Law360, New York (March 31, 2016, 9:33 AM ET) -- 

Mary Carmel Kaczmarek

​

Somewhere along the path, BigLaw and AmLaw 200 attorneys lost the way. While attorneys recognize and appreciate that sophisticated substantive work requires a team effort, business development is still conducted in many firms as a solo act. But it doesn’t have to be that way — regardless of how compensation systems reward business development results. In fact, the Final Four accounting firms realized long ago that a sales team — with different skill sets, personalities and knowledge bases — will always achieve better outcomes than a single professional trying to juggle billable work and non-chargeable sales efforts. 
As a former practicing attorney and a business development coach with more than 20 years’ experience, I’d like to shine the light on best practices for building business as a team. Shifting the paradigm from solo acts to business development team play requires understanding how to form and facilitate a well-coordinated team effort — from targeting and pitching a specific prospect, to establishing a productive client service team and following specific best practices.

Law firms have organizational structures unique to the corporate world and while there have been changes in the past 25 years to the traditional partnership concept, a cultural notion continues to persist that each lawyer is the master of his/her fate. To further complicate things, in many firms each lawyer continues to be viewed as a discrete business unit and revenue generator — to some extent, competing with colleagues within their own organizations for opportunities. Regardless, it's time for attorneys to have more fun and to make more money by participating in business development team play.

What is meant by "team play"? Most lawyers — in mid-sized to large corporate practice firms — are well acquainted with the concept of team play when it comes to substantive work projects. While one attorney may be the "client lead" or the case manager to serve a client's needs well and effectively on a significant project, the efforts of a team of legal professionals must be coordinated to bring about the best possible result for the client in a cost-effective manner. Many of my attorney coaching clients tell me that participating as a member of a well-run client team is one of their most enjoyable work experiences. Why? Because when a team effort is well-orchestrated, each lawyer/team member has the opportunity to play to his/her strengths with regard to expertise and practice skill. The team lead is in effect a conductor facilitating a symphony of services to achieve the client's legal and business goals. The sense of professional satisfaction experienced by team members engaged in this process often far surpasses what results from a solo or individual effort. "We did it!" tends to build esprit de corps within the organization and serve clients' needs better and more effectively than "I did it!"

A while back, I had an opportunity to hear Kevin Fong, M.D., a Boston-based anesthesiologist talk about his recent book, Extreme Medicine: How Exploration Transformed Medicine in the Twentieth Century. While the focus of his writing is on how people survive in dangerous conditions — mainly having to do with extreme sports — he also talked about his work in the hospital as part of a surgical team. I'm paraphrasing here, but basically what he said is the idea of the surgeon as the "health god" on the surgical team whose skills determine a patient's ultimate outcome is an outdated and inaccurate concept. According to Fong, it is now well-accepted that each medical professional who touches the patient or impacts his/her care is considered to be an essential part of the team, including the anesthesiologist. Fong described how the team mentality makes him a better health care provider because he recognizes that each of his colleagues — and the patient, of course — are counting on him to do his best and participate fully in the collective effort. Seeing that our counterparts in the medical profession — and as mentioned above, in accounting as well — have made the paradigm shift to a teamwork perspective, we know we are on the right track in emphasizing this approach with regard to substantive work.

Before we focus on how to implement the teamwork approach in our business development efforts, let’s examine the types of business development initiatives that benefit from a team effort. Here are just a few examples of business building initiatives on which a team typically will outperform an individual’s efforts:
 

• Launching effective client service team initiatives where a group of attorneys and other professionals seeks to create ties that bind the client to the firm, expand the type of legal service provided, and otherwise deepen the relationship to guard the flank from competitors

 

• Diversifying a firm’s client base or introducing a new product or service

 

• Targeting and pursuing specific new business opportunities with/from sophisticated organizations

 

• Innovating service delivery strategies to develop greater competitive advantage

 

• Building brand or reputation with a target client market to differentiate services from those of other providers

It’s obvious — assuming that certain other “conditions of play” exist — why a team would outperform an individual in such critical business building efforts. When a team of smart and motivated professionals pool their talents on strategy and implementation, they can achieve far more than even the most talented solo act. Moreover, in the aggregate a team has significantly more nonbillable hours to devote to the effort — another reason that the outcomes of team efforts go far beyond a typical individual’s abilities.

Now let’s focus on how to implement the team play process effectively in our business building efforts. The single most important rule of play is to do what you say you will do.

Failure to keep a promise to teammates quickly erodes their confidence in the process. When we agree to work with our law firm colleagues on a project — especially a nonbillable business development initiative — failure to keep a commitment to the team sends a powerful and corrosive message: "When something that I consider to be more important than our work together comes up, I will feel free to turn to that rather than to honor my obligations to the team." And, if one team member drops the ball without consequence, it’s usually not too long before others follow suit. Pretty soon, taking action on commitments to the team effort becomes the exception rather than the rule. The whole thing pretty much collapses from there.

The second most important rubric for effective team efforts is to appoint and delegate certain authority to a facilitator or leader. The leader’s primary task is to ensure that team members follow through on commitments and, related to that, hold them accountable if they fail to do so. The most productive and high performing teams agree with their leader on task goals (the outcomes we will achieve with respect to the business development project) as well as on process goals, or rules for how we will behave toward each other and with respect to the team project. A-teams recognize the failure to observe process goals is as serious as dropping the ball on a substantive commitment; they expect their facilitator to take action.

So far we’ve looked at two rules for effective team play — building trust with team members by doing what you promised to do to achieve the team’s goals; and empowering a team leader or facilitator to hold members accountable for commitments. Here is a list of other factors that are present in an effective, collective business development effort:
 

• The "mission" or purpose of the team is well-defined by the team members and understood by all. Busy professionals will rarely commit to participate in a nonbillable effort unless they have a role in defining it. And it’s impossible to gauge success if the goals we set are too nebulous or otherwise difficult to measure.

 

• The “right people” are asked by the team lead or facilitator to participate in the team and the total number of team members is limited to seven. Who are the “right people”? It depends on the initiative. But typically we are seeking colleagues who are interested, demonstrate engagement and have the types of talents we need to achieve the intended results. And seven is the magic number when it comes to team play. Try not to have more than seven people on any particular team. Scheduling for more than seven participants is nightmarish and research shows that with seven or fewer members, teams tend to have robust discussions, the right mix of talents — if chosen properly — and the ability to make decisions effectively. As numbers grow, these positives are diluted.

 

• Everyone is given a task and, as mentioned above, is held accountable for performing it by the team lead and by each other.

 

• Team members meet physically or virtually on a regular basis for discussion, not reporting. Reporting is done using intranet or other technology. Meeting time is devoted to brainstorming, discussing issues and deciding on the way forward together.

 

• Disagreement on the team is permitted and even encouraged. By sharing different points of view we tend to make the best decisions about strategy and process. Not allowing for disagreement results in a “dumbed down” strategy and resentment among team members that may undermine the eventual outcome.

 

• Goals and actions are reassessed from time to time based on new information generated by the team’s activities.

 

• “Small wins” are celebrated as stepping stones to ultimate success. Everyone who makes a contribution to both small and large wins is acknowledged by team and firm leadership.

The legendary football coach, Vince Lombardi, famously stated, “The achievements of an organization are the results of the combined effort of each individual … People who work together will win, whether it be against complex football defenses, or the problems of modern society … Individual commitment to a group effort — that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, and a civilization work.”

In a mid-sized to large law firm, winning as a team is about having more fun and increasing profitability. We know how to do this on substantive matters. Let’s shift the business development paradigm in 2016 and use the team approach well and effectively. Let’s hear collective shouts of “We did it!” coming from your respective firms by year-end 2016.

—By Mary Carmel Kaczmarek, Skillful Means Marketing LLC