From our perspective it was pure coincidence that this summer also saw publication in The New Yorker of Jill Lepore’s 6,000-word take-down of Clayton Christensen’s classic The Innovator’s Dilemma. But for driving home the value of the story of the firm Chair and the GC, it could not have come at a better time.
I won’t attempt to do justice to Lepore’s full-frontal assault on The Innovator’s Dilemma (I commend it to you, however), but if anyone ever wanted to launch a donnybrook over a classic business text, Lepore has given it her best shot. Consider just a few quick excerpts:
Most big ideas have loud critics. Not disruption. Disruptive innovation as the explanation for how change happens has been subject to little serious criticism… partly because disrupters ridicule doubters by charging them with fogyism [and partly because] innovation is the idea of progress jammed into a criticism-proof jack-in-the-box. [This era of disruption’s peaceable reign may be about to end with a bang—Bruce.]
Disruptive innovation as a theory of change is meant to serve both as a chronicle of the past (this has happened) and as a model for the future (it will keep happening). The strength of a prediction made from a model depends on the quality of the historical evidence and on the reliability of the methods used to gather and interpret it. Historical analysis proceeds from certain conditions regarding proof. None of these conditions have been met. [Broadside #1—Bruce.]
“The Innovator’s Dilemma” consists of a set of handpicked case studies, beginning with the disk-drive industry. “Nowhere in the history of business has there been an industry like disk drives,” Christensen writes, which makes it a very odd choice for an investigation designed to create a model for understanding other industries. [The shiv is officially out—Bruce.]
I won’t spoil Lepore’s entertaining exegesis for you any further, nor are these the pages in which to pass final judgment on whether Christensen unearthed a timeless insight or whether it’s yet another hot air balloon rapidly running out of fuel.
Christensen fired back through the pages of BloombergBusinessweek:
Well, in the first two or three pages, it seems that her motivation is to try to rein in this almost random use of the word “disruption.” The word is used to justify whatever anybody—an entrepreneur or a college student—wants to do. And as I read that, I was delighted that somebody with her standing would join me in trying to bring discipline and understanding around a very useful theory. I’ve been trying to do it for 20 years.
And then in a stunning reversal, she starts instead to try to discredit Clay Christensen, in a really mean way. And mean is fine, but in order to discredit me, Jill had to break all of the rules of scholarship that she accused me of breaking—in just egregious ways, truly egregious ways.
Be that as it may, the concept and frankly the threat, are very much on every thinking lawyer’s mind these days.
My own view—and where the Lepore/Christensen bar fight may come to rest—reflects my own appreciation for the strength of both the disruptors from below and the entrenched from above.
As the FT put it in its Attack on Clayton Christensen’s theory falls wide of the mark:
The New Yorker article is a useful corrective for overzealous executives and consultants who took a 17-year-old idea and turned it into a religion. But complacent managers and smug strategists who think they can return to a golden age of known rivals and predictable markets should not take comfort from it.
In other words, my view is that (a) innovators are the lifeblood of capitalism (thank you, Schumpeter) and also that (b) incumbents have real resources including capital, talent, and a client base. In other words, my hunch is that neither Lepore nor Christensen is right 100% of the time: Neither the Visigoths nor the Romans win every encounter: Usually, in fact, it depends.
One thing I will confidently predict, however: Disruption happens when the incumbents squander their resources.
Various are the ways incumbents can fail to rise to the occasion: Occasionally it’s through perverse and misguided management and decision-making, but far more often it’s through complacency: Preferring comfort to challenge, the familiar and well-trod channels to the bivouac into the uncharted, and drifting along in the soft well-known pleasantries over honestly and fearlessly confronting reality.
This brings us back to Narcissus. Whatever else Narcissus was (or wasn’t) thinking during this episode, those thoughts were not about the firm and its competitive position in the market. The thoughts were focused on what made one individual personally comfortable—and unconsciously (we’ll give them the benefit of the doubt) assuming they were in charge here.
We have news for all the Narcissus’s out there:
- Firm first and firm always;
- Your personal comfort zone, your customary preferences, and your cozy habits have nothing to do with anything anymore;
- And finally, the firm is not your oyster; you are neither King nor Queen.
Less than a year ago, Christensen wrote in Harvard Business Review that the Visigoths are on the horizon for management consulting and for law. Lepore might rebut that the Romans (that would be us) have hundreds of thousands of talented people and billions of dollars of revenue and profit.
We’re telling you that if you have too many Narcissus’s in your firm, our money is on the Visigoths.
Bruce, this was one of those pieces that upon reading through the first few paragraphs I fully expected an entirely different message.
You explained how “although the GC and the Chair had never met, the company already knew and respected this firm and used it from time to time for some specialized matters” so we can certainly conclude that there clearly existed some prior client relationship.
You then explain how the “groundwork for the meeting was laid when the company appointed a new CEO who was acquainted with a (good and reasonable) partner at our firm; partner reached out to the CEO who set up the meeting with the GC.”
And here is where I expected a very different interpretation.
The title of your piece is Partners Behaving Badly and having heard from so many GCs and in-house counsels over the years, about how they absolutely detest lawyers going over there heads to try to get favorable attention from their bosses, I just naturally expected this to be a rant about how this partner behaved badly by doing an end-run on the GC.
You fooled me! While I am certainly not condoning any partner thinking that their clients should be regarded as proprietary (that certainly is behaving badly), this example does lead me to wonder whether there is more going on here and whether the GC was simply going through the motions . . . to satisfy his new boss.
Patrick:
As I would expect, a very thoughtful response from you; thanks as ever.
I think the real answer to the interesting “going through the motions” possibility you pose is that the GC actually didn’t know what our firm could offer in addition to the focused and rather minor matters it was already handling, but following his meeting with our Managing Partner-friend, he was in a position to decide on his own initiative and on the merits that the firm deserved a bigger “share of wallet.”
But that was not clear from our initial column, so thanks for the chance to clarify.
Bruce, the charts on page 2 give Managing Partner the information to confront Narcissus in a way that might show Narcissus the benefit of being a little more open. MP can use your data to show Narcissus that if the firm can cross-sell a second practice area to General Widget, then Narcissus’s chance of losing the client goes down by 1/3, and if the firm can cross-sell a third practice area, Narcissus’s chance of losing the client goes down by 2/3. Appealing to Narcissus’s self-interest might succeed where pure rationality, collegiality, partnership, and the common good would fail.
If the chairman wants to go in for a little bit of public shaming, this sounds like a delightful opportunity to take what Mark Stevens, in his book “Your Management Sucks,” called a clown vote, as in asking the board of directors to vote on “How many of you clowns don’t want to make more money?”
I can envision myself, in the Chairman’s position, circulating a memo or e-mail to the partners, stating that the firm has been solicited by General Widget to make a pitch to get more of its legal work, that the Chairman is in favor of getting more work from General Widget, and that Narcissus is opposed to getting more work from General Widget. The Chairman would then ask how many of the partners are in favor of getting more work from General Widget, and how many are opposed.
From the Chair’s explosion, it sounds like the problems are not at all limited to Narcissus. If numerous and widespread, they have evolved over some time, and may be pretty well entrenched in the firm’s culture.
Supposing we take your final set of “news” as axiomatic, what paths are available to the Chair and his allies to make firm-wide changes that accord with such axioms? What are the pit falls that must be avoided, and what are the prospects for success? Are there available case histories (not necessarily even in Law) to illuminate how such a changes might be executed?
Perhaps we need to return to the Leadership archive for ideas.
Mark L.
Narcissus attitide might not sound so foolish if you take into account the salary system of said firm. If his salary is based on an “eat what you kill”-system, then actually he acts quite rational. It is the firms system that is badly set-up then, it should have included some “communistic” aspects.
The behaviour of Narcissus (without knowing any background) sounds for me as if not (only) something is wrong with Narcissus – that may be, then you have to throw him out. But if your firm’s salary system is wrong then then other Narcissuses will pop-out inevitably…