Multiple factors

Motivation is what causes us to take action. It is what drives us to achieve our goals. It is also what enables law firm owners and managers to achieve commercial objectives through their workforce. Motivation is necessary for growth and development, which is what businesses must have if they are to avoid stagnation and shrinkage.

Consistently motivating our workforce is a key skill for everyone who wants to excel personally and corporately as an owner and a de facto leader. This is especially true at times like these when many lawyers feel ‘stuck’ in some way as a result of the inertia created by the economic crisis.

Human nature

Creating and sustaining a well-motivated, productive workforce is the prerequisite of maximal business success. But the nature of human motivation is commonly misunderstood and its importance is underestimated. This means that management often makes mistakes and then repeats them endlessly in myriad inadvertent variety that always generates the same result.

So the reason for examining ‘the theory’ is not for academic interest alone (although as thoughtful private client lawyers we typically appreciate that), but to get out of the error loop and move ahead.

The most influential theorists in the field of motivation are Maslow (hierarchy of needs), McGregor (theory X and theory Y) and Herzberg, Mausner and Snyderman (two-factor theory). In this column I will examine Maslow and McGregor. Next time I will take a look at the others.

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs identifies five different types of needs arranged in a hierarchical order. People are initially motivated by the needs at the lowest level of need hierarchy, and once this need is met they want to satisfy those at the next higher levels.

1. Physiological needs: hunger, thirst, sleep. From a law firm’s perspective, a ‘good working environment’.

2. Safety needs: personal security, financial security, good health, protection of goods. From a law firm’s perspective, ‘the steady job’, ‘some cash in the bank’, ‘a decent pension scheme’.

3. Social needs: ‘belongingness’. From a law firm’s perspective, feeling part of the business culture and finding it supportive.

4. Self esteem: self respect, as evidenced by confidence and independence and being respected by others. From a law firm’s perspective, this emphasises the need for people to be treated properly as individuals, not as cogs and coglets, and for respect building and reward/status recognition systems – which are not typified by nepotism.

5. Self actualisation: the desire to become more of who you are in terms of your potential for personal development, growth and accomplishments. From a law firm’s perspective, a person will only maximise this and the higher performance which can flow from it if they are ‘in the right role in the right place’.

This approach can be criticised as being simplistic as it is culturally biased towards individualistic societies such as our own. It also takes little account of sub-cultural and age differences even within ours. Similarly, it takes no account of personal biases. Some things are far more important to some people than others and that balance also varies over time.
Broadly, however, from a law firm owner’s perspective, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs suggests we need to consider carefully where our colleagues, teams and employees are at. It will influence the ways we need to respond to their needs, in the ways which motivate them best. That is not necessarily by the same thing as would motivate us. Private client lawyers tend to be different beasts from litigators and commercial lawyers, for example. It pays to check out the differences and recognise them.

In terms of other varieties of motivation, remote access to the office computer 24 hours a day seven days a week, including from the poolside on holiday, would not motivate me (especially as my loved ones might become violent), but if it did not motivate some lawyers then my fan mail would be so much depleted I might well become demotivated.

Poles apart

In The Human Side of Enterprise (McGraw-Hill, 1960) Douglas McGregor suggested that there were two primary ways in which owners and managers might look at motivating employees. X represented a traditional perspective on what motivates people and Y represented a possible alternative based on a number of hypotheses. McGregor did not advocate either X or Y, as some commentary appears to suggest, but he did believe that managers should consider what might work best in their business and think creatively around the subject. I have to say my own bias is rather obvious in my take on the subject.

Theory X is supposedly the traditional perspective of the employer/manager:

1. People are lazy, dislike work and try to avoid it.

2. Close supervision, direction and threats are necessary to ensure employees work toward the achievement of a company’s objectives.

3. The average person:

• wants to be directed;

• does not like responsibility;

• has little ambition; and

• seeks security as their priority.

It implies that the law firm owner/manger’s role is to structure the employees work and fire them up to do it. But also that there is a culture of blame the employee and not the system, not the policy, not the training and certainly not the manager. It looks peculiarly narrow and self-righteous so far as law firm owners and managers are concerned – even Dickensian.

But it is certainly not impossible to find among law firms even today. It tends to be found in smaller firms that are getting smaller, but it can also haunt some far more modern establishments, especially in the realms where paralegals and legal executives are relied upon (i.e. mercilessly oppressed and exploited).

Theory Y was presented as a series of unproven hypotheses:

1. Work is as natural as play or idleness.

2. Close supervision, direction and threats are not the only way to achieve a company’s objectives.

3. An employee’s commitment to company objectives is a function of the rewards they associate with meeting them.

4. The average person:

• accepts responsibility under the right conditions;

• seeks responsibility under the right conditions;

• is imaginative;

• is ingenious;

• is creative;

• has untapped goodwill and energy; and

• is intellectually and practically underestimated and underused.?

Theory Y is usually considered nowadays to be a more accurate general description of the working self than theory X. Much of what we read in terms of management theory tends to assume it is a fact and because most of us tend to have a fairly positive view of our own nature and that of people we think it ‘must’ be true.

Starting point

But it is important to not assume that what we would like to see as a universal truth is indeed true in relation to our own law firm. McGregor rightly suggests that people are not a homogenous whole motivated by the same things.

Overall though, theory Y is usually considered a more accurate description of human nature and it is therefore a good place to start when considering what might work best in terms of spurring business development and growth by improving motivation. But it also needs to contain structures that contain some elements of theory X, most notably in terms of accountability. It is possible to be highly self motivated and well out of line. Partners be aware and beware.

The result is maybe a less idealised but more balanced and realistic set of management expectations. The essential self motivation implied by an established theory Y type law firm culture may be something to aspire towards in the workplace rather than something that already exists under the surface as a hidden universal or which can be brought about quickly. Change, even if well intentioned, can generate suspicion, at least in the short term.

McGregor’s message is that we should think before we assume and also ask questions of ourselves and all the relevant people before we seek to implement a particular ‘solution’ to the issue of motivation. But while motivation is a tricky issue, it must be a priority, because it is a pre-requisite of all effective business development and growth and in an era of increased competition for law firms, whatever our discipline, that means us.

In closing, I must add a quotation from a surprisingly witty old Victorian: “The bureaucracy is a circle from which one cannot escape. Its hierarchy is a hierarchy of knowledge. The top entrusts the understanding of detail to the lower levels, while the lower levels credit the top with understanding of the general, and so all are mutually deceived” (Karl Marx). Now try reading it again, replacing the word ‘bureaucracy’ with ‘law firm’.

David Coldrick is a consultant at Wrigleys Solicitors