Management is difficult. Just look around. We have all known managers who were barely managing. They entered management the way some people fall down a flight of stairs. A quarter of the way down, those around the ill-suited manager realize stairs are not their thing. Halfway down, the manager thinks maybe they should have trained for this or maybe stairs aren’t their thing. Three-quarters of the way down, all agree that trying to stop the tumbling is too risky, so everyone else just takes the elevator.
In management, you need to know A. what you know, B. what you don’t and C. how to move items from B to A. It can feel like everyone is looking to you for answers (because they are) when you have none. Sometimes the answers seem just out of reach. Or you know the “right” answer today, but it changes tomorrow (or as soon as approvals are completed). And even when you know what to do and how to do it, you must manage the challenges of people, process, technology and organizational structure, culture and barriers.
Management involves leadership, too. Whether leading individuals, processes, projects or more likely all the above, you need to be endowed with emotional intelligence, build trust, identify opportunities, motivate with a shared and purposeful mission and maintain stability necessary to complete the work.
You don’t operate in a silo, even if your organization is siloed. You must be attuned to ideal staffing practices, mental health issues, legal tech opportunities, operating procedures, operational challenges and more. How do you manage such diverse challenges all at once, especially if you never worked for a “good” leader you want to emulate? And let’s face it, those are few and far between.
Well, if it were easy, what fun would that be? You like a challenge! And, since you also love a listicle, because who doesn’t, let’s listicle! The “five things” approach should work well. So here are five keys to success––management edition.
The first, and most overlooked, step to strong management is self awareness. You need to be a stable, reliable, predictable force and if you don’t understand how you think, feel and operate, you can’t tell others what they need to know about working with you. Which means they must guess. Constantly. Have you ever been in a relationship with someone who was a source of continuous stress because you never knew what to expect? Do you want to be that constant source of stress for others? (The correct answer is a resounding “No!”)
One solution to this is to write down everything you’d want to know about your boss, employees and colleagues––or even significant others and relatives if you’re feeling ambitious. Then document that information as it applies to you and put it in a shared space, like your onboarding files (which I’m sure you have in good order).
Hopefully you don’t discover through this process that you are one of the many tumbling down that long staircase. But, if you do, you will have taken the first step toward regaining your footing.
It’s hard to foster a sense of ownership and investment in work when the intent and impact are unclear. After all, if none of it really matters because it’s just moving a [insert thing] from here to there, which does nothing material and nobody will ever care about, why show up every day?
It’s your job to understand the goals and impact and translate those to your team so they know why their work matters. Forest through the trees, y’all!
How will everyone know if things are going well? Poorly? Is there a leading indicator or will everyone only know when it’s too late? (Obviously, the latter isn’t what you want.)
Success measures are a challenging topic because they require both critical and strategic thinking to ensure the measures aren’t creating the wrong incentives. This effect is all too familiar in the legal industry. For example, mental health challenges and high turnover rates are associated with incentivizing working longer (more billable hours) over working smarter (more efficient work leveraging technology and process improvements). And, as a second example, artificial firm growth limitations and operational challenges are often caused (in part) by law firm lawyers being unwilling to introduce clients to colleagues who could support them for fear that the colleague will “steal” the clients, negatively impacting the lawyer’s compensation.
This is why data and information really should be thought of as your frenemy. As with technology, how you build and use it will determine whether it’s friend or foe. So, take the time to thoroughly think through success measures and leading indicators. Consider both how selected measures can support your goals and how they can work against those goals.
Once you determine appropriate measures, you just need to find the source information; ensure its reliability, accessibility, consistency and availability over time; cleanse and normalize it; validate it; build programs around it; and hold people accountable to it. All while avoiding bias in the selection, implementation and usage. Easy, right?!
Of course, this assumes you have the right ’em. Think in terms of who you need based on skills and expertise, availability and workload balancing, anticipated team dynamics (remember, constructive disagreement often leads to better results) and other relevant factors. RACI (responsible, accountable, consulted, informed) charts and similar tools and approaches can help clarify roles and responsibilities of the team members.
And don’t be that person. You know, the one who tries to dictate how they get from point A to point B when there are many equally effective paths. Or the one who must be in every room, all the time, taking over whenever someone takes a different approach than you would.
It’s not about you. Louder for those in the back: “It’s not about you!” Give your teams a chance to shine. Give them ownership and autonomy. Give them kudos and credit and more kudos. Put them in front of others as the face of the project, initiative or task. But more than that, be available to them so you can:
I know I said five things, but there is no end to the process. You should always be improving, growing and developing. It isn’t just “if at first you don’t succeed . . .” It’s “even if you do succeed . . .” So, keep trying. Keep learning. Keep teaching. Keep leading.
