76SMART COLLABORATION
the size of a lead partner’s network (which I’ll define here as the
number of partner-level collaborators involved across the lead part-
ner’s projects in a given year). Figure 3-4 summarizes the results
of my study of this question. Again, the results are not perfectly
correlated, but the trend line is powerful.
Finer-grained analyses can distinguish the impact of building
business with existing versus new clients. The biggest effects on
subsequent-year revenue come from cross-practice collaboration
in the context of a solo specialist’s existing clients: in other words,
the more she involves partners from other practices this year, the
more money she generates from her current clients next year (see
the bottom right box on the matrix in figure 3-5). You can also
see that collaborating with partners in her own practice produces
significant incremental future revenue from existing clients (top
right, figure 3-5).
For new clients, cross-practice collaboration is a strong predic-
tor of long-term revenue growth (bottom left quadrant), but even
collaborating with your in-practice colleagues this year will boost
your ability to generate future work from new clients (top left).
What’s going on here? It turns out that origination revenues are
determined not just by the number of partners that a solo specialist
involves, but also by the number of cross-practice projects sold in
one year. Further analysis, using a partner’s “number of projects”
$0
$500,000
$1,000,000
$1,500,000
$2,000,000
$2,500,000
$3,000,000
$3,500,000
12345678910111213141516171819202122232425262728
Number of partners involved across the lead partner’s projects
Average net revenue
FIGURE 3-4
Total profits generated by lead client partners based on the size of
their network
Chapter_03.indd 76 05/10/16 11:42 pm
Collaboration and the Solo Specialist77
instead of “number of collaborators” as the independent variable
in year 1, shows that this factor, too, significantly predicts the spe-
cialist’s origination revenues for the following year. In other words,
solo specialists benefit not just from selling a few huge projects that
involve dozens of colleagues—such as major M&A deals, or the
kinds of postmerger integration projects that are the domain of the
very top-end rainmakers—but also from building up their practice
by selling a greater number of smaller, multipractice projects.
There are a couple of explanations. The simplest is obvious: delega-
tion creates opportunities for leverage. The more work you can hand
off, the more time you can spend prospecting for new work. And of
course, by building a smart team, you’re creating a scouting unit that
can better understand the client’s needs and seek out novel opportuni-
ties. A second explanation may be a little less obvious, but even more
important: by collaborating, you’re learning. As you come to under-
stand other practices and how they add value to clients, you gain the
Work referrals to peers in Year 1
Within lead
client
partner’s
practice
group
In
practice
groups
outside lead
client
partner’s
group
From new clients
US$2.6 million
US$5.8 million
US$5.5 million US$17.6 million
From existing clients
Year 2 revenue
FIGURE 3-5
Effect of collaboration on subsequent-year business development
revenue
Chapter_03.indd 77 05/10/16 11:42 pm
78SMART COLLABORATION
ability to have broader strategic conversations. You not only learn the
jargon and assumptions of other domains, but you also gain a whole
new set of lenses through which to examine your clients’ problems.
No, cross-practice collaboration doesn’t make you an instant
expert in another area. But you do learn enough to spot issues that
previously would have gone over your head, and to at least initiate
certain conversations that you previously would have considered
out of bounds. With more experience, you gain the confidence
needed to move up the food chain, as your existing client starts to
draw you onto bigger issues.
Meanwhile, you make them look good too. One tax consul-
tant I’ve worked with eased her way into collaboration by using
her employment and real estate partners to help advise her client’s
tax director about approaches their firm had delivered to clients
in related industries. The client—who was wise enough to listen
carefully—began looking smarter in his own meetings, and over
time drew the trio into settings where they had the chance to
advise on more sophisticated work. This exposure gave them more
insights about where and how to add value, and they continued
growing the scope of expertise and practices involved.
Perhaps it goes without saying, but revenues from this client
have soared.
The real and perceived
obstacles to collaboration
The data presented earlier begs an obvious question: If collabora-
tion holds the potential for such huge gains, then why do so many
partners resist it?
The surveys I conducted with thousands of professionals across
a wide range of firms point to a number of answers.
3
First, these
gains take some time to materialize: it’s not as if a partner’s daily
rate jumps the first time he or she completes a complex transaction.
Second, there are barriers and risks involved. So when successful
solo specialists run their personal cost-benefit analyses, even if only
loosely or intuitively, they may well decide that collaboration is
unlikely to pay off—at least not in the short term, in which they’re
Chapter_03.indd 78 05/10/16 11:42 pm
Collaboration and the Solo Specialist79
largely driven by the pressures to boost their own chargeable hours
and books of business. It’s the tyranny of success: for the solo special-
ist, high expectations never go down. They stay high, or get higher.
Can you change that cost-benefit analysis? Yes, by lowering the
impediments to collaboration and reducing its inherent risks. Let’s look
at each of the six barriers revealed by my survey research. Although the
relative importance of each one shifted from firm to firm, they tended
to show up in almost every context I studied. First I’ll draw on the com-
ments of people who have actually wrestled with them. Once I outline
the barriers, I’ll return to offer advice for how to overcome each one.
Competence trust
Simply stated, from the solo specialist’s point of view, competence
trust means Can I trust that the partner I bring into my client rela-
tionship won’t screw up that relationship? Even if you’re not anx-
ious about a colleague’s purely technical competence, you might
worry about his messing up in more nebulous ways—for example,
not responding quickly enough to your client.
The farther someone’s expertise is from your own, the harder it is
to accurately judge that person’s competence—and the harder it is for
you to trust him or her. When knowledge professionals from different
practices work together, they may initially have to bridge dissimilar
“thought worlds”—for example, new jargon, differing assumptions,
or unfamiliar approaches.
4
That kind of bridging requires both a leap
of faith and, in many cases, shared experiences and the passage of time.
Concerns about technical expertise often show up in firms that
have grown through recent mergers—which, these days, is an
increasingly common phenomenon. Collaboration faces a struc-
tural hurdle: partners often doubt that everyone who got scooped
up into the combined firm would have passed the test if they’d been
interviewed individually.
International expansion also can fuel trust concerns, because
cross-cultural misunderstandings or stereotypes can feed into the
story line: People from [fill in the city, region, or country] are not as
hardworking as our domestic partners, or not as well trained, or not
likely to work on weekends, or won’t interrupt their family holiday
Chapter_03.indd 79 05/10/16 11:42 pm
80SMART COLLABORATION
to return a client call—or just about any other generalization that
feeds a nervous partner’s anxiety about cross-border collaboration.
When talking about collaboration with solo specialists, I often
hear these sorts of worries about professionalism, responsiveness,
and other client-handling protocols. Research undertaken by
Harvard’s Center on the Legal Profession confirms that lawyers
ought to worry about this issue: chief legal officers reported that
they are likely to reduce work given not only to the specific lawyer
who underperformed, but that a majority of those penalties (54 per-
cent) encompassed the entire team and/or department of the under-
performing individual.
5
This negative halo effect can last for years.
In other words, if I bring you in and you screw up, I’m very likely
to take a hit due to your incompetence.
Interpersonal trust
Is there a risk that the aggressively competitive partner will under-
mine my relationship in order to get work of his own? Or that the
new lateral hotshot will set out to steal my client?
Even people who don’t believe that their colleagues would delib-
erately sabotage them can harbor worries about losing control, not
getting enough credit, and so on. My research suggests that these
fears arise more in firms with extensive lateral hiring. Although a
partner will be applauded for bringing his book of business to a
new firm, this prowess cuts both ways: when his new colleagues
consider his deftness at making off with critical, transportable
assets—which, after all, he has done pretty recently—they may
think twice about introducing him to their key clients. Even in
firms that grow organically, the concerns are surprisingly common.
This mistrust appears to stem from two issues. First, as soon
as the firm grows beyond a certain size—150 is often cited as the
“natural limit” to a strongly interdependent community—the inter-
personal bonds that inherently strengthen trust begin to erode.
6
Second, regardless of a firm’s size, today’s commercial pressures
often produce greater competitiveness between partners.
Interestingly, almost every time I present these results at a firm’s
partner retreat, someone in the room pushes back, refusing to
Chapter_03.indd 80 05/10/16 11:42 pm
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