Leading and learning

Business school rhetoric along the lines of 'people are our most important asset' or ' you will become who you hire' has become somewhat tired in recent years. Why? Because despite the clever management speak, it is a fact that people in most organisations are expendable. This may sound like heresy, but in most businesses competitive advantage does not rely directly on the retention, motivation and behaviour of particular individuals. It relies, instead, on things like technology, product design or effective distribution networks. So in most commercial organisations, profit performance is not necessarily linked directly with 'people assets'.

This is not the case for professional-service firms. We don't compete on the basis of technology or products, but on the performance and technical knowledge of people. We rely, even depend, on our ability to attract, retain and motivate our professional employees. If a professional-service firm is unable to hold onto its top performers '“ or is unable to attract the best graduates from the leading universities '“ clients soon notice and financial performance suffers.

The firms that recognise this and place people management and leadership at the top of their strategic priorities are those that are likely to win in today's marketplace. These firms will ensure that senior people worry as much about losing their star performers as they do about losing their key clients and will go to equally great lengths to stop either from happening. Partners will see people management and leadership as a key part of their role, just as they do client management. The senior partner, for example, might spend several days of each month on the firm's recruitment activities.

Looking for leaders

Management and leadership are two distinct, although complementary, activities. Both are needed in any successful business, but it is common for an organisation to be over-managed and under-led. In an increasingly competitive marketplace, it is essential any organisation gets the balance right. What's the difference? Generally speaking, management is about coping with complexity. Leadership, by contrast, is about coping with change. The responsibilities of management, for example, include:

·        Planning and budgeting '“ setting targets or goals, establishing detailed plans to achieve those goals and allocating resources to those plans;

·        Organising and staffing '“ creating a team and a set of roles to accomplish the plan. Staffing the roles with qualified people and delegating responsibility to deliver aspects of the plan;

·        Controlling and problem solving '“ monitoring results against the plan and identifying issues for resolution.

The aims of leadership include:

·        Setting direction '“ developing a vision for the future along with strategies for producing the changes needed to achieve the vision;

·        Aligning people with the vision and strategy '“ working with the team members to ensure that the strategy is understood and that they are committed to its success;

·        Motivating and inspiring '“ appealing to people at a human level; generating energy and commitment; translating strategy into local plans and actions; helping others to change; and acting as a role model.

What this means at CMS

Senior people at CMS Cameron McKenna must act as leaders as well as managers '“ whether with clients, in the wider marketplace or with our people.

This means our leaders should:

·        Inspire and motivate others;

·        Be confident in business situations and have the confidence of others;

·        Produce and embrace imaginative ideas, being open-minded to new ideas and solutions for both clients and the firm;

·        Take ownership of the business strategy and make sure our values are embedded in the practice;

·        Be good role models and engender trust and respect;

·        Be passionate about the firm and its people;

·        Provide clear, open and honest messages to both teams and colleagues.

We aim to ensure that leadership potential features very prominently in our selection and succession processes for senior roles in the firm. We have also developed a more formal leadership-development programme, which means continuing to send senior people to Harvard Business School and supplementing this with a modular leadership course developed locally with the City of London Business School. Leadership development is further emphasised through existing training programmes across the firm.

Recruitment

The firm's immediate task is to ensure it can attract more high-potential candidates than it can accommodate at all levels '“ that is, graduate, assistant and partner. The firm is very successful at converting offers to acceptances, but it needs to attract more people in the first place.

In practice, this will mean:

1.      Updating and re-launching the graduate-recruitment process. We aim to raise our profile with key universities by building relationships with key academic staff and sponsoring
CMS Cameron McKenna events on campus. We have appointed a graduate-recruitment partner to lead the process and coordinate the involvement of other partners.

2.      Raising our profile in the legal employment market. We will not only seek to advertise for particular vacancies, but will also promote ourselves as an employer of choice. This will involve advertising the firm and its qualities as an employer in the legal press. It will also be an international initiative, covering not just the UK, but also Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and countries such as Australia and Canada, which have already proved to be a productive source of high-quality candidates.

3.      Further standardising and updating the selection processes to ensure the highest-quality candidates who are culturally compatible. This means developing a range of assessment tools and training those who make recruitment decisions in their effective use.

4.      Ensuring recruitment activity is driven by business strategy. This means continuing to integrate manpower planning with business planning and carrying out the recruitment plans that support the business needs.

5.      Getting the profile of assistants right. Law firms can't succeed with a high proportion of assistants having five years plus post-qualification experience (PQE) and too few junior assistants below them. Continuing skill and commitment is needed to mentor, nurture, develop, retain and promote newly-qualified assistants as well.

Retention

People choose to stay in an organisation for a number of reasons. A competitive salary and benefits package is just the start.

Professional staff want to learn. They have already proved they are good at learning and they generally enjoy it. They also know that learning increases their market value. They join one firm rather than another because they think it will be worth more to them to work there. The education they value, and which we must provide, has to be both practical and marketable.

Increasingly, they also want career options other than partnership. It is no longer a given that young solicitors joining the firm will see the firm as their first and only employer. Nowadays, the key question they will ask is 'What are you going to do to help me continue developing and make me more marketable in the future?'

People also value affiliation, teamwork and leadership. They like to work with other like-minded individuals; to feel as though their work is making a difference; and that they are appreciated.

Our statistics show that lawyers who train with us generate over 25 per cent more revenue per head than those we recruit at some stage after qualification. This creates two challenges: to retain as many of those who train with us as possible and to improve the fee generation of lateral recruits.

Law firms need to be clear about the range of career options available to solicitors, and agree what good performance looks like and how it should be rewarded. A critical test of the ability of the partners in a team is whether they can both grow their business to support a new partner and raise a new partner through the ranks.

Developing a performance-management and appraisal process that is simple to understand, transparent in intent and capable of being adopted consistently across the firm is critical. It is also important for law firms to demonstrate their commitment to training, legal and non-legal. We have therefore appointed a training partner to lead and coordinate training initiatives across the firm.

Reaching for stars

Look at any great professional-service firm and ask the question 'which came first, the client or the star performer?' The star performer wins every time. Professional firms achieve and maintain greatness by attracting, retaining and motivating the right people who, in turn, attract and retain clients, who attract more star performers, and so it continues.

At CMS Cameron McKenna the strategy is to differentiate ourselves through a committed approach to building lasting client relationships; better management of people; more teamwork and a focus on personal development. Much has been achieved in all of these areas over the past three years. Perhaps inevitably, however, it has proved easier to make significant progress on the client relationship side of the equation, but the point remains that people are as hard to find and to keep. They are no more expendable than their clients.

Finding the balance between excellent client service and excellent people management is critical. The so-called 'war for talent' is more acute than ever. The challenge is to continue dedicating time and energy to becoming as well-known for how we look after our people as our client care. Perhaps it is appropriate to end on another business-school cliché: 'The people we pay are at least as important as the