Collaboration and the Contributor149
leaders can take to help contributors—and by extension, their
firm—reap the benefits sooner.
Help diamonds in the rough to shine through
Contributors need tooth-cutting opportunities—their first foot in
the door—which means in turn that they need account team lead-
ers to take a chance on them. Particularly in firms that have grown
through mergers, those lead partners may not be convinced that
others (especially untested others) have their same levels of com-
petence or professionalism. And this is especially true when we’re
talking about cross-discipline collaboration, because the more dif-
ferent someone’s expertise is from one’s own, the harder it is to
assess the competence of or to trust that individual.
The stakes are high, and a partner once burned is going to be
that much harder to lure back into a collaborative relationship. As
one disappointed partner phrased it:
Easily the largest impediment is setting up a client of mine
with a colleague who will disappoint, in terms of either
substantive lawyering or responsiveness. This situation has
occurred with some frequency in my experience, and my
sense is at an increasing rate. I have lost substantial clients
and, more often, business as a result of this issue. I also
have found some colleagues do a poor job of keeping me
generally appraised, and/or involved, making it difficult to
fulfill my role as relationship partner.
Given these sorts of perceived risks, how can you, as a firm
leader, make sure that at least some legitimate referrals flow to peo-
ple who may not be the “usual suspects”? One approach is to set
up a series of low-pressure meetings where contributors can share
concrete examples of times they’ve added value to the firm’s clients.
Especially for people who are generally uncomfortable blow-
ing their own horn, these events normalize self-promotion and give
them the chance to show off their expertise. These meetings are
also great for allowing introverts to stand out. As one consulting
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150SMART COLLABORATION
partner, Janice, remarked, “I’m normally overshadowed by extro-
verts who can spout off their accomplishments at a moment’s
notice. If somebody rings them up or even mentions a potential
opportunity, they’re great at riffing—sort of tailoring their mes-
sage on the fly. Personally, though, I need more time to prepare.”
One reputation-building technique that is gaining popularity
is the professional equivalent of “speed-dating” events: a group
of partners get together, and each has five minutes, one-to-one,
with a colleague to explain why the listener’s clients should be
interested in the presenter’s specialist knowledge. This event is
low cost, fun, and lively. But you can really only expect it to have
lasting business impact if the group is carefully chosen to gather
partners with high-potential opportunities. Hand-pick a couple
of client-relationship partners with fast-growing accounts—the
kind we advise contributors to cultivate—and get their personal
commitment to attend with the intent to find at least one eager
new member for their client team. Plus, everyone must show up
prepared: each participant must research others’ specific clients
(which means they need the attendee list in advance), not just speak
generally about their own expertise. These events seem to work
best when all participants serve clients in a particular sector, such
as life sciences or automotive or higher education, because then
they have a natural core of shared knowledge to build on.
Here are a few other techniques you can use to help contributors
build their profile and more readily reap the benefits of collaboration:
• Set expectations that client lead partners will ardently seek
new team members from the ranks of the current contribu-
tors. To help these partners see the value to the account in
building a set of highly committed professionals who are
jumping at this chance to shine, draw on specific examples
of where the technique has worked already—or better yet,
ask the partners with success stories to do the proselytizing.
Over time, reinforce your expectations by asking for specific
examples of their progress, and if partners don’t move the
dial enough on their own, then set a formal performance
metric and give it some teeth.
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Collaboration and the Contributor151
• Become an honest broker—someone who actively promotes
low-profile professionals, but is known for giving the real
deal. A partner in one firm I researched gave this example of
how a leader’s honesty in referring colleagues helped boost
his confidence in the recommendations: “He has been unbe-
lievably straightforward with me. In the past, he has said
things like, ‘Here are three people, and here is what I know
about them. This person presents really well in front of cli-
ents, but doesn’t roll up his sleeves and get into the details as
much as others. This person is bright, sharp, and hardwork-
ing, but awkward socially. And this person is probably not
the right choice if the deal is going to require weekends and
holidays.’ That honesty is very important.”
• Assign practice managers or other business development
staff the job of tracking contributors who have credible
expertise in a specialist area or geography. Encourage con-
tributors to get into the habit of updating development staff
with sound bites from their own project work (including
recommendations from the client or lead partner, if possible),
and persuade lead partners to seek the development staff’s
input for sourcing new team members. This system works
especially well for locating talent in far-flung locations, and
it has the advantage of breaking up the old-boys’ network.
Again, the most credible way of advertising this system is for
a few high-profile partners to use it and spread the word.
Boost contributors’ ability to think like a client
Give aspiring collaborators the business-fundamentals skills they
need to start and sustain a substantive conversation with a client.
Research shows that adult learning happens 10 percent by formal
training, 20 percent by observation, and 70 percent by experience
and experimentation.
12
Surprisingly, even the best firms that invest
heavily in training their junior professionals tend to downplay formal
training for partners. Sure, they’ll provide access to courses that are
required for their professionals’ continuing accreditation, and they
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152SMART COLLABORATION
often bring guest speakers to annual events like partner conferences.
But how many firms deliver programs that focus on helping partners
develop the capabilities and confidence to “think like a client”?
If you lead a firm where few partners have had formal busi-
ness training, invest in giving them exposure to some core busi-
ness concepts. You’ll almost certainly delegate the design of these
programs to experienced learning and development professionals,
either in-house or external, but here are a few things to watch out
for. First, make sure that the program is well rounded in giving
partners exposure to fundamental concepts related to corporate
strategy, finance, marketing, and organizational behavior. This
cross-cutting approach is critical to get partners to think like cli-
ents who tend to say, “I have a business problem,” rather than
segment it by academic discipline.
Second, because the goal of these programs is to give partners
the ability to apply the learning to their own clients, participants
need both to understand the theory (in order to generalize from one
client situation to another) and to practice using the new concepts.
Scott Westfahl of Harvard Law School explains why executive
education programs for lawyers need to be grounded in research,
and his rationale applies equally well to many other kinds of pro-
fessionals: “Executive education for lawyers needs to be research-
based. Lawyers are inherently skeptical of theories and anecdotal
evidence and are the world’s most skillful debunkers of hypotheses.
They have earned their standing by challenging assumptions, so
executive education programs that shortcut the empirical knowl-
edge will suffer.”
13
Third, make sure your learning and development specialists
invest heavily in designing realistic vignettes so that partners have
the chance to practice using the ideas in the low-risk setting of
a training program. Set up the scenario so that one partner acts
as the account handler and benefits from the chance to apply a
concept during a simulated conversation with a client, while the
partner who acts as the client benefits by learning how to take that
perspective. Most grown-ups say that they hate role-playing, but
feedback from executives suggests that these experiences are often
the highlight of formal training programs.
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Collaboration and the Contributor153
Capabilities and confidence are also derived from internal sup-
port and external exposure. First, let’s restate the problem. “I
don’t know how to approach client issues where I’m not the clear
expert,” is how some contributors phrase it to me. Or, “I can’t steer
conversations outside my core knowledge and comfort zone, which
is what it takes to collaborate.”
Part of the solution is simply tribal storytelling. Contributors
need to learn how others improvise in the face of stress and uncer-
tainty. I attended one meeting where a firm’s managing partner told
a revealing story. He had flown from London to Asia to accompany
a tax partner to a meeting with the CEO of a major local client.
After ten minutes and a nice cup of tea, the CEO flatly stated that
he had no additional needs for tax advice, stood up, and thanked
the partners for coming in. The managing partner interrupted—
not rudely, but forcefully. “We’re not here to sell you more tax
advice,” he told the CEO, “but rather to get to know your business
needs. What’s the biggest issue on your mind?”
The CEO sat back down, and said frankly that he didn’t see
how the firm could help with the biggest issue on his plate. In fact,
he was totally preoccupied with trying to figure out how to keep
his factories running after a neighboring country had embargoed
the export of the exact type of fuel that could profitably power his
plants. The managing partner nodded sympathetically and recom-
mended that the CEO speak to a few of his partners with regu-
latory, international trade, and project finance expertise “simply
to get a few new perspectives.” In the end, the law firm ended
up serving the client on a highly profitable, long-term engagement
involving partners from multiple practice groups and offices.
Was there magic involved? No. Was there deep substantive
knowledge on the part of the managing partner? Clearly not.
The managing partner possessed, at most, a rudimentary under-
standing of regulation, trade, finance, and manufacturing. But he
had abundant confidence to steer the CEO toward others in the
firm who did have expertise in the necessary fields. The story had a
visible impact on the junior people assembled in the room.
So my prescription here is to use the good storytellers among your
firm’s leadership to demystify and motivate. As you do so, be aware
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