Of course, if you don’t want to do that, I refer you back to the first circular diagram in our first installment.
I have news for you. Whichever way you choose to run your firm, you will get the results you expect and you will have the finance, marketing, client relations, (etc.) functions you deserve.
If you want to continue undercutting “non-lawyers,” I sincerely hope it makes you feel a whole lot smarter and more virtuous. Because that’s all the good you’ll get out of it, and the price you—and all of your partners—will pay for your juvenile self-indulgence is contributing to undermining your firm’s future business competitiveness in this brave new world.
A final point.
Throughout this series, we’ve been talking about business functions such as finance, IT, and marketing. We’ve also talked about distributing leadership down, engaging people through developing a “meaning quotient” and explaining how that vision will make the firm, society, clients, their team, and themselves, all better off.
These seem like things that can be “managed” in the most classic sense: Administered, directed, governed, handled, regulated and controlled. And indeed they can be so.
But there’s one prior condition which is absolutely prerequisite to any of this working with your firm’s C-suite, and it doesn’t begin with management, recruitment, compensation, or organizational charts. It begins at a far more fundamental level.
It begins with respect.
