NOTES
Introduction
1. I use the term partner in this book to refer to any senior member of
a knowledge-based organization who has the sort of power and autonomy
described here.
2. Henceforth, unless otherwise stated, I will use the word collaboration
as shorthand for “smart collaboration.”
3. From H. K. Gardner, “Leading the Campaign for Greater Collaboration
within Law Firms,” in Leadership for Lawyers: Essential Leadership Strategies
for Law Firm Success, eds. H. K. Gardner and R. Normand-Hochman (London:
Globe Law and Business, 2015). The managing partner in question chose to
remain anonymous.
4. For a history of specialization in the legal field, see M. Ariens, “Know
the Law: A History of Legal Specialization,” South Carolina Law Review 1003
(1994); and T. Hia, “Que Sera, Sera? The Future of Specialization in Large Law
Firms,” Columbia Business and Law Review 541 (2002).
5. G. C. Hazard Jr., “‘Practice’ in Law and Other Professions,” Arizona
Law Review 39 (1997): 390.
6. 976 F. 2d 86—Stewart v. Jackson & Nash, 61 USLW 2206, 127 Lab.
Cas. P 57,631, 7 IER Cases 1322, United States Court of Appeals, Second
Circuit, http://openjurist.org/976/f2d/86/stewart-v-jackson-and-nash.
7. Professional service firms are hardly the only organizations that have
subdivided into siloes; for a fascinating account of this phenomenon in many
domains, see G. Tett, The Silo Effect: The Peril of Expertise and the Promise of
Breaking Down Barriers (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015). Like Tett (see
p. 13), I believe that silo refers not only to physical structures and organiza-
tional subunits, but also to psychological “tribalism” associated with silos.
8. The first use of the term is believed to be in the first edition of a report
from the US Army War College: R. R. Magee, ed., Strategic Leadership
Primer (Carlisle Barracks, PA: Department of Command, Leadership, and
Management, US Army War College, 1998).
9. Harvard Law School, Center on the Legal Profession, “Perspectives
from a General Counsel: Jennifer Daniels of the Colgate-Palmolive Company,”
The Practice, September 2015.
Notes.indd 229 06/10/16 12:06 am
230NOTES
10. See IBM, Capitalizing on Complexity: Insights from the Global Chief
Executive Officer Study, at http://public.dhe.ibm.com/common/ssi/ecm/en/
gbe03297usen/GBE03297USEN.PDF.
11. Research interview with author; permission to quote contingent
on anonymity.
12. I have also written five Harvard Business School case studies of
knowledge-based organizations that are grappling with issues of collaboration
among highly autonomous professional workers, as well as multiple book
chapters and articles in the Harvard Business Review and similar publications
on the subject. See, for example, “When Senior Managers Won’t Collaborate,”
Harvard Business Review, March 2015.
13. My data from several firms spans the 2008–2009 period—arguably
one of the most difficult stretches in history for the knowledge industry.
Chapter 1
1. The material in this section is largely derived from my article
“When Senior Managers Won’t Collaborate,” Harvard Business Review,
March 2015.
2. This chart and some of the accompanying analysis first appeared in
H. K. Gardner, “Why It Pays to Collaborate,” American Lawyer, March 2015.
3. Research interview with author; permission to quote contingent
on anonymity.
4. M. Boussebaa and G. Morgan, “Internationalization of Professional
Service Firms: Drivers, Forms and Outcomes,” in The Oxford Handbook
of Professional Service Firms, eds. L. Empson, D. Muzio, and J. Broschak
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).
5. When I started research interviews with clients, I used the word loyalty
rather than stickiness, but was quickly corrected: as one executive said, “I’m
not loyal, in the sense that I continue the relationship out of a sense of
devotion or duty. I’m simply stuck with the firm that collaborates because it’s
hard to find a substitute.” Other clients confirmed that the word sticky was
more accurate.
6. B. Groysberg and R. Abrahams, “Lift Outs: How to Acquire a High-
Functioning Team,” Harvard Business Review, December 2006.
7. See for example, R. Reagans and E. W. Zuckerman, “Networks,
Diversity, and Productivity: The Social Capital of Corporate R&D Teams,”
Organization Science 12 (2001): 502–517.
8. The study of collaboration’s impact on patents and publications was
published by S. Wuchty, B. F. Jones, and B. Uzzi, “The Increasing Dominance
of Teams in Production of Knowledge,” Science 316 (2007): 1036–1039.
What is not entirely clear in the comparison, however, is whether yesteryear’s
“freestanding geniuses” were actually working in teams and simply taking
all the credit.
9. S. Wuchty, B. F. Jones, and B. Uzzi, “The Increasing Dominance of
Teams in Production of Knowledge,” Science 316 (2007): 1036–1039.
Notes.indd 230 06/10/16 12:06 am
NOTES231
10. C. A. Cotropia and L. Petherbridge, “The Dominance of Teams in the
Production of Legal Knowledge,” Yale Law Journal Forum 124 (2014): 18–28.
11. H. K. Gardner, “Performance Pressure as a Double-edged Sword:
Enhancing Team Motivation but Undermining the Use of Team Knowledge,”
Administrative Science Quarterly 57 (2012): 1–46.
12. See, for example, how one client measures these aspect of its service
provider’s work: H. K. Gardner and S. Silverstein, “GlaxoSmithKlein: Sourcing
Complex Professional Sources,” Case no. 414–003 (Boston: Harvard Business
School Publishing, 2013).
13. From “Leading Through Connections,” a study of global CEOs con-
ducted by IBM in 2012.
14. The contact to the procurement department at this company came
through one of my former executive education students. Because of my concern
for strict confidentiality about my research participants, I couldn’t tell the
lawyer about my interview with his client, and I didn’t reveal his statements
to the purchasing head. I hope they both read this book and come to an
understanding of the missed opportunities.
15. American Bar Association, Standing Committee on Lawyers’ Profes-
sional Liability, “Profile of Legal Malpractice Claims 2000–2003,” 2005.
16. This analysis is derived in part from a 2006 speech to the ABA—“The
Top Ten Causes of Malpractice, and How You Can Avoid Them”—by legal
risk management coordinator Mark C. S. Bassingthwaighte. Bassingthwaighte
offered some pithy (and relevant) advice to his audience: “Don’t dabble.”
17. This particular interviewee was especially keen to preserve anonymity,
given how sensitive a topic we were covering. Yet, multiple individuals in sim-
ilar external positions—regulatory authorities, insurers, trade associations—
reported an increase in both deliberate malfeasance and unintentional errors,
all of which were linked to noncollaborative behaviors.
18. Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations, US Securities and
Exchange Commission, “National Examination Risk Alert” II, no. 2 (2012).
19. Today’s e-billing systems have evolved to become essential analytic tools
for legal departments. They analyze incoming invoices and provide reports full
of detailed data on outside counsel activities and billing rates. “What e-billing
can do is unbundle all of the information that comes from traditional legal
bills so that you have the ability to compare over a long period of time, from
timekeeper to timekeeper or from firm to firm,” says Pamela Woldow, general
counsel at Edge International Inc. quoted in J. Beck and A. Byrne, “The 4 Best
Technologies to Add to Your Legal Department’s Toolbox,” Inside Counsel
Magazine, November 28, 2012.
20. B. W. Heineman Jr., “Big Isn’t Always Best,” Corporate Counsel,
November 2008.
21. See M. Sako, “Outsourcing and Offshoring by Professional Service
Firms,” in Empson, Muzio, and Broschak, eds., The Oxford Handbook of
Professional Service Firms; “Law Firm Allen & Overy Creating 300 Jobs in
Belfast,” BBC News, February 3, 2011; Jennifer Smith, “Law Firms Wring
Costs from Back-Office Tasks,” Wall Street Journal, October 7, 2012.
Notes.indd 231 06/10/16 12:06 am
232NOTES
Chapter 2
1. D. H. Maister, Managing the Professional Service Firm (New York:
Free Press, 1993), 18.
2. “Laterals” can include anyone who has some successful experience in
the workplace—in other words, anyone who’s not fresh out of school—but I
tend to use the word to describe relatively senior people.
3. M. Bidwell, “Paying More to Get Less: The Effects of External
Hiring Versus Internal Mobility,” Administrative Science Quarterly 56, no. 3
(September 2011): 369–407.
4. One study showed that after professionals in the banking sector
switched employer, their average performance fell by about 20 percent, and had
not reached pre-move levels even five years later. See B. Groysberg, Chasing
Stars: The Myth of Talent and the Portability of Performance (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 2012).
5. A. Press, “Special Report: Big Law’s Reality Check,” American Lawyer,
November 2014.
6. “Lateral Damage: Failed Hires Cost London Dear,” The Lawyer,
February 2012.
7. These confidential estimates were supplied in my research interviews
and by my board of contributors.
8. Groysberg, Chasing Stars.
9. Note that culture is typically the outcome or by-product of many of
the formal systems and structures in a firm, and strongly related to the type of
people employed. See J. W. Lorsch and Emily McTague, “Culture Is Not the
Culprit,” Harvard Business Review, April 2016.
10. When the US Army opened up its front lines to female soldiers in
Afghanistan—even in limited ways—it suddenly acquired the ability to interact
with the “other half” of the local population.
11. J. Eligon, “3 Weeks into Retirement, Morgenthau Takes a Law Job,”
New York Times, January 21, 2010.
12. A. Nanda and K. Morrell, “Egon Zehnder International: Managing
Professionals in an Executive Search Firm,” Case 9-700-133 (Boston: Harvard
Business School, 2004).
13. Confidential interview with the US-based COO of an international
consulting firm. His point of view was echoed in some similar conversations with
a few leaders in law and engineering-design firms. But too many leaders still fail
to put the brakes on lateral hiring, perhaps because they lack either the willing-
ness or the ability to enforce a more centralized approach in their companies.
14. Nanda and Morrell, “Egon Zehnder International,” 2; see also F. Gino
and B. Staats, “Mary Caroline Tillman at Egon Zehnder: Spotting Talent in the
21st Century,” Case 9-426-027 (Boston: Harvard Business School, 2016).
15. The study was the result of joint research between Universum,
INSEAD Emerging Markets Institute, and the HEAD Foundation:
Understanding a Misunderstood Generation, 2014, http://universumglobal
.com/millennials/.
Notes.indd 232 06/10/16 12:06 am
NOTES233
16. N. Kitroeff, “The Smartest People Are Opting Out of Law School,”
April 15, 2015, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-15/
the-smartest-people-are-opting-out-of-law-school; J. Areen, “Lawyers as
Professionals and as Citizens: Key Roles and Responsibilities in the 21st
Century: Commentary,” https://clp.law.harvard.edu/assets/Commentary-
Judith_Areen.pdf.
17. For more on leverage structure, see D. H. Maister, “The Anatomy
of a Consulting Firm,” in The Advice Business: Essential Tools and Models
for Managing Consulting, eds. C. J. Fombrun and M. D. Nevis (New York:
Pearson, 2004).
18. Universum et al., Understanding a Misunderstood Generation.
19. Ibid.
20. These ideas and more were initially published in the chapter by
S. Sheehan, H. K. Gardner, and H. Bresman, “Leading the Millennial
Generation,” in Leadership for Lawyers: Essential Leadership Strategies for
Law Firm Success, eds. H. K. Gardner and R. Normand-Hochman (London:
Globe Law and Business Publishing, 2015).
21. The idea that meaning (also known as “purpose”), mastery, and
autonomy are essential drivers of human behavior—more so than financial
incentives—has been popularized by D. H. Pink, Drive: The Surprising Truth
About What Motivates Us (New York: Riverhead Books, 2011). There is also
significant academic research supporting the idea.
22. See, for example, T. R. Mitchell et al., “Why People Stay: Using Job
Embeddedness to Predict Voluntary Turnover,” Academy of Management
Journal 44, no. 6 (December 2001): 1102–1121; and J. Pearce and A. Randel,
“Expectations of Organizational Mobility, Workplace Social Inclusion, and
Employee Job Performance,” Journal of Organizational Behavior 25, no. 1
(February 2004): 81–98.
23. Of course, this assumes successful experiences, which this book aims to
help you shape.
24. Academic research on the topic includes, for example, R. M. Steers,
“Antecedents and Outcomes of Organizational Commitment,” Administrative
Science Quarterly (1977): 46–56; R. Eisenberger, P. Fasolo, and V. Davis-
LaMastro, “Perceived Organizational Support and Employee Diligence,
Commitment, and Innovation,” Journal of Applied Psychology 75, no. 1
(1990): 51–59. The idea has been previously applied to professional service
firms in D. Maister and J. Walker, “The One-Firm Firm Revisited,” http://
davidmaister.com/articles/the-one-firm-firm-revisited/.
25. J. K. Harter, F. L. Schmidt, and S. K. Plowman, “The Relationship
Between Engagement at Work and Organizational Outcomes,” Gallup Report,
February 2013.
26. M. Buckingham and A. Goodall, “Reinventing Performance Manage-
ment,” Harvard Business Review, April 2015.
27. AARs were originally developed by the US Army and have since been
adopted by all US and many non-US military services, as well as a wide array
Notes.indd 233 06/10/16 12:06 am
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