Have you got the guts to be remarkable?

“Something remarkable is worth talking about. Worth noticing. Exceptional. New. Interesting. It’s a Purple Cow. Boring stuff is invisible. It’s a brown cow.” – Seth Godin, Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable.

I am worried: every time I bring up the question of social media, personal branding or business development, I get the same answers. They are cast in the middle-of-the-road paradigm: “We had better not rock the (average) boat.”

I would love to signpost a few firms that have hit the jackpot with their offering, but, right now, with all the attention on ABSs, the next incarnation of the SRA handbook, the state of the market and disruptive technology, I sense that everyone is in idle mode. Some firms might be poking away, but who is genuinely setting out their stall to be remarkable?

Time to adapt

Legal services used to be easy. You operated in a closed market, the competition was predictable and your service only had to be good enough. Of course, the recession put paid to the grand plans of expansion, recruitment and eye-watering PEP figures, but radical change wasn’t a priority (reacting to circumstances, i.e. the downturn, doesn’t count). However, picture a scenario where the consumer is more confused than ever: TV advertising day and night; a change in the terminology from client to customer; a few shock tactics to keep them awake; and big brands all dangling one offer after another. Do you think you can continue to count on the same clients for their business?

Any managing partner worth their salt will already have read the riot act ‘change or die’, but how many people have heeded the message and started to change their daily practice? How much of your daily practice is really that different to two, three or even five years ago?

If you take something close to my heart – social media – I am concerned that too many firms are chasing the wrong thing. They are going for the clone model. Imagine in the next few years when every firm has a Twitter feed, a Facebook page, a LinkedIn company page and their website is replete with a blog for every practice area. Perhaps the early adopters will have built a permission asset and, together with their focused email marketing, have managed to earn enough attention so that they become the go-to provider in their area or geographical region – but don’t bet on it. I suspect the majority will have bugged the living daylights out of every passerby (“get our Twitter feed here...”) and managed to alienate more putative clients than they would ever have won. Or, and more likely, the content that they have focused on is a homogenised version of their subscription services, so that every firm looks (un)remarkably the same.

Service strategy

Whenever I ask those in a position to make a difference, what would be remarkable in their service offering, I get that sideways stare that suggests to me that they either don’t understand the question, or, more likely, they have no faith of delivering against that ideal.

But putting to one side the remarkable mantra, what do your clients really want? They want to deal with someone who cares and the service is boffo. That means you will have to throttle back on the number of matters you currently juggle, start liking your clients and treat them as a person and not a commodity.

Imagine if you made service your number one priority. How would that change the way you spoke about your clients, dealt with their complaints and billed them? For the enlightened, it might mean that you would be able to drop all that nonsense over non-recoverable codes, and have a super-pleasing dial on each file that you turned up to ten, rather than trying to dial it down under the auspices of managing your client’s ‘expectations’ (give them less in other words).

Turning it upside down

Also, the demographic in firms is all wrong. Those people who have the ‘power’ to effect change are the ones least likely to embrace change; they have invested too much in the status quo. If you truly want to set the legal world alight, how about going for a servant leadership programme or upending the pyramid structure and allowing the best ideas from the juniors to be taken forward? Even if this is too way out, then it should be the mantra of every leader in every department to give people the freedom, flexibility and autonomy to act on more of their ideas. That doesn’t mean you do lots of talking and nothing else. The point is that too many times people either go ignored or just don’t think they are important enough to stick their head above the parapet.

The legal profession should take a leaf out of the world of business. In an open market, those companies, no matter how successful, that refuse or that are unable to change go out of business eventually. If firms are not willing to risk more, create something remarkable – which means trying more stuff and, yes, failing – then, even allowing for the increase in the number of players, you might just find that your days are numbered.