'Leadership’ - International law firm - 28 July 2007
Q5: “I have been recently re-elected as Managing Partner of an International Law Firm. We have been very successful over the past few years so there is little appetite for change. I feel my role should change from management to leading the firm into the 21st century. How can I decide what the future direction of the firm should be? And how can I get everyone in the firm behind the new direction.â€
RESPONSES
27 July – Assistant to Managing Partner, major international law firm
The answer lies in asking why you need to change. Environments change and if a business does not it suffers strategic drift, where you suddenly wake up one day to find you no longer match the world around you. Painful readjustment typically follows. So before you set off anywhere you need to first reach a view on what the future will look like in the mid and longer term and then consider what the implications of that are. If you are very successful, close to clients, fleet of foot, highly efficient and people love working for you then perhaps you need do nothing more than nuzzle the tiller now and again.
28 July – HR director, actuarial firm
One possible approach could be to celebrate success with a special publication or a series of events, and share your desire to uncover the critical success factors of recent years as a springboard for identifying those to build upon for the next decade or so.
You could then pursue this at a number of levels – conference for partners; staff workshops; new special suggestion scheme. When things are going well it is important that people know you won’t try to fix what’s working, so sometimes working with volunteers is best , in this case those who share your enthusiasm for thinking about the future in order to sustain success. Let momentum build gradually and when a clear direction begins to evolve, then consider how to engage your leadership team and spread enthusiasm through the firm informally through your volunteers and formally through good leadership.
30 July – HR director, top 20 accounting firm
Leadership - there are many definitions - my favourite being "Leadership is using your personal power to win the hearts and minds of people to achieve a common purpose". This definition encapsulates the elements required of leadership and helps steer decision making within leadership.
So in order to decide on the future direction of the firm - find the common purpose - ask the key stakeholders. This way key stakeholders will be behind the new direction because they formulated it, they will then need to use their leadership skills to cascade the commitments.
30 July – Training and learning consultant
Being properly concerned with the question, "what next, and why?" is the hallmark of good leadership. This is the start of the search for a new vision.
The easiest part of leadership is the 'vision thing'. Creating a vision is simply the act of visualising better conditions or circumstances than exist at present. Executives often work themselves up into a lather over the issue of vision creation. But the truth is that vision creation is far easier than changing behaviour to get alignment with the vision. The issue for leaders is not lack of vision but the failure of others to support that vision. This problem is magnified in many PSF's where the partnership culture values autonomy and individualism over and a shared sense of direction.
Leaders don't have to create visions themselves. But, at a minimum, they must initiate a process for developing a vision and then engage themselves fully in generating buy-in. Shared commitment to a vision can be built either through wide-scale participation in the act of its creation or through involvement immediately thereafter in its dissemination. In most case, that simply means creating opportunities for thorough discussion so everyone has a chance to ask questions, express concerns, and offer suggestions.
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