Young Professionals: Cultivate the Habits of Friendship

Most young professionals realise early in their careers that, at some point, skill in generating business will be an important determinant of their success. However, many believe that, in the early stages of their career, they do not have much opportunity to develop these skills.

This could not be further from the truth. True, few clients will trust someone still "wet behind the ears" with their business, but it is never too early (or, for that matter, too late) to begin the process of learning how to earn and deserve trust.

The way most clients choose among professionals is essentially identical to the way people choose their friends. At the point of selecting a professional to work with, clients go with providers who can (a) make them feel at ease; (b) make them feel comfortable sharing their fears and concerns; (c) can be trusted to look after them as well as their transaction and (d) are dependably on their side.

Creating these feelings in others begins with the correct attitudes (few people can make others think they care when they don't) but also require the development of conversational and interpersonal skills, which only come with practice.

If you have an active social circle and people like being with you in your personal life, the odds are that you will have a significant advantage in learning the skills and habits of business development. If, on the other hand, you're a social recluse personally, you will find it more difficult to get clients to see you as the trusted advisor they wish to work with.

Two key points must be stressed. First, none of this means that you can be anything less than excellent technically. The issue is not whether you are competent or trustworthy, but whether or not you are both.

Second, it is not necessary (or even always advisable) to actually make your clients your best friends. Friendship skills, while useful in both personal and professional life, can be put to different purposes. But first you have to develop them.

Making Friends

I had to learn these lessons the hard way. For years, I have worked for clients who have been gracious enough to invite me to dinner the evening before or after my work with them. They weren't trying to get more work out of me; they just wanted to be sociable.

However, after a long day's work, the prospect of still being "on duty" has not been attractive to me. It's not that I don't like my clients, but that I prefer to unwind by being alone. I'm not that sociable by nature. (I don't drink, I don't like the Bee Gees. I like sports. You get the idea.).

This is something I now regret. I have missed a lot of opportunities to form relationships with interesting people, and I know it would have helped me a lot professionally to make the gesture occasionally. I have tried to make up for it by being attentive and dedicated to my clients on the work issues during work hours, and to some extent that has been effective.

But I know I missed something important due to my social habits. At a minimum, I have under-capitalised on the many opportunities given to me to build profitable and fulfilling long-term client relationships.

A Talent For Friendship

There are people in this world who have a talent for friendship. My (late and very lamented) friend Roger Bennett was so good at friendship that, in his 40s he was still in regular touch with people he went to school with at age 12, with people from all walks of life, tastes, social standing, income levels and preferences.

Roger could talk sports with some people, switch to an intellectual discussion of philosophy with others, share cooking tips with a third group. Lots of people considered Roger their best friend, and few people did not enjoy his company.

Yet he was never anything but himself. He was not a chameleon, acting differently just to blend in. He fit in everywhere because he was interested in a broad range of things.

The actress Angelina Jolie was interviewed on television and asked if she had to like the characters she was portraying in order to act them well. Her answer was brilliant. She said something like: "You can't love everything about everyone. But there must be something there. The key is to find that one small slice of overlap between you and them, and focus intensely on that overlap, ignoring everything else." I don't know about acting, but that sounds like a perfect recipe for human relationships to me.

Someone can be your friend if you have anything in common. You don't need a majority of things in common. There are none so lonely as those who dismiss others as "not my kind of person." If someone else has to match you to be your kind of person, you will have few friends.

Notice, it's not about pretending. It's about actually working hard to find the area of mutual interest or common ground, whatever that might be. People can get very lazy at this, or unpracticed in doing it with politeness and sincerity.

For example, if I am in the wrong mood, I can find table talk at a dinner party to be an effort. I say to the person my left "And what are your hobbies?"

"Oh," he or she might reply, "I love mountain climbing."

At this point I have to fight an overwhelming desire to turn immediately the person on my right side to save me from having to ask a follow up question with the first person. Mountain climbing! Ye gods, this is going to be a long night!

Other people can and do immediately think of three or four follow-up questions ("Where do you go? Do you climb alone? What got you started in this?") and can keep posing additional questions all evening long.

By the end of dinner, their table companion, who has done nothing but talk about himself or herself the whole time has come to think of the questioner as an enjoyable person to be around. He or she will look forward to meeting again.

So it is with business development and client relations. The most trusted advisors in every profession are not those who have a ready answer for every client problem, but those who can, through questions and conversational style, put the other person at ease, make them want to tell you about themselves and engage in a dialogue.

And just as in personal life, it is done not by trying to be impressive, but by learning how to show a genuine interest in other people and keep them talking, not primarily doing the talking yourself.

Can this habit be abused? Yes. Will it work if you are only faking it? No. Can you leave it out? No.

Surprisingly, it also turns out that you are also more likely to build a bond with someone by letting them help you than being too keen to try and help them. My wife is involved in a variety of groups. She reports that some of her most dedicated friendships began when she confessed her (relative) weaknesses and accepted help from others, whereas those she helped often resented (a little or a lot) having to seek out or accept her input.

Again, this matches client relationships and business development. You will accomplish more by saying to potential clients "I'm not sure I understand why you are doing things the way you do, could you explain it to me?" than you will by saying "If you'll just shut up and listen, I'll tell you the right answer to your problem."

As professionals, we sometimes think that, to be impressive, we must demonstrate our competence by never revealing our weaknesses or areas of ignorance. This belief is incorrect. One of the ways you build friendships is to let people help you. Developing the self-control to do it that way is a lifelong learning process!

Start As You Mean To Begin

When I was young I thought that the way you made friends was by turning yourself into an interesting person. Eventually, I learned the truth: You don't make people want to spend time with you because they feel good about you. You do it by making them feel good about themselves when they are with you.

For example, do people feel comfortable around you? (No, she's always trying to be the centre of attention.) Do they enjoy themselves when they are with you? (No, he's always trying to win arguments and prevail.) Do they feel they can let their guard down and tell you how they really feel and what they are really worried about? (No, because when I do people are always trying to take advantage of me. I don't trust them to be really interested in me.)

None of this means you need to make people feel good by engaging in false flattery, which is soon detected and rejected. It means that you learn to talk and act in ways that make people feel comfortable and safe around you. They feel that you are on their side. That you can disagree and have lively debates without taking things personally, because the friendship matters more than anything else.

It turns out to be the same in business development. The key to getting hired is not convincing the client things about you ("I'm terrific, trust me!") but being convincing that you will look after them.

It's also worth pointing out that, with people, you get points for trying. It's like a romantic relationship. You don't have to be perfect. Your partner just wants to see that you're sincerely trying to do the right thing. Your motives are more important than your abilities.

Friendship Attitudes and Behaviours

Abilities, however, do count and that's where getting started early matters.

Suppose you wanted to be good at building romance, excelling at getting another person to work with you to build a mutually beneficial, mutually supportive relationship. What characteristics would make you good at this? Most of us have discovered that whether it be love, friendship or work, people respond best when they believe you are considerate, supportive, understanding and thoughtful.

These are easy words to say, but being viewed this way is not trivial. You actually have to earn the reward through your social habits. Many of us want to be considered as supportive, but that doesn't mean we know what to do in order to be seen that way.

For example, to be seen as considerate you have to be able to remember to follow up with things that people told you about their lives last time you met, thus proving that you listened and paid attention. The classic example of this in business is to send along a newspaper clipping or article that you find that responds to something the other person made reference to.

To achieve the desired effect, this must not come across as, and must not be, a formulaic gesture. You don't "cheapen the currency" by doing it all the time, and you must ensure that the clipping or article actually is useful so that you are not immediately seen to be making phony gestures.

It also helps to follow up with questions about what you were told last time you met, as long as you are skilled in phrasing your query ("How did it all work out with that guy you met?") so that it comes across as concern and not as overly intrusive.

This is a delicate issue of language, which needs to be done differently with different people. They are not inherent talents, but habits of social intercourse. Habits that can only be developed with practice.

Social courtesy works in personal and business life. It is remarkably effective to remember to telephone your host or hostess the day or week after a party to say something like "I just wanted to say thank you for the party the other night. I had a great time. What time did you eventually get to bed after clearing up the mess we all made?"

Exactly how formally or informally this will be expressed is different in different parts of the world, and among different types of people, but the habit of expressing appreciation (and judging just how much is enough without being false) can -- and must be -- developed over a lifetime.

Similarly, it is remarkably powerful to call clients after a business meeting to say something like: "I just wanted to let you know how much I appreciate the opportunity to work with you. Thanks! See you next time, as planned."

Done with a sensitivity to local culture and phraseology, such a call can go a long way to making the other person realise that you do not just see him or her as a "business contact," but as a person with whom you want a friendly relationship. Not everyone will reciprocate, but the majority of people will.

If you do not develop the habit early in life, the act of making such a telephone call after a meeting could feel awkward and you will either leave it out or do it poorly, not quite creating the casual, comfortable "just a quick call between us friends" atmosphere that you wish to create.

For example, my old friend Roger was very good at working at staying in touch with everyone. He didn't need an excuse to telephone. He would just pick up the phone to ask how everything was going. He did that to all his business clients as well as his friends. To him, there was no difference, and one context was no more difficult or embarrassing than the other. It was just the way he dealt with people.

To be viewed by other people as supportive also takes thought and careful attention to language. It is important to remember that friends don't judge each other. They don't evaluate. They don't point out each others' weaknesses. Even when asked directly ("Do I look fat in this?"), friends work hard to find the language that deflects criticism ("I like the other dress better.")

Suppose that your friend has a child that is badly behaved. You don't say "Your kid is a little horror!" nor "You're raising that kid incorrectly", even though both statements may be true. Instead, a friend might say something like "Have you ever thought about doing or saying 'such-and-such' to little Ashley?"

Having the ability to respond with the right phrase in real time takes practice, as do all social skills. Can you recall how difficult it was to find the right words and tone when you first wanted to signal to someone that you might be interested in a date? Can you imagine what it would be like if you still had to do it the same way today as you did that first time?

So it is with business development. If the first time you try to convince someone that you are interested in them and their business and want to help is when it is urgent for you to win business, you will be under too much pressure to learn it fast. Better to start practicing now, when there is less pressure for immediate results and more room to develop your own style, discovering what works for you.

Cheers! Skol! Salud!

In almost every society, ancient and modern, the cultural norm is to build friendships over food and drink. There is no more culturally accepted way to develop a friendship than to share a meal.

You want to be good at business development later in your career? Start inviting the people that you meet in the course of your work (whether they are powerful client executives, administrative assistants or anyone else) for coffee, lunch, a drink.

Ask them about their work lives and their personal lives. Do it as an exercise in developing your "curiosity muscles." Do it as an exercise in asking good follow up questions about what people tell you. Do it to develop your ability to understand other people who are not like you. Do it now.

If your reaction is that doing so will not pay off for you immediately and therefore is not worth doing now, then you are missing the whole point about human relationships and you are going to be very bad at getting people to entrust you with their business.

If you only do things when it pays off for you in the short term, your attitude will be readily transparent. People will see that you view them "instrumentally," interested in them only to the extent that you can get what you want. And if they detect this in you, they will give you what you want less often.

The key to business development success is making people believe that you are truly interested in a two-way relationship, and that you are willing to earn and deserve your relationship. You must first make deposits in the "trusting relationship bank" if you wish to make withdrawals later.

You will actually need to be willing to get interested in people and initiate relationships, and that means being willing to ask someone out for a drink without being self conscious about it. And the only way to get to that stage is to have a history of doing it!

One of the most important habits of friendship is taking the initiative and doing the inviting, not just waiting to be invited. Do you remember that from adolescence? The way you get people to ask you out for a drink is to ask them out for a drink first. If it feels uncomfortable the first time, and an act of tremendous courage, well, it is.

We all need to get to the stage that we can talk to someone we're interested in (a client or a romantic prospect) without being frozen into inaction by our hopes and fears. The guidelines are well known. Keep it casual, keep it small, take it a step at a time, but get out there and start meeting people.

Yes, we hated it when our parents told us to do that as children and it doesn't make it any less terrifying today, but the habits are identical and you don't get better at them by going to a training program.

More Friendship Habits

People good at friendship work hard at developing joint habits and routines, whether it's as simple as discussing "last night's game" or going to the same place each time for a cup of coffee. For my friend Roger and me, regular sessions of playing cribbage (the card game) became our way of cementing and celebrating our bond. I rarely played the game with anyone else.

Good friends go out of their way to celebrate each others' small triumphs and make it their business to be there in times of need for their friends. They stay alert for any opportunity to help, in ways big or small, without keeping track of who has done how much for whom. That's exactly what happens in effective business development.

Clearly, there is more to say about friendship skills, but my purpose here is not to report everything you have to learn. Goodness knows, I have only learned a little of what I should have. The key lesson is that it is learnable. You don't have to be a natural to get better at this.

And, for goodness sake, start earlier than I did!

Doing It For The Money

It was one of those familiar conversations that I often have:

"We want to get more of our people involved in business development."

"Is this a new idea, or have you been working at it for a while?"

"Oh, we've been working at it a lot. We've tried quite a few things."

"Such as?"

"Well, the first thing we did was try to convince them of the wonderful things business development would do for the firm if we were all successful at it."

"And?"

"They all agreed, but only a few were moved to action by things that were good for the firm. Most of the others were more interested in things that were good for them personally.

"So what did you try next?"

"We tried to make it personal. We changed our compensation system to put more reward in for business getters"

"Did that work?"

"A little, but it mostly just ended up paying more to the people who were already good at it. It turned out that promising to pay you if you got terrific at a completely new skill wasn't enough to overcome the lack of confidence that many had about whether they could learn it."

"What happened next?"

"Well, we tried using the pay scheme again. We started rumours that we would cut the pay of or fire people who couldn't generate business."

"And how well did that work?"

"Well, it generated a lot of fear, but even fear and terror didn't turn non-marketers into marketers. We ended up spending more time fighting about the new reward system and even less time discussing new marketing ideas. It seems as if the minute you discuss money, people can't think about anything else."

"Interesting. What did you try next?"

"Well, we put all our people through sales training courses."

"Were they effective?"

"They were very useful for those who were already interested in business development. They didn't have much impact on those who weren't interested. It was pretty much a waste of time, because it was the ones who weren't interested that we were trying to reach."

"Anything else?"

"Oh, yes. We designed a process for targeting our key clients with cross-discipline teams and we gave people access to marketing staff specialists, laying out a program of how to make relationship building programs effective."

"And what happened?"

"Well, where individual people or groups did what we planned, it worked fabulously. Some people always wanted to do this in an organised fashion. But many of our supposed teams never did execute the programs they had themselves submitted as plans."

"Why not?"

"The same syndrome, I suppose. Tools, systems and organisation are wonderful aids for people who already want to do this stuff, but they seem to have little impact on people who don't want to. If the underlying problem is attitude, no amount of processes, forms and support is going to change things."

"So?"

"Well, what do you think we ought to try next, Richard? What's the latest thinking?

First, Stop Doing What Doesn't Work

Notice the amazing range of things that firms have tried to get people involved in business development. Included in the preceding dialogue are references to:

• Visions
• Rewards
• Punishments
• Training
• Processes
• Support Resources
• Restructuring of Teams

And, I'm told, they haven't worked as well as people hoped they would. There's still a need to find a way to elicit enthusiastic participation in business-getting.

The primary reason most of these business development management initiatives tend to deliver poor results is exactly that word: a reason. Firms do not address the central question that those who do not participate have: "Why should I get involved in all this?"

Firms keep trying to prove to people why their efforts would be good for the firm ("Do it for the glory of the institution; do it to achieve our strategic goals") or because it will make them rich ("Don't worry about whether this is interesting stuff -- do it for the money!")

Not only are these appeals not always effective (if they were, I wouldn't have been asked to write this article or to constantly speak about this subject) but, perhaps surprisingly, encouraging professionals to put effort into business development for the money turns out to backfire badly -- less money is earned, not more.

There are two reasons for this: the impact of incentives on people's motivations, and the impact of the "money orientation" on their business development approaches.

What's Wrong With "Do it For the Money"

In 1999, Alfie Kohn published an important book, Punished by Rewards, (Mariner Books) in which he pointed out that all incentive schemes are doomed to failure because they divert people's attention away from inherent meaning, purpose, fulfillment or fun in the activity. Rather than these things, all motivation is shifted to getting the reward.

He also argues effectively that the most important things needed to get rewards in any field of endeavour are the energy and dedication created by meaning, purpose, fulfillment and fun.

He reports an interesting non-business example. An experiment was conducted with two groups of children, each given some toys to play with. One group was left alone to play, while the other group was given rewards for playing with the toys (ice cream, cookies and such.)

After a short while, the experiment was halted and the rewards removed. The outcome was (in hindsight) readily understandable. Those children who were playing with the toys for the fun of doing so happily carried on.

Those who had been rewarded for playing with the toys had transferred their focus of attention from the play to the reward. If they were no longer to be rewarded, they would no longer play, and ceased to do so.

Doesn't this sound exactly like a group of professionals? Say "Do it and I'll pay you" and they will immediately translate it into "I'm not going to do anything you don't pay me for!"

What happens if people's primary (or even exclusive) reason for doing marketing is to get the money?

In 1997, I first gave the results of a simple survey I have conducted among professionals around the world. People tell me that they truly enjoy their work 20 to 30 percent of the time, and can tolerate the rest.

Similarly, they report that they really like the clients they work for and find the clients' sector interesting about 30 to 40 percent of the time. Again, the rest is acceptable.

Notice that this is what people tell me. It is not my judgment about their lives but their own assessment.

These proportions certainly help us understand why people aren't all that keen to go out, get active and work passionately on business development. Getting more business just brings in more stuff they can tolerate for clients they don't particularly care for!

If you don't love what you do or those you do it for, why would you want to go out and get more of it?

The traditional answer is, of course, because they'll pay me if I do. They'll pay me to do stuff I have no feelings for, for people I don't care for! That, of course, is the dictionary definition of prostitution. Which is exactly the way many professionals feel when their firms try to get them to market themselves. No wonder marketing management efforts have such a low success rate!

If firms wish to get enthusiastic participation in business development, they need to start talking and behaving very differently in their attempts to entice non-participants into the program. The very purpose of being good at business development, the very reason to do it, needs to be re-examined!

What getting good at marketing can do for the individual is to help him or her find the clients they could care about and be eager to help, and the types of work that would be truly stimulating. The better you are at marketing, the more truly professional you can be, because you are not forced to take money from anyone and everyone just because you need the cash.

Paradoxically, if one takes this view of marketing (it's about finding things you really want to work on and people you truly want to help) the energy and involvement in marketing that would be created (in addition to the sincerity and passion immediately evident to clients) would make you much more likely to get the volume and the cash.

Go for things that turn you on and you'll get the money. Go for the money and you'll get less.

The trouble, of course, is that finding exciting work and enjoyable clients is not the reason that firms give their people to participate in business development. Helping people find more fun, fulfillment and meaning in their practices is not really why firms hire marketing directors, is it? But if firms want increased revenues, it should be!

Clients and "Do it For the Money" Attitudes

These survey results also make completely clear why so many people fail at business development. Take a guess at the answer to this question: Do you think that clients can tell when professionals are doing it only for the money and have no special interest in them or their problems?

When you are the target of some other professional, how easily and quickly can you tell if they are interested in you or just trying to get your business and your cash? How transparent are their underlying motives when they are engaged in selling to you?

How easily or quickly can you tell if they have a passion for what they do -- or whether they view themselves simply as solid, competent people just doing a job?

If you are able to detect these things when you are the buyer, how do you feel about them? Do such factors affect your decision about whether to hire specific professionals?

My guess is that you can spot these things almost always and that, most of the time, it significantly influences your desire to work with such professionals. It matters to 95 percent of the people I have asked around the world for more than a decade, and it probably matters to your clients too.

As it turns out, you and your profession are not unique even though you may think you are (sorry!), and your buyers, when they buy, are not that different from you and me when we buy.

"I'm doing it for the money" is an attitude most of us can spot a mile away -- when we're the buyer. And nothing is designed to make us less likely to want to hire such a person. Yet that is the number one reason firms give when they try to get their people to go out and generate business.

The message from management seems to be: "Do it for the money, but try and convince the prospective client that you're not doing it for the money"

I have bad news for you. Your people are just not that good at acting. If their real motivation to engage in marketing is for the money, it will inevitably show. And they will succeed less often, no mater how many training courses you provide to them about how to fake sincerity, Motives matter!

This is not an idealistic "anti-money" argument. When I'm your buyer, knowing that you want the money is nothing to be embarrassed about or to apologise for. We all want the money. But if you truly want me to give you my business, then you will need to be a little more sophisticated about how to actually get it.

You must win my business by showing me that you are interested in more than just the money. You need to prove that you are prepared to earn and deserve my trust and my business by being interested in me.

We know all this as buyers. Why do we keep forgetting it when the time comes for us to get hired? And why do so many firm marketing efforts seem to show so little understanding of how people actually buy?

How Managers and Marketing Directors Make a Difference

There are other ways in which the way a firm's management of its marketing efforts actually leads to less marketing success, rather than more.

In many firms, rewards for marketing success are based upon exactly that: success. There is no credit within the systems or, perhaps more important, the culture of the firm to reward marketing contributions that cannot be linked to a specific piece of business.

There is no "origination credit" for writing a good article or putting on a good seminar. There is no bonus for contributing a new tax idea that everyone else in the firm got to tell their clients about. Unless you were the one to tell your client and you were the one who got the "here's a deal" call from the client, you don't get acknowledged.

Not surprisingly, this mentality leads everyone to under-invest in articles, seminars, innovative ideas and the like, and instead, rush to "selling" activities. They focus on the final event of trying to get hired, rather than the "romance" of successfully laying the groundwork by tempting the prospective client into wanting a relationship. They start approaching prospective clients with an overeager rush of "Do you want to do it?" -- not usually a recipe for success!

Firms also mismanage marketing by fervently preaching team efforts (such as cross-discipline approaches to key clients) while clearly running reward systems based on individual performance. If you pay me on what I do personally, I'm not going to be silly enough to waste my time on any team efforts that don't carry my name attached. Make up your mind, management! What do you really want me to do?

Firms also try to encourage long-term relationship investments by their people while visibly running short-term focused management and reward systems. Again the paradox or contradiction is soon spotted. You say you want us to do all the right things to build long term relationships, but you also want to reserve the right to be short-term decision-makers yourselves? Come on, get real, guys!

What all these problems have in common is that firms are not only "in it only for the money," but they want the money now! As a result, while they talk a good game about long-term relationship building marketing efforts, the truth is that these are never really executed well unless they deliver results immediately.

Managing As If What We Do For a Living Has Meaning

It should be clear by now that my experience has taught me that most firms' marketing problems are not marketing problems at all, but "management of marketing" problems.

Specifically, people are being encouraged into ineffective and counter-productive mindsets and habits by the words and behaviours of firm management and marketing directors as they go about getting their professionals to think about business development.

It will come as a surprise to many, but if firms wish to be more successful at generating revenues, they need to stop saying, "Do it for the money," or even "Do it for the firm."

They do not need to stop saying these things not because they are immoral, but because they cause many professionals (particularly the novices who need the most help) to profoundly misunderstand what actually works in business development. By saying these things they are, just as Alfie Kohn pointed out, drawing people's attention away from the true reasons they might want to be enthusiastically involved.

They need to start saying, "Let's do it as if we were planning to be in business for a long time. Let's do it to really be helpful and valuable to people we can care about, and let's have more fun and fulfillment!" Then they will be able to say: "Oh, and by the way, a wonderful consequence will follow -- clients will love it and we will get richer!"

So how does a marketing director or managing partner help the firm's professionals get good at being trusted and hence start generating the cash?

They need to help professionals understand that we don't get rich by "selling" -- we get rich by making people want to hire us and work with us.

Pulling that off requires a whole new attitude toward why we are doing marketing and selling, and why we work in the profession we chose. It is the job of management and marketing directors to create those attitudes in the firm (and to not generate precisely the opposite attitude, which is all too often the case.)

You do not need to teach your people how to sell. You need to find out, partner by partner, what kind of work turns each partner on and what kind of clients each partner could actually get interested in.

Your people can't love everyone (or everything), but if they can't learn to really care about some kinds of clients and some kinds of work (or the problems of those certain kinds of clients), they are not going to get a higher percentage of clients to give them business.

And if your professionals truly are interested in no one and nothing, there are almost certainly bigger issues at stake!

Strategy and the Fat Smoker

Much of what professional firms do in the name of strategic planning is a complete waste of time, no more effective than individuals making New Year's resolutions.

The reasons are the same in both situations. Personally and professionally, we already know what we should do: lose weight, give up smoking, exercise more. In business, strategic plans are also stuffed with familiar goals: build client relationships, act like team players, provide fulfilling, motivating careers.

We want the benefits of these things. We know what to do, we know why we should do it and we know how to do it. Yet we don't change, most of us, as individuals or as businesses.

The problem is that many change efforts are based on the assumption that all you have to do is to explain to people that their life could be better, be convincing that the goals are worth going for and show them how to do it.

This is patently false. If this were true, there would be no drug addicts in the world, no alcoholics, no bad marriages: "Oh, I see, it's not good for me? Ah, well then, I'll stop, of course!" What nonsense!

And yet strategic plans and annual speeches by CEOs, managing partners, management consultants and others continue to have this same useless structure: "Look at how fabulous it would be if you were a fit, non-smoking exerciser, Richard!" My usual response? "True, but please shut up and go away."

And that's the response of most audiences to the manager's or consultant's latest vision or strategy. "We knew all this a long time ago. Why don't you ask us why we don't do it?"

Now there's an interesting question!

Why We Don't Do It

The primary reason we do not work at areas in which we know we need to improve is that the rewards (and pleasures) are in the future; the disruption, discomfort and discipline needed to get there are immediate.

To reach our goals, we must first change our lifestyle, our daily habits, now. Then we have to have the courage to keep up the new habits and not yield to all the old familiar temptations. Then, and only then, we get the benefits.

As human beings, we are not good at such decisions. We start self-improvement programs with good intentions, but if they don't pay off immediately, or if a temptation to depart from the program arises, we abandon our efforts completely -- until the next time we pretend to be on the program.

That's our pattern. Try a little, succumb to temptation, give up. Repeat until totally frustrated. Unfortunately, there is rarely, if ever, a benefit from dabbling or trying a little of a new strategy.

You can't get half the benefits of a better marriage by cutting out half your affairs; you don't cure half the problems of alcoholism by cutting out half the drinks; and you don't much reduce the risks of lung cancer by cutting out half the cigarettes.

So it is with business strategy: you can't achieve a competitive differentiation through things you do "reasonably well, most of the time." Not only can you not dabble, but you also cannot have short-term strategies (an oxymoron, if ever there was one). The pursuit of short-term goals is inherently anti-strategic and self-defeating.

As Jean Nidetch (the founder of Weight Watchers) believed, the pursuit of quick weight loss is always self-defeating and ill-advised. If you don't understand from the beginning that you have to change your lifestyle, now and forever, then you are wasting your time. Any initial weight you lose will be put right back on.

What's more, repeated, short-lived efforts at weight loss are actually detrimental to long-run success since, among other reasons, they breed cynicism and the attitude of "We can't do this. We've tried and failed before."

Millions of people and countless businesses have proved her insight exactly correct. You are either seriously on the program, really living what you have chosen, or you are wasting your time.

Strategy Is the Diet, Not the Goal

Debating which goals to pursue (whether you wish to choose losing weight, giving up smoking, ceasing to drink or starting to exercise) is a nonsensical process if you lack the discipline to stick with the (different) diet and exercise programs that each of these requires. The only meaningful debate is which diet you are really ready to get on.

Giving up smoking may be better for you (or a better competitive strategy), but if you're not willing to make the changes that that specific goal requires, its relative importance is irrelevant.

It's the same in business. Discussing "strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats" (to take only the oldest and most familiar of the strategic planning exercises) is fun, but gets nowhere near the real questions.

Improving the quality of the analysis is not where the problem lies. The necessary outcome of strategic planning is not analytical insight but resolve.

The essential questions of strategy are these: "Which of our habits are we really prepared to change, permanently and forever? Which lifestyle changes are we really prepared to make? What issues are we really ready to tackle?"

Now that's a different tone of conversation and discussion (and the reason the real debate is so often avoided). Discussing goals is stimulating, inspiring and energising. Discussing what disciplines you are prepared to accept to get to a goal feels tough, awkward, annoying, frightening and completely unpleasant.

An Illustration

As an example, consider the familiar strategic topic of aiming for competitive differentiation through excellence in client service. Here are three real-world examples of programs to achieve this goal:

Once a quarter, an email is sent by the CEO to all active clients (without consultation with the lead people serving those clients), asking them to click on one of three buttons in the email: green if they are satisfied with the way their work is being handled, amber if they have some concerns, and red if they are unhappy.

The CEO personally reviews all the email replies, every day, following up on every single one that is not a green. Every quarter, the group averages on this score are published for each operating unit within the firm (every office, every discipline area) and distributed to everyone in the organisation. Even the mail room clerks can see each quarter how well the senior vice presidents in each group are doing on client satisfaction.

At compensation-setting time, the relevant senior management group conducts a phone or face-to-face interview with every client that partner has served in the last year (or a scientifically chosen random sample if the numbers are too high to be practical).

These client assessments carry a significant (40 to 60 percent) weighting in pay. You can't get paid for selling or doing more volume unless it is more volume of highly satisfied clients. There is no reward for more volume of only moderately satisfied clients.

The organisation adopts and publicises an unconditional satisfaction guarantee, allowing clients to pay only what they thought the work was worth if they were disappointed.

These are just three examples of how to enforce the same strategic idea. Other ideas may be superior. The debate you would need to have in your firm, if you really want to pursue this or any other strategic goal, would be a series of questions:

Which diet, if integrated into our normal running of the firm, would actually get us to perform at a higher level, enough to achieve the benefits we seek?

Which would we be prepared to adopt as a central part of our regular lifestyle?

If we don't like any of these diets, can anyone think of another that will have as much force as these, but that we could live with more easily?

Substitutes are allowed. No one diet idea is without flaw, and there are drawbacks to every program. If asked what the best way to lose weight is, the only sensible answer is: "Whatever diet you will stick to!"

However, if there is no specific diet that all your people can agree to follow, then you must conclude that you are not really willing or able to pursue that strategic goal.

Which is no shame. Life offers many opportunities to do quite well being competent. You don't have to strive for excellence. It's just that if you are not willing to do what it takes to achieve excellence, you should probably just shut up about it (internally and externally) and stop pretending!

There is no business benefit in claiming to pursue a goal that everyone can tell you don't have the guts to pursue. It not only makes you look foolish to clients, staff and colleagues, but it also deeply demoralises people and breeds cynicism. Declaring your commitment to strategies that you don't follow will lower your organisation's energy and its profits.

What Gets People on the Diet?

If all business improvement is like curing a fat smoker or helping an alcoholic recover, what, then, actually gets people and organisations to change?

We all know the main thing that works: a major crisis! If revenues drop off sharply, it's amazing how quickly businesses can act to deal with known inefficiencies and bad habits they could have tackled years ago.

And when the first heart attack comes, it's amazing how many people suddenly find the self-discipline to start living right.

That's close to what happened to a friend of mine. Until March 2005, he was a fat smoker. I had been overweight for most of his life and smoked a pack a day for 37 years. He never pretended that getting fit was his strategy.

Then, a variety of medical conditions put him into the hospital with a kidney malfunction. In the five months that followed, he stopped smoking, started exercising and lost 30 pounds.

This was all wonderful news for me and an amazing and welcome surprise to my family and friends, but a depressing conclusion for any theory of change.

Do people and institutions really have to wait until something very serious happens to them to fix things they have known about for years? Isn't there any hope of a better way?

We know only a few things about getting people to change before the heart attack comes, but here are some.

1. It's About a Permanent Change in Lifestyle

A major source of failure in implementing sensible business strategies is that we underestimate how much effort is truly required to bring about significant improvement.

A major reason that only a small proportion of those who try to implement strategic programs (or stick to diets) ever obtain the benefits they seek is that too many individuals and businesses think of improvement (and strategy) as a distinct schedule of activities, separate (and sometimes separately accounted for) from regular business activities. In other words, there's real life, and then there's the diet.

Viewed that way, all improvement programs are doomed to failure. As I discuss in my "Natural Manager" article, my personal trainer points out that you don't really get the sustained benefits of being an exerciser until it has become as natural and permanent a part of your life as brushing your teeth and taking a shower each day. Anything less than that will put in jeopardy any short-term gains you might obtain with bursts of activity. It's about routines, not special events.

2. You Must Change the Core Scorecards

Strategy, if is to be lived and achieved, is about modifying the very rules of daily living and score-keeping. You must scheme carefully about how new tracking measures of the strategies you pursue are published and disseminated.

If you are trying to lose weight, you must get on the scale regularly. If you do not, it is too easy to let yourself go and fool yourself as to how you are doing. But if you are the only one to see what the measurement says, the force for change will be minimal.

We all forgive ourselves too easily. We all find it quite easy to live with guilt. Even high levels of guilt don't change people. Embarrassment, even in small doses, is far more effective.

How much more forceful it would be if you let your spouse see, each time, what you weigh! Or better yet, what about letting your children monitor your progress?

So it is in professional life. When I was at university, every course taught there was evaluated by the students at the end of every semester, and the results were published to everyone on campus. There was no doubt at that institution as to what the strategy was!

3. Leadership: Get Serious, or Get Out of the Way

Organisations often rush to figure out how the troops need to change to live the new standards. However, this is not the first task. Perhaps the single biggest difficulty in getting an organisation to stick to the diet is convincing them that top management really wants them to.

For example, if a group within the firm faces a trade-off between a lesser volume of high-quality work and a greater volume of "acceptable-quality" work, it is critical that they understand without ambiguity what choice firm leaders wish them to make. If they believe that management, when push comes to shove, wants the second alternative, they will never stretch to engage in strategic behaviors themselves.

If the leadership of the organisation wants the people in it to believe that a new strategy is being followed, they must figure out a way for it to be credible that they, top management, have actually changed their thinking and are prepared to change the way they act, measure and reward.

I have countless examples of failure to do this. I was asked by one firm to run a program for their middle managers on how to be more effective as managers, but my instructions included this: "Please don't raise the topic of how well we ourselves manage these middle managers. We know we do that terribly, but we're not ready to discuss that. Keep their attention on what they could do better. We want them to change first."

Can you imaging a process less likely to get the people in the organisation to actually live to higher standards?

A similar event happened when I was asked to moderate a discussion in a firm that wanted the people in its different regions to work for the good of the institution, not just their own region. Unfortunately, as I ran this discussion, the CEO at the back of the room became more and more agitated.

I later found out that he had turned to his second in command and said, "This guy keeps talking about what we in management need to change to become a one-firm firm. We wanted him to talk about what the people out in the field need to do." Not surprisingly, they never achieved collaboration, and I was never invited back to that firm!

This illustrates, by the way, the fatal flaw in using all outside speakers and consultants. Whether or not they are convincing, educational or inspirational, the question on the audience's mind is, "Do our leaders believe this and are they actually going to run the firm that way?"

All too often, the audience is given no evidence of the firm's leadership commitment to the ideas, and the whole exercise becomes a waste of money and time. I have been told more times than I care to remember that the reaction to one of my presentations has been, "This all makes terrific sense, but there's no way we'll ever do these things around here."

If people are to make the right strategic decision in every location of the firm, in every operating group and at every level, then they must absolutely trust that management will back them up and reward them (or at least not punish them) for acting in accordance with the declared strategy. A large part of really bringing about strategic change is designing some action or new system that visibly, inescapably and irreversibly commits top management to the strategy.

I have sometimes asked firm leaders whether they are willing to announce to their people, right up front, that they will resign their roles if measurable progress is not made on the strategic plans they advocate. Such a commitment has had a dramatic impact where it has been made.

4. Principles Are More Effective Than Tactics

Since successful implementation of a strategy requires both sustained commitment over time and broad participation across the whole organisation, strategies in business, like diets and alcohol recovery, are implemented much better when the ideas are presented as matters of principle, not just as matters of expediency.

If strategic rules are justified only in terms of outcomes ("exercise daily in order to look good"), the diet will always be seen as a punishment on the way to an uncertain and possibly unattainable reward. Accordingly, it will always be resented.

If, however, diet achieves the force of moral principle (such as "treating clients and employees with respect is a value around here, not just a tactic"), the odds are significantly higher that successful implementation will be achieved.

As I reported, managers who get things done are people who are seen to have an ideology -- their people believe that they believe in something.

This is because buy-in and excellent implementation result from a sense of not wanting to let people down. My personal trainer reports that some of his clients tell him that they keep up their exercise programs between meetings because they "don't want to disappoint him."

5. People Must Volunteer

Even though it is the leader's job to offer an ideology around which people can rally, it is by itself only a necessary, but not sufficient, first step.

Among the most powerful revelations of any successful recovery or self-improvement program, perhaps the most important is this: it only works when the individual is doing it for himself or herself and has made a personal choice to do it.

It doesn't work if the person is doing it only for their spouse, or for his or her children, or to gain the good opinion of others. To sustain the effort, an individual has got to make a personal choice that the change is being made for him- or herself.

The motivation must be intrinsic. Since the essence of successful strategic change is not technique, but will. If you prefer, you can call it determination, commitment or resolve.

To achieve any goal, you must really want the goal. The common questions presented when discussing strategies and strategic change are these: "Do we have to do this? Why, when things are going so well, do we need to accept more discipline into our lives?"

The answer, of course, is that you don't have to do anything you don't want to do. Strategy in a professional business is a choice that each individual has to make about whether he or she wants to put more effort into his or her life and career in order to get somewhere new.

In professional firms, it is dangerous to assume that every person, or every partner, does. That's why most firms (and most individuals) don't pull off their strategies: not everyone in the firm actually wants to try that hard. They will say they want to be the clear market leader in their field; they are just not willing to do what that takes.

It's valid for them to make this choice. After all, my friend was a fat smoker for 37 years and felt he had the right to remain so. For him and for others, the single biggest barrier to making change is the feeling that "it's OK so far." People don't disagree that the future state of being a non-smoker would be beneficial, but they resist when they are told that they have to do it.

Brad Robitaille, a Canadian lawyer, points out that while execution of a strategic plan is hard work, it must be hard work that a person loves to do, because only passion creates the determination to continue. He also notes that "no one can instill passion in anyone else's heart." It must come from within. If the hard work inherent in executing the disciplines of strategy is merely a by-product of duty and obligation, then the battle is lost before it has even begun.
One of a leader's roles is to act as a coach, drawing people's attention to what is not perfect about the status quo (i.e., creating dissatisfaction), whether things could actually be better, and whether the desired change is both achievable and desirable. But it's subtle stuff -- the leader must be skilled in not only knowing the answers to these questions, but also in the process of helping others think it through to a personal conclusion.

6. People Must Get On or Off the Bus

Every individual can, and must, make a personal choice. But then the organisation must decide how to respond to those individual choices. For an organisation, strategy cannot be what "most of us, most of the time" do. You'll never be good enough as a firm if participation in your firm's definition of excellence is optional.

If a number of top people have clearly not signed up for the journey or are clearly not true believers, no number of systems or amount of inspired speech making will get the organisation there. Strategy making in professional firms is as often about getting some senior people to leave as it is about bringing new people in.

Jim Collins in Good to Great called this "getting the right people on and off the bus" and identified it as the first step in all programs for strategic greatness.

Everyone in the organisation has to decide if they want to try hard enough to sacrifice some of the present to achieve a better tomorrow. They may do so if they believe the effort is serious. They definitely will not if they think those at the top are undecided or are divided.

Professional firms are afraid of this conclusion. They try to work around the sceptics, the non-believers and the non-participants in their senior ranks, preferring to hold on to revenue volume rather than achieve a senior team who all want to go to the same place and have the same resolve to get there. That's fine, but you can't call it strategy.

As all married couples who try dieting know, it's hard enough to stay the course and resist temptation when you are both attempting to do the right thing. It's nigh impossible if those around you continue to indulge and there are temptations (food, alcohol, etc.) all around. You either pull this off together, or you will lose the resolve and you will fail.

Notice, it's absolutely not about how we can force people to do what we want. It's about how we can make sure that people have opted in and that those who do not wish to be on the program have opted out -- of the firm!

People absolutely need the mutual support (and social structure) that comes from doing this together, in common cause. People need to help each other through the tough times ("Come on, one last repetition of the training circuit") instead of being part of a forgiving culture that keeps discouraging extra effort. ("Oh, that's OK, you can skip exercise today. You deserve a break.")

Again, that's why other researchers and I keep discovering that the most successful organisations have an ideology. There is a McKinsey way, a Goldman Sachs approach and a Bain philosophy, to take only three examples of firms with strong ideologies, clear strategies and the financial success to match.

At these firms, if you don't subscribe to the ideology, you don't stay and argue or act as a silent dissenter. You walk. Or, eventually, you're asked to walk.

Managing the Process of Change

None of this is meant to say that firms must change overnight. It truly is, like alcoholic recovery, a process of "first make a lifetime commitment, then take it one day at time."

Once we know what the agreed-upon diet is, there is a need for skilled coaching in leading individuals and teams through the struggle to attain the goals they have committed to.

I have described this process elsewhere: my article "A Great Coach in Action" explores this topic in depth. But it is worth reviewing the highlights of what we know about diet and exercise program management here.

The key is to manage with a philosophy of "It's OK to stumble; it's only a sin if you don't get back on the program." The primary goal of the beginning stage of a change program is to get people to believe that it is do-able and that all we are asking is that they try. This means early successes.

All that wise leaders (and good personal trainers) talk about is the next small step. And they celebrate like crazy each small accomplishment. They focus on requiring improvement, not on requiring excellence. "As long as you are improving, you're with the program, and one of us!"

Managing a weight loss program often means you stop talking about the ultimate goal. If you keep reminding me that I need to lose 50 pounds, it is as likely to backfire and make me give up as it is to energise me.

But what if someone says to me, "Let's just focus on losing one pound in a week, Richard. Do you think you can do that? That doesn't sound impossible, does it?" My reaction to that will be a lot different. Yet, of course, one pound a week is 50 pounds in a year. An alcoholic is daunted by a lifetime of abstinence, but he or she can manage to not drink just for today.

Michael Webb, a sales consultant, points out that short-term goals ("Lose a pound a week") only take on value in the context of principles, which are long-term. First, one establishes what is important; then, you get people to do a little of it, a little more and so on. It is commitment to a process of continuous improvement on things that matter.

In my article "The Courage to Have a Strategy," I described this as an attitude of "Rome wasn't built in a day, but we are building Rome." It can be described as a managerial style of insistent patience.

Encouragement is an essential ingredient in the recipe. When I began exercising, it was sobering to realise how much I needed my personal trainer's words ("Good, good, Richard") when I had just been able to complete an exercise for the first time.

At one level, I knew I was pathetically bad, but it really did help to hear his constant encouragement: "You're doing much better, Richard. You might not be able to feel it, but as a personal trainer I can see it."

I don't know how much of it was him being falsely optimistic, and I am sure it was all a well-practiced mind game.

But, as every good personal trainer knows, that's the point. We all need to play mind games with ourselves when we struggle to build new achievements and habits into our lives. ("If I can just finish this first one, I'll reward myself with a break. Let me just get this first one done!")

It also means making a game of strategic programs. Educated professionals may scoff, but it's profoundly rooted in the human psyche that if you can make a game of something, it helps to sustain strenuous effort.

Hence all the hoopla of various strategic initiatives such as "Six Sigma," "quality is free" and similar fads; business jargon; and prizes, rewards and "black belt" recognition programs.

There's a reason such things work, even among cynical people. They help to make a "mind game" of the whole thing, creating a framework on which we hang the mind-distracting habits. ("If I can just do this one thing, I can make it. If I change the way I do that, I will be better able to stick to things.)

Good personal trainers know that life-changing improvement can and does fail by rushing to either of the two extremes: establishing improvement goals that are too ambitious or take too long to achieve, thus leading to frustration and abandonment of the program, or failing to establish any pressure to improve, allowing people to pretend that they plan to get on the program, but just not today.

The good news in all of this is that, in the world at large, there is experience in helping people make significant improvement in their lives. There are well-documented methodologies; they are just not the ones we usually associate with the business world.

If we are prepared to rethink how we view strategy and business life, then people can achieve things they never thought possible. If my friend can become a fit, non-smoking exerciser, there's truly no limit!

Geographic Expansion Strategies

Newspaper coverage of the legal profession is filled with plans to expand geographically, diversify into new services and create multi-site, multi-disciplinary, multi-jurisdictional law firms. In this, Australian firms are copying (surprise, surprise) their U.S. and UK counterparts in focusing on growth and expansion as their primary strategic concerns.

And it's not just the mega-firms that have these grandiose dreams: every established firm outside the major cities (in every country) has plans to join the big boys and open offices in major centres. (All together now: "If I can make it there, I'll make it anywhere...")

What is surprising about all these initiatives is how common they are. And how misguided. The time to expand is when you have a track record of being superb (not just competent) at what you do. Once you have found a way to do what no other good firm can match, then think of taking those (managerial) skills to new places and new disciplines -- not before.

Beaton Consulting, a Melbourne-based research and consulting firm, has since 2003 performed a thorough investigation of the Australian legal marketplace. They report that clients rate competence, service and client care as most important in choosing a firm, providing national and international coverage ranked close to the bottom of relevant choice criteria.

What the research also shows is that in the legal profession, as in accounting, consulting and engineering, most clients rate the firms they use highly on competence, service and client care, but they do not think these firms are very much differentiated from each other on things clients care about. (My experience says that's the same around the world.)

It's not that these findings are surprising: firms have heard them before. Indeed, firms preach the virtues of reliability, client care and understanding the clients' business fervently to all their partners and staff. They just don't have programs to make them happen.

Firms everywhere (and in every profession) seem to miss the points that: (a) strategy is about differentiation; (b) differentiation is about going where your competitors aren't, rather than where they are; (c) strategy is about making your services more valuable to your clients than those of your competitors; and (d) the differentiation comes from what you do consistently and to a high standard.

For example, what percentage of partners could honestly say that they read every issue of their clients' trade magazines? (Less than 5 percent.) Yet they continue to trumpet (falsely) their commitment to an understanding of their clients' business.

What are firms doing? Well, they seem to say, we've failed to differentiate in the locations and services we are already in ("We're no worse than anyone else" seems to be the implied slogan) so let's go to new places and be no worse than anyone else there!

Why? Because it is more difficult to get the partners and staff you already have to live their lives to higher standards than to go out and merge with new partners in new countries or bring in lateral partners in new specialties that you know nothing about. That's called strategic initiative, and it feels good -- and it's just relatively easy to do. But it should not be as high a priority as firms think it is.

Why do such smart people do such dumb things? Part of the reason is that there truly is exciting work for fascinating clients in these new places. But the amount of work is vastly exceeded by the number of people pursuing it.

It's as if everyone is planning their dating and marriage strategy around capturing the hearts and minds of the latest model or movie star: No one is working at the romance of taking care of those they are already in a relationship with. The dreams are glamorous, and truly desirable. They just happen to be impractical for the vast majority of people who dream them.

U.S. law firm expansion into London is a wonderful case in point. Of course, London is a good market for lawyers. That doesn't take much genius to spot. Does that mean (as has happened) that over 100 American law firms can successfully open offices there?

Of course not, but that's what they've done. Almost all, of course, are unprofitable, certainly less profitable than their firms' domestic practices. The original partners are getting (and will continue to get) literally zero benefit from all the overseas expansion.

Yet Australian firms are rushing to copy this model. In the words of George Bernard Shaw (he was referring to marrying for the second time), it is the "triumph of hope over experience."

What law firms (and other professional firms) continue to ignore is the fact that success does not come from spotting emerging growth areas that your competitors have missed ("Wow -- China's a big market! Don't tell anyone! Pssst! I know an Adelaide firm that has just discovered that there's great legal work available in Sydney! Keep it under your hat!")

Rather, success comes from consistent, diligent, passionate execution of the well-known basics of client service, user-friendliness, understanding of the clients' business, internal firm collaboration and other well-known virtues already included in every firm's strategic plan and mission or values statement. The key is not whether we know this stuff, but whether we have the managerial culture to ensure that we practice what we preach.

On a previous trip, one of the country's major law firms told me, "We're thinking of expanding into Indonesia, Richard. Do you think it's a good idea?" I replied, "Well, do you have three partners eagerly looking forward to spending the next five years living in Jakarta?"

"No," they replied. "Well, then," I answered, "your question about expansion is moot. Your success will not turn on whether Indonesia is analytically a good market, but whether you have the people with the passion, drive, enthusiasm, commitment, energy and discipline to make it work. Sure, someone will succeed in Indonesia, but the question is -- what makes you think it will be you?"

The Basis of Reputation: Controls

What is often overlooked in today's law firm fascination with branding is that your reputation is based on what you really are, not what you hope to be. Your brand is not what you claim to be, but what you actually are willing to enforce. You only get a reputation when the market-place experiences the fact that you are, 100 percent of the time, what you say you are.

Reputations are a consequence of internal management control and not primarily about marketing. The question is: do you have in place the control systems that make sure all your people adhere to the principles you espouse.

I have always been a cynic about the ability of law firms to achieve this standard in a global network. Managing a global network is rather like trying to do a doctorate in management when most law firms are still in kindergarten when it comes to management.

Some firms are still fighting to introduce the concept of partner performance appraisals, and many resist the notion that partners should be subject to coaching. Resisting these things may be fair and wise, but without them, it's hard to see how a firm can credibly present to the market an ability to co-ordinate multi-disciplinary engagements across multiple jurisdictions.

I do not think the well-managed global law firm is impossible in principle, but I would bet against the ability of the majority of firms to introduce the culture and managerial processes to pull it off. It takes a level of managerial skill that the firms have not demonstrated domestically, never mind internationally.

Clearly, there are exciting clients who want to buy sophisticated legal services simultaneously on a multi-jurisdictional basis from the same firm. However, there is very little evidence that such clients constitute a large market segment.

Notice, it is not a question of having a clients that has domestic work in Germany, France, UK or the US. Single jurisdictional firms can handle that. The global firm is only justified when clients have, on the same project, a need for German, French, British and American expertise. It is only the integrated project that justifies having a global network.

There are some clients that need this, but there are more law firms going after this segment than the size of the segment justifies. There's enough work there for a few, truly stellar integrated firms, but the fact is there is a large stampede of firms, each thinking they will be one of the select few. Only a small fraction of them will succeed because the size of the market is currently small, and it has been made worse by the recession. This leaves firms putting the infrastructure in place ahead of demand, which is a very risky strategy.

There are benefits to being global such as knowledge sharing, real team work and collaboration, common values and standards. But first you have to prove that you can achieve these things domestically before you try them internationally.

Conflicts

The issues of conflicts will become even more pressing than they have already been. In England, Holland and to a certain extent Germany and Spain, firms can outgrow their ability to generate decent profits for the partners because they find themselves conflicted out of the high margin work too often.

The problem of managing conflicts has taken on great importance in the past five years or so as firms have become larger. By and large lawyers are noble and honourable people. The problem is not the ethical one about misleading clients or adhering to Bar rules. The overwhelming majority of firms do that with discipline.

The problem is the managerial issue. Conflicts cause disputes in partnerships when it becomes necessary to turn away either client A or client B. It's very difficult to make a firm-wide decision if you are very big. The result is that the cannons and nuclear bombs come out as one group of partners wage war on another group, particularly if the partner compensation is performance related. This is not just a big firm problem. It also occurs in smaller firms with so-called "merit systems" in place because there are vested interests with groups of partners.

If London tells Frankfurt that they have to turn away a transaction (or an entire client relationship) because of conflicts, how then can London complain if Frankfurt misses its financial targets? What temptations might Frankfurt have to find some way to represent this client and "hide" the conflict in order to meet these targets? To believe that law firm partners will not be so tempted (because we're all honourable) is to believe that no accounting firm partner would ever shred documents.

Bigger or Better?

Law firms' obsession with size has always been a goose-chase. The secret of success is getting better, not getting bigger. What firms should be worried about is, are we becoming ever more valuable to our clients on things that they value (and will pay a premium for)? Are we giving better client service? Have we learned how to deliver excellence to our clients at an ever-decreasing cost. (i.e. become more efficient?)

For all of the talk about competition and client fee-sensitivity, the issue of costs remains a neglected one among law firms. I do a lot of work for in-house counsel as well as law firms. No-one is worried about high fees for good work.

What they are incredibly annoyed about is that they do not believe of the typical law firm that it is acting as an honourable agent, looking after the clients' money, working hard to minimise the bill. What annoys the client is paying for inefficiency such as partners doing things that associate lawyers could do, having three partners attend a meeting when one would do. Most of the pressure on fees we are seeing around the world today is because clients do not believe law firms are efficient in spending the client's money wisely.

Indeed the client perceives (accurately) that the incentives in most law firms are precisely the opposite! Because the average partner is rewarded (financially or otherwise) by the firm when he or she raises the number of personal billable hours, the client perceives that the partner (and the firm) has an incentive to charge as much as they can get away with.

Hence, most clients feel the need to watch their legal bills like a hawk, and go over them with a fine tooth comb. The result is we have made the client profoundly cynical. It's actually point of professionalism. Clients wants someone that he or she can trust you to look after their interests and spend their money wisely.

There is also a lot of work to do in the area of client relationships. The goal of building multi-jurisdiction, multi-disciplinary relationships is a fine one. But current behaviour in this area, even domestically, is pretty poor.

Recently, I was at a meeting of a major Fortune 500 company which invited in all of its outside lawyers. They asked me to run a discussion on relationship building between the law firm and the client. I asked the in-house general counsel if any of the law firms present had volunteered, as a gesture of goodwill, to sit in on the legal department meetings to keep up in what was going on inside the corporation.

The general counsel said it had never happened in all his experience of dealing with outside law firms, and that he would welcome such an investment in relationship building. An old idea, but few are doing it.

If I were running a law firm and had one of two things to work on: get bigger (say, by merging or opening an office in a new location) or persuade my partners to act as if they cared I am convinced the latter would increase profits and the chance of getting better transactions. But of course, that would require tackling the behaviour of partners, which is much harder than doing a merger or signing a new lease.

Global but not Multi-site

I think it is better to be multi-jurisdictional on the condition that you have the managerial capability. But there is no virtue in being multi-jurisdictional by having dots on the map. The issue is not about how many new offices you've got. The keys are extra levels of client service, efficiency, innovation, creativity and understanding your clients' business. All basic things on which most firms do competently.

The issue then, is which firm is going to get the reputation for doing these things not just competently, but superbly -- reliably, consistently, dependably, superbly.

The point about globalisation is that you can have a global reputation and a global business without actually being geographically global. Tom Peters or Charles Handy are internationally renowned management consultants.

There are also lawyers in the City and on Wall Street (and elsewhere) who have global reputations. They charge extremely high fees (because they are worth it) but they don't have offices in every city in the world. They are just superb at what they do. If they subsequently decided to expand geographically, they could.

But the time to do it is when you have the cultural or managerial ability to live up to the claims of excellence that you offer the marketplace.

It is no coincidence that the most financially successful (and admired) law firms in both the United States and the UK are the firms Wachtell, Lipton in the United States and Slaughter & May in the UK. These firms, unlike the majority of their grandiose, empire-building competitors, have done nothing but focus on being the best at what they do, thereby attracting the kind of top-tier work and premium fees that are the envy of their peers.

They do not attend business conferences, do not (to my knowledge) hire business consultants, and they have made no attempt to build global firms. They have simply focused on the highest standards of professionalism and aim to be perceived by the market as the best.

Everyone's trying to copy the expansion plans of Clifford Chance and Shearman & Sterling. Why aren't they trying to do what Wachtell and Slaughter & May are doing? Because getting better is hard work. Getting bigger is a simple matter of doing deals and hiring laterals -- wonderful strategic avoidance tactics.

What, then, does it take to succeed in new markets (and/or new services)? In conversation with one of my UK law firm clients (a managing partner of a firm just outside the top Magic Circle set of firms), he was observing that the U.S. firms entering the London market that are threatening the established UK firms do not yet have sizable practices. Nevertheless, they seemed to be attracting terrific work.

"It seems as if size is a lot less important than people say," he commented. "What are these new U.S. entrants doing, then, that the UK firms' partners are not?" I asked. "They are showing 'Ooomph,' " he answered, implying that their energy was the key to their success.

Ooomph? That's the latest management theory? Well, yes. Ooomph. Focus on the essentials and just get it done -- superbly. Read the clients' trade magazines, act as if you gave an unconditional satisfaction guarantee, insist that everyone put the clients' interests first. Be absolutely reliable, dependable and a true trusted advisor.

And when you've mastered all that, take your excellence on the road: the big city, China, the sexy practice areas. Go for it -- but be sure you have made yourself ready to win!

Do You Really Want Relationships?

In 2001, I pointed out that building trusting relationships with clients leads to many benefits: less fee resistance, more future work, more referrals to new clients, and more effective and harmonious work relationships with the clients.

However, many people have built their past success on having a transactional view of their clients, not a relationship one, and it is not clear that they really want to change. Stated bluntly, professionals say that they want the benefits of romance, yet they still act in ways that suggest that what they are really interested in is a one-night stand.

In romance, both sides work at building a mutually supportive, mutually beneficial relationship. They work hard to create a sense of togetherness, a feeling of "US."

Each tries to truly listen to what the other is saying and feeling. The emphasis in discussions is less on the immediate topic at hand, and more about preserving the emotional bond and the mutual commitment.

Rather than seeking immediate short-term gratification and reward, romance relies on making investments in the relationship in order to obtain long-term, future benefits.

This is all seemingly attractive, but it is not an accurate description of the way most professionals deal with their clients, nor how many clients deal with their professional providers.

Most professional-to-client interactions involve little if any commitment to each other beyond the current deal. The prevailing principle is "buyer beware." Mutual guardedness and suspicion exist, and the interaction is full of negotiation, bargaining, and adversarial activity. Both sides focus on the terms, conditions, and costs of temporary contact. Each side treats THEM as "different," as "other."

This is the way many professionals and their clients want it to be. They want a transaction, and may not yet (if ever) be ready for relationships. Rather than acting to build relationships, both sides might initially have the brakes on.

After all, relationships require making a commitment and incurring obligations. They also mean focusing and being selective: you can't chase after every opportunity if you want to build relationships. To be good at relationships, you must have patience and know how to trust others.

Moving from a one-night-stand (transactional) mentality to a romance (relationship) mindset is not about incremental actions, but requires a complete reversal of attitudes and behaviours. One approach is not necessarily "better" than another, but there is a real choice to be made.

Expert versus Advisor

Although it is not an identical concept, the difference between transactions and relationships is similar to the distinction between being an expert to one's client versus being an advisor.

An expert's job is to be right -- to solve the client's problems through the application of technical and professional skill. In order to do this, the expert takes responsibility for the work away from the client and acts as if he or she is "in charge" until the project is done.

The advisor behaves differently. Rather than being in the right, the advisor's job is to be helpful, providing guidance, input, and counselling to the client's own thought and decision-making processes. The client retains control and responsibility at all times; the advisor's role is subordinate to this, not that of a prime mover.

Viewed this way, it is easy to see why many professionals, while they may pretend to the virtues of being their client's advisor, actually do not want to be one. They do not want to advise; they want to take charge.

The asset manager does not want merely to recommend investments to the client; he or she wants to control the client's funds. The trial litigator, similarly, does not want to provide input on trial strategy. He or she wants the client to cede authority to the warrior to do battle as she or he sees fit.

Naturally, there is nothing wrong with either role. There are many times when the client is best served by selecting the true expert and putting his or her affairs in their hands. On other occasions, the client may truly want and need an advisor.

The only mistake, on either side, is to pretend. A practitioner who is wedded to expert ways ("Leave this to me, I'll get you the result you want") has every right to practice that way. He or she has no right to complain if some (or many) clients prefer a different approach.

Of course, what would be foolish would be for someone who really prefers being an expert to pretend that he or she is an advisor. The mentality is different. The personality required is different. The skills required are different. The work experience and the fulfillments are different.

An expert who wants to be an expert is going to be miserably poor at pretending to be an advisor, and is going to resent the client throughout the entire project. (Which apparently happens a lot!)

Managing as a Relationship or as a Transaction

The issue of choosing between transactional and relationship approaches exists not only in dealings with clients but also in dealings with people inside the firm.

When I conduct seminars and workshops on managerial topics, those who pose questions want to know how to get other people (partners, subordinates, employees) to change their behaviour.

The very questions suggest a transactional viewpoint with the implication that we are just fine, it's THEM who need to change. When I suggest solutions based on building relationships with these other people, my questioners are often frustrated.

"Are you saying," they ask me, "that I need to show an interest in my subordinates as people and care about their career ambitions?"

"Only if you want them to respond to you," I reply. "If your subordinates feel that you are prepared to work at a relationship with them, ensuring that both sides benefit, then they will give you more of what you want. That's human nature, not a political or religious point.

"But if they think that you, their superior, are just trying to get out of the deal more of what you want from them -- harder work, more billable hours, whatever -- then they will respond in kind. They will view you as you are viewing them -- useful only to the extent that they can get out of it what they want in the short run.

"There will be no long-term loyalty and no commitment to the larger interests of the firm, because you have set the pattern that this is truly a temporary transaction, not a relationship. If you treat people as THEM, as objects, or as 'others,' they in turn will treat you instrumentally. It's completely predictable and unavoidable."

This analysis is not always received well. Managers are always trying to get more from THEM (the subordinates) without having to build relationships with THEM. The reasons are often the same as in the client situation. Developing relationships means creating commitments and obligations that people do not want to create.

In spite of what they say their goals are, many individuals are just not prepared to do what relationships require -- in any context. It's not just about their views of clients, but also about their entire life choices in dealing with people. It is their beliefs that must change, not just their daily habits.

The Attractions of Transactions

We must be wary of romanticising romance (or the advisory role.) Relationships are not the best answer for all people at all times. There are benefits to both parties in transactions.

Relationships can be scary, particularly if they rush too quickly into creating obligations that neither side is yet ready to accept. Both client and provider may be reluctant to commit to each other for future activity until significant experience with each other is developed.

Growing relationships is very personal and intimate. You actually have to be interested in others, listen to what they say and care about, and pay attention to their moods and needs.

Little of this is required in a transaction. Where it is required, it is only needed for a short period of time, usually during the initial seduction (i.e., negotiating the deal) when people play games pretending to care about each other.

After that, the transactional approach (focus on the getting the job done, not on the other person) allows you to remain detached and unengaged, which is very attractive to some people. You can emphasise the technical skills in which you trained, and not be stressed by the need for interpersonal, psychological, emotional, or political nuances. For many professionals, this is a great blessing.

Relationships, by their very nature, are not as clear-cut as the negotiated contract terms of a transaction. On both commercial and psychological grounds, it is easy to see why some individuals might prefer the clarity (and short-term gratification) of a "propose, get hired, deliver, get paid" transaction.

Transaction skills are very "scalable": expertise at winning and delivering transactions can be codified and disseminated quickly across an organisation. It is less clear that the interpersonal skill of relationship building can be developed as quickly in a business that wants to grow rapidly.

Transactions are also very appealing to those who find comfort in the rational, the logical, or the analytical approach, which description covers people in most professional and technical businesses. Little in professional training prepares one for the psychological complexities of dealing with clients (or liking it).

An analysis of just how different transactions and relationships can be (and their relative appeals) is given in the following table.

Transactions	Relationships
One-night stand	Romance
Them	Us
Opponents	On the same side
Short-term benefit	Long-term benefit
Suspicion	Trust
Goal is to make yourself look attractive	Goal is to understand the other party
Negotiate and bargain	Give and be helpful
Preserve options, avoid obligations	Make a commitment
Focus on the present	Focus on the future
Develop a detailed contract	Be comfortable with ambiguous understandings about future reciprocity
Main goal is to prevail	Main goal is to preserve the relationship
Style can be impersonal, detached	Style must be personal, engaged, intimate
Preparation and rehearsal of what we're going to say and do	Adaptability and flexibility to the responses of the other party
Listen to what they're saying	Listen to what they're feeling, why they're saying it
Usual feeling during the interaction is tense, enervated	Usual feeling is relaxed, comfortable
Interactive style is defensive, protective	Interactive style is open, inquisitive

Additional differences exist between the two approaches. In pursuing a one-night stand, a small degree of exaggeration, misrepresentation, and manufactured appearance is normal and even expected. Perhaps people rarely lie, but they rarely tell the whole truth either.

Clients hide the true objectives and budgets for their projects for fear of giving too much away and being at a disadvantage in the negotiations. Professionals try to create the appearance of greater experience, competence, and capabilities than they truly have.

In creating a trusting relationship, however, complete integrity is required. Even the smallest example of lying to your spouse will destroy years of relationship building.

Switching from a transactional to a relationship approach to business requires a revolution of attitudes and behaviours. Gradual change will not take hold, because everything people have learned through their successes in transactions may work against them in learning how to be good at relationships. The most successful Don Juans and Donna Juanitas are unlikely to make the best spouses.

Which Approach Do People Want?

It is interesting to speculate what percentage of clients are seeking relationship advisors versus transactional experts, and what percentage of providers want to be relationship advisors rather than transactional experts.

I don't have hard data on this point, but I regularly poll my seminar audiences about what they look for when they are trying to buy professional services.

Fully eighty percent of the typical audience reports that they would prefer to hire a true advisor and, if they could find someone skilled in taking that approach, would be willing to pay a premium for it. Twenty percent would not, preferring to seek out either the best technical expert or the low-cost provider.

When I ask the same audience which approach they and their firms are currently taking, the numbers are reversed. Eighty percent report that they mostly market themselves as experts (or are currently perceived as such) although many have dreams of changing this and becoming a "trusted advisor firm."

These results are not, of course, scientific. But the difference between what people say when they are buyers and what they say when they are providers is striking.

The Client as Enemy

While viewing dealings with clients (or employees) as a transaction is normal (and may be the most common form of professional service interaction), there is a danger that continuing to view clients as THEM can degenerate into viewing the client as the enemy. This can breed reactions that spiral into self-defeating behaviour for both parties involved.

All too often, the client becomes a competitor for things the professional wants (money, challenge, or control), not a partner in getting them.

All this can lead to behaviour that worsens the situation. Professionals act in ways that are pompous, patronising, condescending, or arrogant, and the clients react to that by being (in turn) defensive, more guarded, and even less "relational." Things begin to spiral.

As Charles Green points out in his new book, Trust-Based Selling (McGraw-Hill, 2005), you can tell a professional provider is treating the client as the enemy when he or she prefers to work back at the office rather than at the client's location. Each side, jealous and insecure about its control of THEM, competes for control of the agenda or outcome of a meeting or phone call.

Unlike healthy relationships, which surface and deal with problematic issues early, transaction players develop an inability to confront THEM on difficult issues.

As a result of all this, exaggeration, misrepresentation, selective disclosure of key information, and careful management of appearances are common on both sides. Both sides fight to be right and to prevail, rather than collaborate on finding a solution.

This all ends up being against the best interests of all parties concerned. By treating providers with suspicion, buyers create an atmosphere that makes providers more reluctant to show a sincere interest in any client need or requirement beyond the terms of the contract.

In turn, this unresponsive behaviour reinforces the buyer's perception that the provider is not worthy of trust and must be kept at arm's length, watched like a hawk in case they take advantage of the client.

Like some ancient rivalry, or a bad marriage, the origins of the dispute are lost in the mists of time. It is impossible to discover who was first responsible for treating the other badly.

All that can be observed now is a set of resentments and accusations of being treated poorly by the other side. Each side can point to specific behaviours that show that THEY (the other side) are unfair, unreasonable, and untrustworthy. Each side has concrete evidence of behaviour by THEM that proves that "we are justified" in our thinking poorly about THEM.

As a result, clients become more demanding and controlling in their buying behaviour and providers become more insincere and less responsive in their dealings with clients. Both sides end up actively encouraging the adverse reactions from THEM that they are trying to avoid.

Other examples of dysfunctional "client as enemy" behaviours include:

• Focus on rehearsing what you are going to say to the client in proposals and presentations rather than how you plan to get a true conversation going.
• Avoiding conversations with clients because you want either to remain in control or avoid having to treat the client as a person.
• Avoiding contact with clients unless there is something concrete to talk about.
• Too obviously trying to sell more work to get what you want rather than serve the client.
• Requiring that all agreements and decisions be documented and formally approved, rather than trusting each other's word.

The most important agenda for most professionals is to ensure that they do not allow their transaction business to spin out of control into "client as enemy" behaviour. Among all the outcomes, this is the worst, with no winners.

Transactions are inevitable. Clients increasingly treat professionals as vendors; they audit bills, they use purchasing departments and consultants in their selection processes, they bargain hard, and they emphasise contractual terms. Once this has begun to happen, it is clear that the client organisation has categorised you as THEM and what follows, with immensely high probability, is going to be a transaction.

That's not necessarily a tragedy. As long as enmity does not build up, great success can be achieved with this approach. Once you are working with the client on the transaction, you have the opportunity to then take advantage of the client contact to build a relationship for the next time.

However, firms must be vigilant in identifying where they are engaging in "client as enemy" activities, and discuss ways to eliminate them. In addition, they must identify and eliminate anything they might be doing that causes the clients to view the firm as the enemy.

As Patrick McKenna observes: "The first tangible acknowledgment that many clients get from their professional service provider is a standard retainer agreement that lays out in no uncertain terms 'what we are going to do for you -- and to you -- if you don't pay our bill in a timely fashion.' "

"How's that for a terrible way to start?" Patrick asks. "Why not make sure that the firm's first communication with the client is a letter of thanks for having been chosen, providing a note of reassurance to the client that they have chosen someone with some human sensitivity?"

If relationships are not always possible, the very least a firm can do is to ensure that it handles its transactions professionally, and does not play the transaction game in such a way as to alienate the very clients it seeks to win and serve.

Making the Transition to Romance

Many people believe that individuals, by the time they reach positions of influence in their careers, cannot readily change and that if firms want to build relationships, they must recruit, develop, and retain people who have a predisposition for romance rather than seeking to change transactional people in the middle of their careers.

There is a great deal of truth to this. In 1997, I wrote about two types of firms: hunters (based on opportunistic individualism) and farmers (based on collaborative teamwork). Many firms have tried to make the transition from the former to the latter, only to discover that it has been extremely difficult to turn individualists into team players.

Few have pulled it off as institutions and those that did accomplished it not by changing people, but by replacing them. Only when the collaborative team players achieved positions of power and could insist on their approach did firms begin to change.

Another approach to changes of this kind has been to complement "old style" players with people who have the "new" attitudes and skills. This has been done in firms where technical experts have been explicitly teamed up with "client-friendly" salespeople who work together to win and serve clients, melding their skills.

The real challenge, however, is for all of us as individuals, not as firms. Transactions are common because they involve less hard work and demand fewer skills. Ultimately, however, they are not in the best long-term interests of either professional or client.

Mutual trust will allow both sides to get more of what they seek than continued mutual suspicion. Relationships are not more "noble" than transactions, but where they can be created they are much more profitable.

Accordingly, many professionals will want to make the terrifying and difficult transition from skilled seducers to relationship-minded collaborators.

Clients can be successfully led into a mutually supportive relationship and away from treating us with suspicion, but only if we throw away the bad habits of viewing them as THEM, and throw ourselves whole-heartedly into developing the new skills of relationships.

The key first step is to recognise that romance and relationships work by earning and deserving what you want to get back from the other party.

Whenever a trade-off occurs, the rules of romance require that, instead of acting defensively to protect your own interests, you put the client's interest first and keep the faith that this relationship-building act will be repaid through future reciprocity. As I tried to show, this is not idealism since it leads to higher returns, but it does require an act of faith.

Accordingly, the course of wisdom for those new to the approach is to be highly selective in choosing a first relationship to experiment with. As in all change efforts, a small-scale first experiment that has a high chance of yielding an early success is the wisest approach, rather than beginning with the most important relationships. If you are going to learn a new skill, it is better to do so in a situation where any initial fumbles will not be costly.

If they are to capture market premiums, professionals cannot, in the long run, afford to have clients continue to view them as THEM. Professionals need clients (and employees) to think of them as US. And the only way to achieve that is to start thinking of them the same way.

We must each decide whether, if we truly want the benefits of romance, we have the courage and patience to shake off old ways of viewing other people and are willing to learn new ways of dealing with them.