Effectiveness and Intellectual Capital

Knowing how an organization works is a pre-requisite to good management and effective leadership. Energy, focus and discipline must be introduced to manage a group of legal professionals. Successful organizations require people who are on their toes, not on their heels. These are resourceful people who provide leadership at their own levels. They may lead a practice area, industry specialty groups, a region, or the relationship with a significant client group within the organization. Ideally, each lawyer creates a top-to-bottom “chain of leadership” that supports the strategic intent of the company.

The Role of Firm Leadership

Legal leadership has many responsibilities. Contributing to the effectiveness of the company is a key responsibility, perhaps the most important one. The legal leadership team must execute a cycle of activities essential for the sustainable development of the department’s members and of others in the company. They must anticipate through strategic assessment and opportunity identification. Then they must adapt through development and execution. Some law departments complete the cycle once, using a strategic business planning process. But too few repeat the planning cycle every three to five years.

Effective leaders of all types have one thing in common. Their followers produce good results. Thinking of leaders in terms of results offers a practical approach to suggesting what they must do to manage an effective and innovative legal team. Frank, Porter and Gertz proposed six things that followers need to do to get results. They must

• know what to do
• know how to do it
• know why they are doing it
• want to do it
• have the resources to do it, and
• believe that they have the leadership to do it

Non-Legal Work

Too many professionals think that doing non-legal work such as training or developing work product is less important than client work. Our interviews with law departments ask counsel how they spend their time and on what they “like” to spend their time. Unsurprisingly, they prefer tasks that provide recognition from the client, tasks which are intellectually stimulating, and work which can contribute measurably to personal income. Timely, effective contributions to developmental functions are held in lower regard and are too rare in law departments.

A law department should undertake a comprehensive planning program to position itself properly in the company. Dozens of tasks requiring hundreds of hours to carry out may be identified. Some will be referred to professional, non-lawyer employees. But many others cannot be delegated. Instead, they are piled onto the backs of a few senior counsel who must manage part of a practice, as well as the crises and opportunities which come up every month. Experience tells us that too few people always have too much to do and not enough time to do it in. Other lawyers in the department are only too relieved to concentrate responsibility for important non-legal work in the hands of others. Too few organizations are prepared to quantify this responsibility and reward it appropriately.

The RASCI Chart

During my more than 30 years as an executive and management consultant, I have read and seen a great deal about techniques and tools to get things done. Some relate to time management, and others to project management. Perhaps legal services as an industry sector are prone to more informal, relationship-based ways of planning, aligning and executing everything it takes to achieve effectiveness every year. Perhaps too many law departments still operate the same way they did 10 years ago and only measure success by number of lawyers, while seldom measuring their effectiveness and growth in intellectual capital.

One General Counsel of a specialty company servicing the oil and gas industry was part of a management team that subscribed to the RASCI chart:

• R = Responsible: the person owns the problem/project
• A = Accountable: the person “R” is accountable to. He or she must approve the work before it can proceed.
• S = Supportive: this person or group of persons can provide resources or can play a supporting role in implementation
• C = Consulted: refers to those who must be consulted, as they have the information and/or the capability necessary to complete the work.
• I = Informed: these are the people who must be informed and satisfied with the results, but may not be consulted.

Management literature often refers to the RACI chart, and only includes the “S” if appropriate. It takes a certain discipline for legal leadership to manage a law department this way. Good business planning, project management skills, a RASCI approach to managing sustainable development, and a compensation system that is aligned to reward all forms of contribution constitute the fundamentals. And without the fundamentals in place, the members of the law department will not know what to do, how to do it, and why they are doing it. They will not have the resources to do it, so they will not want to do it. After all of that, they certainly will not believe that they have the leadership to do it.