Revenue-Focused Leadership

A Comprehensive Approach: Customized Training, Leadership Planning, and Coaching

To be truly effective, a leadership program must be designed to meet the needs of your firm, your groups, and each individual leader. Training programs alone are not enough, as they are more about education than changing behavior. Our approach, which uses a combination of personal and group planning, training, and months of follow-up individualized leadership coaching, will help your leaders ingrain new skills, accelerate implementation, and enhance accountability.

Our program is not a theory-laced, academic abstraction on leadership. It is a very practical, action-oriented approach to increasing revenue, delivering higher levels of client service, and inspiring group members to engage in focused business development activities. The end result is that your leaders will become better equipped to get their lawyers to act on your most important strategic initiatives.

We start by conducting telephone interviews with key leaders to understand the big picture and to learn how to blend our method into your existing culture. We then design and deliver a customized, interactive training workshop and brainstorming session. The workshop provides a foundation and common language around law firm leadership, it delivers best practices from other law firms as well as other industries, and it engages leaders in discussions that can drive decisions on key leadership issues facing the firm.

Revenue-Focused

One of the most important roles of a leader is to focus lawyers on achieving the ultimate prize: attracting and retaining high quality clients. Few leaders, however, receive adequate training and ongoing support to effectively carry out this responsibility. Firms that recognize and address this "leadership gap" will clearly enjoy significant competitive advantages.

Our Revenue-Focused Leadership program is designed to help leaders at all levels find and keep great clients. The process was developed after working with thousands of law firm leaders, partners, and associates for over thirteen years at nearly one hundred law firms across North America. It also incorporates best practices in business development and leadership learned while working with accounting firms, consulting firms, and top corporations such as Zurich Financial Services, Sun Microsystems, Agilent Technologies, and Olin Corporation.

Specialized Expertise in the Legal Industry

While it is easy to find consultants, trainers, or coaches who can work with leaders, it is much more challenging to find people who fully understand our profession, who are lawyers themselves, who have worked with thousands of lawyers, and who understand how to motivate action around desired behaviors in the unique setting of a law firm. Fewer still can blend the principles of leadership with the practical ability to find, attract, and retain excellent clients. Our trainers and coaches have the types of backgrounds that make us uniquely qualified to work with all types of law firm leaders.

Overcoming Common Challenges

Our overarching mission is to help you create a sustainable leadership process that blends seamlessly into your firm's unique culture. To effectively accomplish this goal, we must understand and address issues such as:

• The priority of the billable hour
• Lack of time devoted to leadership roles
• Misaligned compensation systems
• Low motivation
• Resistance to change
• Cynicism and lack of trust
• Weak implementation
• Poor internal communication
• Lack of individual alignment to group and firm-wide goals
• Undefined roles and responsibilities
• Lack of tangible and measurable results

Tangible Benefits and Results from the “Revenue-Focused Leadership” Approach

Benefits:

• Customized to the specific needs of your firm and each individual leader
• On-site delivery reduces days of lost billable time to off-site, multi-day training programs
• Focuses business development activity in alignment with strategic goals
• Increases the quality and quantity of business development activity
• Captures business that might be lost to other firms
• Identifies and addresses issues that could derail successful implementation
• Incorporates internal and external best practices
• Supports development of a business development-driven culture

Examples of Results:

• Accelerated cross-selling throughout the firm
• Realistic marketing plans that groups will support
• Enhanced communication and collaboration between groups and offices
• Inspired lawyers acting on group and individual plans
• Increased accountability
• More effective, action-oriented group meetings
• Group goals and measures
• Identified roles, responsibilities, and authority as leaders
• Aligned rewards and recognition to motivate desired behaviors
• Increased effectiveness of new leaders - “The First Hundred Days”
• Getting more done by doing less – the art of effective delegation
• Improved coaching and feedback skills
• Enhanced client focus and service
• Improved selling skills of individual lawyers
• Enhanced relationships with strategic referral sources

Three Months of Personalized Leadership Coaching

After years of working with leaders at all levels, we know that true change comes from what people do, rather than what they hear. Therefore, the real work begins after a training program, when leaders apply the lessons they have learned. That’s where coaching come in.

Since every leader has a different set of circumstances, challenges, skills, and areas to develop, personalized coaching provides the support they need, when they need it. With three months of follow-up telephone support your leaders will ingrain skills, accelerate implementation, and enhance accountability. Our seasoned coaches are catalysts who show leaders how to grow their practice groups, motivate their lawyers to act on personal and group initiatives, and create sustainable cultures of business development.

Who Should Participate?

These programs are specifically designed to support leaders who are responsible for guiding the business development activities of lawyers and staff such as managing partners, department chairs, practice group/industry group/client team leaders, office managing partners, and other major initiative leaders.

Program Delivery

Our consultants deliver the following in a typical leadership program:

• Conduct interviews with selected leaders
• Create a customized approach specifically focused on the needs of your firm/group
• Design and lead a training and planning workshop
• Meet one-on-one with each leader to begin building customized action plans
• Provide (as needed) templates for group and individual planning
• Conduct three months of individual telephone coaching scaled to each leader's skill and needs
• Participate in leadership group conference calls

Other Leadership Programs

Client-Focused Leadership

Client-Focused Leadership takes a more intensive look at existing clients. Client-Focused leaders have read the research, listened to their clients, and understand that getting (and staying) hired is based on how well they serve their existing clients. They realize the bar is constantly rising. They know they are competing to attract many kinds of “clients”, not just those in need of legal services, but also potential referral sources, laterals, staff, and the community at-large. A Client-Focused Leadership program can include:

• Understanding methods for delivering superior client service
• Institutionalizing systems and procedures that support the delivery of superior service
• Developing internal rewards and recognition systems that reinforce desired behaviors
• Generating buy-in, accountability, and action from individual lawyers

Internally-Focused Leadership

Internally-Focused Leadership concentrates on building a solid infrastructure. This need might arise due to a recent merger, or through unexpected growth or consolidation. It might come from a realization that in order to survive, the firm must move from an older management style to a more modern business model. Proactive firms that are in the process of grooming the next generation of leaders might also use this approach. Internally-Focused Leadership addresses many factors, including:

• Financial growth and productivity
• Internal operations
• Staffing
• Training
• Recruiting
• Performance
• Delivery of legal services
• Firm culture