with biz teams. No can mean, “yes, once we learn x,” or “yes, we need to execute y first,” or “yes, and this is our method of proceeding.” No does not have to be a hard no – and often I can’t be.

BN7 Warning, when business leaders begin to say “no” – something harmful often occurs. That leader ends up looking at the work ahead, gets intimidated or worried about execution and then tries to make the argument to increase budgets to hire outside experts or increase headcount

This adds to the perception that this business leader and their team lack specialized skills and talents. But few in these circumstances – either business or firm leaders – suggest taking the budget $$ ask to invest in skills building for existing team to make them more capable.

BN8 Frequently when this option is expressed, the reply by business and firm leaders is that they don’t want to invest in the biz talent as it will likely lead to that talent leaving the firm based on their new skills – market to new firm and “ladder up” in a new job elsewhere.

Thus another vicious cycle – talent conveyor belt creates team disruption.

This is tolerated because firms often promote the initiation of work rather than completion of it. It’s easy & “fun” to start things. Once the need for rigor, resilience and management enters, many people fatigue, lose interest, or get lost not knowing how to execute.

The lack of specialization in business teams means that there is no doctrine or method to apply in seeking execution. Teams resort to setting meetings and writing emails - using these as proxies for progress but not actually doing the necessary work.

Business teams therefore live and thrive in a “Yes” culture devoid of a strategy or means of demonstrating how and why they choose to work on what they do – they don’t choose, they say Yes.

And BN9 - Teams optimize around being responsive and maximizing access which leads to the reality where nothing is done particularly well, and the desired business outcomes are unachieved.

Problems & opportunities are then only minimally explored, addressed, and executed. Biz teams are not viewed as strategic partners to the business of the firm. So meaningful problems often don’t come to them and lawyers determine they should address them themselves.

This creates another vicious cycle - lawyer lead and business teams will “support” them. Biz teams can and should lead on some things. Another thread coming on how to address these.

2nd thread (jsut adding here).

Firms often lack actionable strategies and misunderstand biz models. Without clear strategies, there are no priorities to focus on but for status quo. Thus any project that does not support status quo has very low conviction around.

Few want to recognize this, so they have fun “starting it” but know deep inside it is doomed to fail.

To address lack of specialization, ability to prioritize, perception of fungibility, general state of apathy and insecurity, and lack of strategic value within their firm, business teams can do the following:

Get Measured: begin capturing the inventory of requests and projects your team is working on. Use this to discover similarities, outliers, least valuable, most challenging, and best fit for the team.

Make a Source: most teams lack a single source of truth for all the requests and works in progress. It lives in team members’ inboxes or their heads creating zero visibility and no ability to measure, track, optimize or redirect.

Got Capabilities?: when was the last time the team leader interrogated and mapped the true skills of each team member? This can be hard as often there is a lack of experience, lack of use, or misunderstanding over what their skills are. But often there are diamonds to be found!

Discern Firm Priorities: while most firms lack an actionable and articulable strategy, they do focus efforts, communication, & actions on particular elements of their business. Right now, associate retention is a critical one.

Use these priorities to map your teams’ capabilities and prior requests against. This aligns the work with the business of the firm.

Set Team Strategy: yes, business functions need their own strategy, without one they flail (see this entire thread). How? Start by choosing a handful of the most critical firm priorities. Define what your team goal should be in helping address it.

Then, where will you focus and what will success look like. Then, how will you measure effort and outcome/impact. And how will team organize and manage each effort.

Learn & Commit to Methods: does the team address requests in an ad hoc, anything goes manner? Does each workstream look the same (meeting upon meeting)? Business teams must investigate and adopt specific work methods. Design, agile, swarm, workshopping, cadence, etc.

This optimizes, professionalizes, and crystalizes the team’s value and work.

Learn the Business: so that you can start the process of defining MBIs – measurable business impacts. These separate mature high-performing teams from mediocre teams. What impact can the team have on the business of the firm?

Don’t over-rely or focus on the balance sheet. Seek other measures too – knowledge transfer, talent engagement, work product utilization, etc.

Develop the Narrative: each business team should be able to articulate, with specificity, its strategies, unique capabilities, methods of work, and measurable business impact.

Write this down on a one-pager “[business team] Intro Briefing” to be shared with new lawyers and new employees. Get an elevator pitch for random casual opportunities to explain the team.

Business teams (the business of law) hold immense untapped and hidden competitive advantage for law firms. They just haven’t realized it yet. There are warts and blindspots within these teams. That’s okay as long as the team can be courageous enought to look in the mirror.

Use this to drive forward. Better work. Better outcomes. Better lives await. That's it . . . phew!