Build for adaptability
If you want your employees to be ready for change, the preparation has to start long before you shift course. You need to build adaptability into how you do business. Your market might not change, depending on your industry. Your philosophy on leadership might not change all that much. But you still want a business and work force that can change with the times, move with shifts in the industry and, perhaps most important, remain able to quickly react to new business opportunities.
As part of thinking like businesspeople, Schlaybaugh wants his attorneys to react like businesspeople. If a potential client presents a new service opportunity that might create the possibility of additional business, Schlaybaugh wants his legal experts to recognize the opportunity and feel empowered to capitalize on it.
The way he makes it happen is by continually driving home the idea that what was good for the firm in decades past isn’t necessarily good now. Momentum should propel you forward, not keep you in a circular flight pattern.
“In today’s environment for leaders, with the challenges that are out there, you need to be able to start out fast and keep picking up speed,” Schlaybaugh says. “We have kept trying to break the rule that says we’ve been doing something a certain way for so long, and we can’t do it any other way. Obviously, you don’t want to just change for change’s sake, but you do want to remain nimble and agile. I don’t think a ponderous organization that is slow to change or afraid to change will necessarily be as successful as organizations that are more nimble.”
In so
me
cases, making a change means making a decision that is unpopular, but the numbers, measurements and insight of your experienced team members have given enough evidence to make you believe it is the right call.
The decisions in which you are cast as the lone wolf awash in a sea of doubters can be difficult to make. Far easier are the decisions over which you can build consensus in advance of pulling the trigger.
There is a time and place for both, but as often as you can, you should try to make the rounds, build your case and cement the idea with your people. Your employees will develop a much stronger tolerance for change if they feel like you are making a good faith effort to solicit, consider and implement their input.
As you keep driving a forward-thinking mindset to your employees, and as the decisions you make begin to deliver positive results, your employees will start to develop more and more confidence in your ability to make a judgment call. If you’ve done your job correctly in the early stages of change management, building a consensus should be a less arduous task over the ensuing months and years.
“In any business, the management team continues to build credibility through the outcomes they have achieved,” Schlaybaugh says. “So we measure ourselves by how we have grown the business, how we have improved earnings, how satisfied our people are with their jobs.”
Dykema Gossett has an internal scoreboard that measures the job that management has done in communicating with employees. Employee confidence is reflected in job satisfaction, workplace satisfaction and the financial success of the business, among other categories.
“Our partners are entitled to expect that our management team will make progress on all fronts every year,” Schlaybaugh says. “We have a number of things that most businesses measure, both on financial and nonfinancial aspects of the operation. Obviously, you’re aware of the financial ones. What is our revenue, our growth rate, our revenue per lawyer, profits per partner? We have a whole series of financial metrics that we measure ourselves against.”
Financial metrics can give you an accurate gauge on how well positioned your business is to grow and change. But it’s the employee feedback that will show you how well your business will be able to capitalize on the opportunities presented to it. It’s your employees who are going to man the throttle and steering wheel.
You need to encourage employee feedback through multiple channels. Feedback channels give employees an ongoing opportunity to interface with management and help retain their involvement and interest once you’ve initially engaged them.
It might be cliché to say that you have an open-door policy, but Schlaybaugh says the concept is still worthwhile. You need to be accessible on a day-to-day basis if you want employees to be engaged and willing to change with the company.
“You have an open door in the sense that you are willing to listen to different opinions and views,” he says. “Even if you do have to make a decision and move on at some point, I think most people appreciate that a decision was made — even if it wasn’t necessarily the one they were advocating — as long as they were provided with the opportunity to be heard, to be able to advance their position. It goes back to the larger communication issue and how important it is within the whole organization.
“When we get a piece of feedback, we hand it to whatever department of the law firm has responsibility for that area. Obviously, not all ideas are adopted. But you go out of your way to thank people for their ideas and time. I think people appreciate the willingness on the part of management to listen, and then they are very happy to see the changes that come from the ideas within the organization.”
How to reach: Dykema Gossett PLLC, (313) 568-6800 or http://www.dykema.com/
