People in every firm we have visited talk about building a team, working as a team, or their team, but few understood how to create team work or how to develop a high performance team. Being part of a team has a lot to do with the understanding of the mission or objectives of the law firm you work for and feeling like you are part of it. In a team-oriented environment, you contribute to the overall success of the firm. Even though you have a specific job function and you belong to a specific team, you are unified with team members to accomplish the overall objectives of the firm. Usually the objective of the firm includes a positive reputation, good client service, a retirement resource for the owner, or even some higher moral objective. When there is no focus on the vision of the firm or no signs of teamwork I will always find a firm owner that is frustrated and overworked.
The problem I see is that the culture of a small law firm is not about teams. To be blunt, it is more like it is all about the owner or it is all about the job. I see this when we talk about teams, strategic planning or even becoming a high performance firm. Instead of being focused on a higher purpose people are focused on the immediate job. There is very little teamwork or support and there is a surprising lack of focus on the end result. If it is all about the owner and it is rare that any control is delegated to a team, the owner is tracking everything from the case settlement down to when the letters get sent out.
It is not uncommon to be invited into a law firm to do a business analysis and find a poor return on investment. When we drill down through all the data and studies we almost always find that there is no well thought out vision for the firm, there has been no strategic planning and the staff is thought of as individual skills. There is no common set of expectations because the entire group is interrupt driven. We can produce all the fancy charts that show that a high performance team is more effective but the pressures of the day prevail.
When we find this situation we slowly integrate high performance concepts. The culture cannot be changed overnight and if the firm leadership does not embrace the new ideas the culture will never change. It all comes down to what you, as the leader, believe in. I am all for developing strategic plans, a well thought out vision, or a high performance firm. I believe that the results are better, the profits are higher and the work culture is happier when you have a true team in place. I will also say that you can’t fight the tide without getting tired (an old saying that I picked up from my days in Cape Cod). If it is truly an all about me work culture driven by the leadership and they do not want to change, then why spin your wheels forming a team you really don’t want. I have seen law firms spend a lot of resource to develop strategic plans, processes, and teams that are abandoned shortly after forming. Even when it is all about the owner, that owner still must figure out what they want.
All that philosophy is fine and dandy for a board meeting presentation. The bigger question I have is; what do you do if the work culture is all about the owner and you happen to be a member of the staff. Unfortunately this type of work culture has the potential to be competitive. This is not a happy place. This is a winner takes all kind of environment. The secret of success is discovering the rules of the game and who is in charge. This works great for a one person team, but grows more and more ineffective as the size of the team grows. There are many theories about what the dividing point is, anywhere from 5 to 25 members of the staff. My best guess is between 5 and 10 depending on the variety of jobs in the mix.
One of the most common problems we find is a small firm that is growing and the old crew does not want to learn new ways.
