Warlords, Dickensian Sweatshops, and Drill Sergeants

David Maister confesses: 

"I have spent twenty years trying to say all professions look similar and can learn from each other, but I’m finally prepared to concede that lawyers are different – and it has nothing to do with economics."

In a piece titled "Warlords and Dickensian Factory Owners," David compares the modern day law firm to both feudal peasants terrorized by the warlord into paying tribute, and the Dickensian factory where you can, in fact, make an awful lot of money if you work people to the bone, slash costs, and have a heart of stone at the mere mention of phrases like "work/life balance."  

Partners defend this approach by appeal to economic necessity in the short run:  "If we don't keep PPP up, we'll lose our rainmakers and the firm will be devastated." 

Doesn't this fly in the face of what by now are mountains of research showing that genuinely engaged and energized employees, sharing a firm-wide vision, are the strongest driver of profitability known to management science?  Yes, it does:   But it takes years of consistent vision, and action, to get to that point.  What's worse, none of the energy expended in creating that environment shows any financial return until, essentially, the environment has been transformed.  Wall Street's, or your partners', insistence on performance this quarter is hard to square with that time-consuming and uncertain investment.

This is also where "lawyers are different" comes in. Consider that lawyers are socialized unlike members of any other profession or followers of any other discipline:

"Martin Seligman [writes] in his book AUTHENTIC HAPPINESS: “Lawyers are trained to be aggressive, judgmental, intellectual, analytical and emotionally detached. This produces predictable emotional consequences…he or she will be depressed, anxious and angry a lot of the time”."

Or, consider a psychographic test measuring "sociability," with the median American defined as scoring 50 on a 1—100 scale:  Lawyers' mean score was 8.  Put 250 Type A's with that personality profile in charge of a $100+ million/year enterprise, and you should not expect a touchy-feely environment to spontaneously emerge.

But we're serious here, folks. 

Is the only way to create a high-performance organization to yell, chastise, berate, intimidate, and generally treat your "colleagues" as enemy aliens?  It is most assuredly not the only way; but it has an indisputable track record of being a way.  And, not to discount its attractions, it has the virtues of simplicity, directness, and economy of action.  As everyone from NFL coaches to Parris Island drill sergeants would testify, it dispenses with the need to painstakingly psychoanalyze what subtle combination of persuasive buttons need to be pushed—in different combinations for each person, of course—to motivate your troops. 

I will further grant there are times and places where peremptory and unilateral emergency injunctions are called for:  Maister uses the examples of a combat unit or a small child nearing a hot stove.  But these are surely far removed from towers in Manhattan's canyons. 

But back to the short-term pressure cooker vs. the longer-term vision needed to escape this inhumane behavior pattern.

In Practice What You Preach, Maister reports the results of a survey of 6,500 people in 139 offices of 29 firms in 15 countries, which demonstrates conclusively (to me at least), that employee attitudes drive profitability, and not the other way around.   What "attitudes" would those be, precisely?

• A palpable sense of engagement is number one.  Are people "turned on" by coming to work? Can they tell you, without prompting and in a convincing fashion, what the firm stands for?

If this describes your firm, congratulations!  (And I'm available for interviews.)  But skeptical responses to the call for such a vision, in places where it doesn't exist, are far easier to come by:

• We don't have the luxury of thinking long-run.
• Not everyone can be engaged, or wants to be; some just want to put in their time and get paid.
• Whatever time we spend trying to move the firm in that direction is time not spent developing new clients and billing hours.
• ...and you can fill out the list.

And lest you think I'm casting aspersions on people who think that way, or that I believe it's only partners who have these attitudes, let me hasten to add that these attitudes are understandable, they're not intrinsically abusive, and clients and associates often feel very similarly, albeit from their own perspectives. 

Associates can feel that they're only in it to pay off their law school loans, or to get enough experience to be able to credibly interview for inhouse positions.  Clients, increasingly, issue RFP's and sponsor "beauty pageants" before awarding work; institutional relationships of longstanding are increasingly rare.  And to firms that do win work from sophisticated clients:   Be careful what you wish for!  Requests for discounts, volume billing, and Procrustean itemization of activities and expenses (the better to micromanage their costs) are on the way.

Can any of this be changed?  Can we, in fact, ever get back to the days of longer-term thinking, and a willingness to invest both time and money to build an enduring firm with a distinctive identity?  Maister is pessimistic:

"I’ve tried logic. It hasn’t worked well on non-believers. I’ve tried presenting conclusive data. It hasn’t worked well on non-believers. I’ve tried appealing to matters of principle, standards, values, and meaning. It hasn’t worked well on non-believers.

"I no longer believe people can be “converted” on this topic."

For those still willing to try, because the cause is as worthy as they come, try these steps on the road to change:

• Ignore the skeptics; you'll never win them over anyway.
• Start with the believers, and talk to their needs.
• Enlist allies.
• Celebrate small wins.
• Spread the word.
• Win a few more.
• Keep telling the story.
• Welcome the converted fence-sitters who decide you must be doing something right.
• And keep telling the story.