17 Ways to Improve Fee Negotiations

Posted on 4 June 2012 by tonyreiss
Bingo players.

‘Fee negotiating is a cross between bingo and voodoo’

A cross between  bingo and voodoo was how a university professor recently described the approach of most service providers to fee negotiation! This got me thinking about professional firms.

With clients looking for more cost certainty and alternative billing structures available, firms are finding fee negotiations with clients more complicated and are struggling to maintain fee rate levels. The response of firms is puzzling. Efforts are rightly being made to become more efficient and reduce costs, but little is being done to address improvements in the top line.

For a start, firms will benefit from reviewing what’s causing fee rates to slide. Where are the priorities? Is it primarily:

  • Scope creep on projects?
  • Procurement pressure from clients?
  • Clients cutting budgets?
  • Pressure to provide fixed fees or reduce hourly rates?

To assess where your firm is, ask yourself the question: ‘What would you say if a client said

“Your fees are 15% higher than other firms”.

Or,

“Drop your fees by 15% or we’ll put the work out to a pitch!”

What are the best responses to these situations and how can firms improve their approach?

There are lots of things firms can do to improve their approach to fee negotiating. Here are 17 tips:

  1. Make sure key people understand the relationship between price and profit – a study by McKinsey in 27 industries (most of them with lower margins than professional firms) showed that, on average, a 1% increase in price leads to a 10% increase in profits. Even if your margins are 20%, you’ll make an extra 5% profit if you can bill just 1% more. The extra fees drop straight down to the bottom line as profit. Conversely, writing off fees has a dramatic negative effect on profits.
  2. Analyse your business in terms of client profitability. Many firms have a group of clients that could be called profit vampires. They challenge you on fees all the time. They might be trophy clients, but be a pain to work for. You might have discounted to win them in the first place and have planned to find ways of increasing your rates, but be finding it impossible to do so. These clients need to be shifted up or out! Let them drain your rival’s profitability, not yours!
  3. Get the relationship right. Avoid those relationships where you could describe them as ‘master – slave’. Try to develop ‘peer–to-peer’ relationships based on mutual trust. This may take time, but will be worth it, both for the client and for you as the service provider.
  4. Prepare for conversations on fee negotiation.  The worst people at winging it appear to be senior, who seem to be saying to themselves “I’ve been doing this for 20 years – I know what I’m doing and don’t need to prepare!” Back of the taxi preparation is risky given the implications of getting this right or wrong.
  5. Put yourself in the client’s position. Imagine what might be important to them and what they might value. It’s likely that they will want to get good value, but ask yourself how they are likely to define value. Most service providers underestimate the importance of taking away hassle, helping the clients be less stressed, helping them hit their targets and generally look good to their peers and directors.
  6. Have a structure for fee negotiating, such as:
  • Prepare
  • Open with a proposition
  • Bargain
  • Close

When bargaining, be clear about your ‘must haves’ and your ‘like to haves’. Give away your ‘like to haves’ if you have to, not your ‘must haves’.

7. With your most profitable clients, be careful that your key contact remains influential in the negotiating. Budget decisions are moving to more senior positions, particularly in this current economic climate. Your contact may be becoming a less important ‘gatekeeper’. Also, what are you doing to ensure complacency isn’t creeping into the relationship? From your side or the client side?

8. Be bold and negotiate with your mind, body and voice as well as your words.  If your posture doesn’t match your words you risk the other side seeing you as posturing. But be realistic and fair at the same time.

9. Become more skilled at developing alternative pricing strategies. Should you be selling value or time? Inputs or outputs? I have a table of different options, with the pros and cons for clients and service providors. Get in touch if you’d like a copy.  If in doubt be flexible and offer your clients choices.

10. When reducing your fees, ask for something in return from the client.  Don’t think that clients believe you’re being generous if you reduce your price. They’re more likely to think you were trying to rip them off in the first place! Plus, they’ll probably continue to ask for discounts, knowing that you’ve said yes in the past. Maybe you could suggest that, for a reduced fee, the client does some of the work?

11. Train some of your better negotiators to be pricing champions. Let’s face it, not everybody can be a star fee negotiator. But if you had one or two champions, you could strengthen your negotiations and improve margins substantially. Plus, what about capturing their approach as ‘knowhow’ and train others to replicate their approach.

12. Consider ways of measuring, incentivising and rewarding people who negotiate well on fees. This approach usually gets any issue more attention and improves performance!

13. Avoid negotiating in the mindset of either friend or adversary – see it as joint problem solving.

14. Avoid focusing on their stated positions – find out their underlying need and focus on that. The situation in which two people are arguing over having the last orange can be avoided if they each realise one wants the juice to drink and the other wants the peel to make a cake.

15. Ask more questions, such as ‘tell me what’s important to you?’ and ‘’tell me why that’s important?’ These should help you understand their underlying needs. Then really listen to what they are saying. And watch to see what their body language is saying as well.

16. Avoid digging in with too strong a position too early on – explain your underlying needs and explore the options, perhaps by jointly brainstorming, for a win-win first.

17. Acknowledge any emotions on their side – if there’s been an ‘incident’ or misunderstanding and the client is feeling annoyed, allow them to let off any steam and avoid over-reacting on your side. Return to the negotiating process when everyone is in a calm place.

Summary

Negotiating about fees is not a comfortable process for most of us. It will take practice and a mindset of learning from your experience.

If you ask procurement specialists how they do it, they’d say…..

1. Be clear about what you want

2. Ask for it

3. Give nothing away

4. Don’t leave until you get it!

Given this strong stance adopted by many clients, firms need to respond robustly. In a way, the challenge on fee negotiating can be phrased as ‘how to disagree without being disagreeable’!

For details about improving the profitability of your practice group see:

Improving Practice Group Profitability – The Five Big Questions

 

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Why Most Mergers Fail to Deliver on Their Promises

Posted on 16 May 2012 by tonyreiss
A clock with a 24-hour dial.

Most mergers take too long to implement

The title of this article seems a bit brutal. Surely most mergers work. After all why do so many firms do them if they fail so often? The cold statistics tell another story. These three studies were based on mergers across the board, not just in the professions. But they may hold some useful insights for professional firms.

  1. Research carried out by Bath Consultancy suggests rather worryingly that, whereas most senior executives think their mergers have succeeded, the data shows that performance drops. Indeed 70% of mergers and acquisitions fail to realise their predicted financial and performance benefits.

The research suggests that the main reasons for failure are as follows:

  • Having too long a period of uncertainty
  • The inability to bring the two cultures together in a mutually beneficial relationship
  • Not retaining the key people

2. Research by Booz Allen discovered that two thirds of mergers failed at the execution phase without proper integration teams in place dealing with the risks of merger failure.

They called these risks the nine deadly sins:

  •  no guiding principles –  for example, is the merger an absorption of one company into another or a combination designed to take the best of both?
  • no ground rules – including processes for how decisions are to be made and how conflicts should be resolved.
  • not sweating the details –  detailed post-close integration plans can be lacking
  • poor communication to stakeholders – creating uncertainty and demotivation
  • overly conservative targets – aggressive targets reinforce and clarify the transaction’s guiding principles and strategic intent and how hard the integration teams need to push for cost savings and revenue growth.
  • integration plan not explicitly communicated in the financials targets
  • cultural disconnect – management must set a vision, align leadership around it and engage with staff
  • keeping information too close – the rumour mill will fill the void
  • allowing the wrong changes to the plan – too much empowerment of middle managers can cause problems, so an integration manager can help

3. Deloitte Consulting come up with similar advice based on experience with more than 600 mergers across the world. To avoid merger failure:

  • Keep the deal strategy brief and to the point
  • When pursuing cost synergies, avoid cuts that detract from value
  • Create a common enemy
  • Manage the merger process meticulously

What are our views in the professions? Are we good at mergers?

Posted in Leadership and Management, Managing Change, Strategy | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

Short of Work? Five Simple Steps to Stimulating Short-term Income

Posted on 13 May 2012 by tonyreiss
Dry earth in the Sonora desert, Mexico. Españo...

When the work dries up….

Most practitioners are finding it tougher keeping their utilisation figures high. It’s a terrible feeling when work levels drop of. You wonder when the next matter is going to crop up or what you’ve got to do to get work in. After a prolonged work drought, you can even start to doubt your standing in the firm. Are you letting the side down?

A downward slide can kick in. When you start getting anxious, your abilities to be successful at selling can diminish.

Of course you increase your BD activity, but are you doing the right things to generate work in the short term?

Here is a suggested BD programme which I know works relatively quickly.

1.  First of all, work out who to target.

The last thing you should do is write an article or plan a seminar. That activity has its place, but it’s just profile-raising and is more appropriate for generating work later. We need work tomorrow – not in 6 months!

Instead select five of your best clients. I don’t necessarily mean your biggest. Ask yourself who you are closest to. Who phones you up? Who opens up to you and talks about their hopes and fears for the future? These are the clients you’ll make more progress with and more quickly.

I say five clients – it could be three or four. The point is, it isn’t 95! You are going to put a programme of activity together and you won’t be able to be rigorous enough if you pick too many prospects.

2.  Review all the information you know and read up all you can about the clients on your shortlist.

Here is where the need for rigour kicks in. You need to plan your campaign. For example, try to find out:

  • What’s happening in their market place?
  • What’s their 3-5 year strategy (expansion, restructuring, mergers etc)?
  • Who selects professional advisers and on what basis? Who are the decision-makers and influencers?
  • Which other professional firms are in the frame? What are their relative strengths and weaknesses?
  • What hopes and fears might your key contact have?

Notice that my list has information about the client as a person, as an organisation and about the marketplace.

Once you have your information, distil down all this information into five or so hot topics that you could ask them about and contribute your own insightful thoughts. Try inviting your colleagues to share their insights and brainstorm some topics. It’s hard doing this by yourself!

Don’t be put off if the clients often use big impressive rival firms. They’ll typically be more expensive and clients might not feel they always get partners giving them their full attention.

Similarly don’t be put off if they use smaller cheaper firms – they won’t necessarily have the range of expertise to always meet their needs.

3.  Ring up the shortlisted target clients.

Many professionals find this step awkward. What should you say? Should you just invite them to lunch?  My suggestion is to offer them something. I sometimes use the phrase ‘put some tasty bait on the end of the fishing line’! This gets the idea across, though it sounds rather too exploitative!

The key point to recognise is that most of your potential clients are busy and probably somewhat stressed. So consider what can you do to make their lives easier or help them look good? Try to put yourself in their shoes. What would you want your advisers to offer you?

Having got this insight, now ask yourself the question ‘what’s in it for them, to give up an hour to meet you?’ Give them something – useful insights, market intelligence, perhaps an opportunity to network with somebody useful who you can introduce them to.

Most of them can afford a nice lunch. If that’s all you’re offering, you might find a lot of your client lunches get cancelled at the last minute.

Most people talk too much on the phone. The reason for the call is to get a meeting. The phone call should be short – perhaps two or three minutes. Leave a discussion on anything substantive to the meeting.  

4.  Have a meeting with your prospective clients.

The key point to emphasise is to be prepared. Don’t wing it! Your actions under point 2 above should mean that you’ll be more impressive and on-the-ball.

Then try not to do all the talking. Your prospective client should do most of the talking. Your job is to listen. To really listen – not just to what they are saying, but to the underlying meaning behind what they’re saying. Partners who are natural sales people ask more probing questions, such as ‘That sounds interesting – can you say a little bit more about that?’

Don’t try to sell every time a client talks about any issues or problems. Explore the problems with them first. Many of us live with things which aren’t perfect, but we’re not yet ready and motivated to do anything about them. We have other priorities.

So help them see the benefits of them addressing the problem or help them see the risks if they leave the problem unaddressed. By doing this, it will more likely lead to action and an instruction for you to assist.

5.  Follow up the meeting.

Most partners have a series of one-off meetings with clients. If they don’t give us work we phone somebody else and try there instead. Selling professional services doesn’t work like that. You need to be developing your relationship as a trusted adviser and finding ways of keeping in touch.

If you picked the right topics to raise and asked good questions, opportunities should follow. If not, think harder about the issues your clients are facing and the needs they have to be addressed. Consider doing a rehearsal in the office to practise communicating the benefits of your offering.

Sometimes you might be unlucky with your timing. Perhaps a rival firm got in there before you. Nevertheless, follow up any leads that arise in your meetings. Send any relevant materials. Offer to introduce any colleagues.

If none of these 5 client meetings leads to work opportunities, select your next five best prospects…..

 

 

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To Those in Management Roles Running Law Firms – Some Support!

Posted on 4 May 2012 by tonyreiss
General Napolean Bonaparte

General Napolean Bonaparte – I wonder how he would lead a law firm?

First of all let’s acknowledge the challenges and frustrations inherent in your role. You knew it wasn’t going to be easy – but this?

There are good days and bad days but it’s a tough role. More than anybody else in the firm, you know the number of issues that need addressing and the scale of the challenges your firm faces. There are rewards, sure. But it can be a lonely place and you feel the weight of decision-making on your shoulders.

I hope you’re proud of your achievements. Perhaps you’ve initiated a process to review your strategy or looked at merger partners or recruited some talented partners or Finance/BD professionals. Whatever those achievements are, when the going gets tough (which it will), replay those positive thoughts!

I say this because I’m aware that most of you are probably lawyers who have been especially trained in analysing detail and seeing things in black and white. Management is rather more grey! There’s hardly ever a right or wrong – never a perfect solution. So it helps to see the glass half full – not half empty! Achievements and opportunities, not failures or problems!

Those who get on top of the role seem to have more focus. They pick three or four initiatives and do them really well, rather than having a list of 92 projects, many of which fizzle out. Change is hard and needs more energy than we might think. Partners and staff need to be reminded of where you’re trying to sail the ship. Plus they’re human beings (on a good day!) and need more support in whatever changes you’re seeking to introduce.

If you were in industry, you’d have had loads of training in leadership and you’d have an executive coach – someone you could talk to in confidence to guide you through the challenges and support you.

Sherwood PSF Consulting is a specialist coaching firm in the legal profession. Most of us are lawyers and we’ve won awards for our work. We have five fully trained coaches and have coached 100’s of partners over the last 10 years, most of whom were in management positions.

For a free one-off consultation, please get in touch: tony.reiss@sherwoodpsfconsulting.com

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Your Partners are Probably Great Lawyers. But are they Great Leaders?

Posted on 30 April 2012 by tonyreiss
Paperwork

Are you partners leaders or drowning in administration?

When we talk to recently-appointed partners about their new role, we frequently hear something along the lines of “we are expected to be leaders now”.

The word leadership gets used a lot these days. We use it all the time. But do we all agree what it means? The other frequently-asked questions are:

  • Are good leaders born or can they be made?
  • Do you have to be popular to be a leader (or will being a good leader make you popular?)
  • Is leadership different to management? If it is, what is the difference?

John Adair, one of the first academics to clarify the distinctions said:

“Leadership is about sense of direction. The word lead comes from the Anglo Saxon word that means a road… It’s knowing what the next step is. Managing is from the Latin “Manus”, a hand. It tends to be closely linked with machines and the idea of controlling, particularly financial control and administration.”

Warren Bennis, a leading American writer who occasionally took a rather poor view of managers, makes the following distinctions between leaders and managers:

Manager Leader
Driven by context Masters their context
Administers Innovates
Maintains Develops
Focuses on systems and structures Focuses on people
Relies on control Inspires trust
Short range view Long term perspective
Asks how and when? Asks what and why?
Has eye on the bottom line Has eye on the horizon
Imitates Originates
Accepts status quo Challenges status quo
Does things right Does right thing

Most commentators agree that effective leaders tend to focus on the following four areas:

  • Vision – Bennis believes that the vision should be of a “realistic, credible and attractive future for the organisation…a target that beckons”
  • Communication – Staff are receiving too many messages. They are also becoming more cynical. They hear people say one thing and they see another thing happening. It is important for a leader to be a good role model, so that they are trusted. Only then will people follow them.
  • Motivation – The best performing businesses usually have the most motivated staff.  Effective leaders know how to motivate their people and align them to achieving the goals of the firm. They tend to give more praise and spend more time coaching other partners and staff.
  • Self-awareness and learning – Many commentators stress that good leaders typically have higher levels of emotional intelligence and have an attitude of perpetually wanting to ‘sharpen the saw’.

 Administration 

David Maister (see www.davidmaister.com) comments that leaders in law firms typically do not spend their time most effectively, particularly in terms of creating added value. He sees administration work, such as checking progress against the budget or ensuring that WIP levels are not getting excessively high, as important, but recognises that great administration will not build the future success of the business.

Most leaders in law firms spend the majority of their ‘non-chargeable’ time on administration and insufficient time on leadership activities (ie creating a vision, communicating and ensuring consistency of messages, motivating/coaching others and reviewing experiences so that they learn from them and do them more effectively next time).

Could your partners be delegating administrative jobs to others (who will probably be on lower salaries and may even be better at carrying out the job!), so that they can add more value to the business by being more effective leaders?

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Findings from Coaching Survey with Law Firms on Behalf of The Institute of Coaching

Posted on 30 April 2012 by tonyreiss
Statue of John Harvard, founder of Harvard Uni...

The Institute of Coaching is based in Harvard

These survey findings reflect the views and current practice of Human Resources (HR) and Learning & Development (L&D) professionals in nine law firms in the City of London – including two of the world’s largest (over £2bn of revenues between them in 2011); and the London offices of two US-based law firms with over 3,000 lawyers between them. It is based on interviews carried out by my colleague Des O’Connell of Sherwood PSF Consulting.

Comparison with 5 years ago

Most respondents report a marked increase in use of coaching compared with 5 years ago. One respondent expressed disappointment with the firm’s investment in coaching over that period; another with the lack of take up of coaching which had been on offer over that period.

 Routes to coaching

Coaching is usually made available via HR/L&D. Typical occasions for coaching are:

  • • Moments of transition
  • • As an adjunct to another intervention (e.g. a training programme)
  • • A request by an individual for specific support or training
  • • An individual seen to be experiencing difficulties (often around people-issues)

It is also common for partners in law firms to access coaching directly (i.e. without involving HR/L&D) – something which can cause problems for the HR/L&D professionals in their efforts to deliver a consistent service to the law firm.

Sourcing coaches

In most cases the respondents’ own networks of professional colleagues play a critical role in identifying potential coaches. Most respondents expressed a preference to use individuals of whom they had previous experience – e.g. through training – or who were known to, and came recommended by, their network of professional colleagues. Four firms have established ‘preferred lists’ which now serve as the starting point for sourcing coaches. One firm has used an outside agency to create an external faculty of potential coaches. 

Selecting coaches

The processes described by respondents for selecting coaches are rigorous and (in most cases) applied flexibly to suit different situations. Almost invariably this involves an interview with the prospective coach to explore their background and experience. In terms of criteria for selection, respondents cited 28 possible factors – and there was much variety between respondents as to their preferences. That said, an attempt has been made to compile a collective ‘Top 10’ criteria for this group of respondents.

How coaching is used and by whom

Coaching is used to cover a broad range of areas, developmental and remedial. It is made available most frequently to partners, though not as widely as some of the respondents would like. Some would like to make coaching available, for example, to new partners / lateral hires but are not currently able to do so. In contrast, others are  able to offer coaching more widely (including to associates and business teams), sometimes using internal staff – themselves trained coaches – for this purpose. 

Monitoring progress

Two firms described explicit set-up and monitoring procedures, i.e. initial session to set objectives; mid-term review; formal review at the end. A third firm uses a standard form at the end of each coaching assignment to gather feedback. The rest rely on informal procedures – i.e. ad hoc ‘checking-in’ with coachees, inviting voluntary feedback. Some firms ask the coach to report back on take-up of sessions – as a proxy for effectiveness. None of the firms enquires into the specific content of the coaching sessions. 

Assessing the value; embedding it

There was no evidence of explicit longer-term evaluation of coaching’s effectiveness e.g. 3-month / 6-month follow-ups. Two respondents noted with concern the absence of links within their firms between coaching and, for example, departmental objective-setting, promotion and annual reviews. 

Help wanted (internal)

The two most-consistent factors that would help respondents promote coaching within their firms were:

  • • Explicit support from the senior leadership
  • • Success stories (evidence of coaching’s effectiveness) 

Help wanted (external)

Asked how The Institute of Coaching might be helpful for them, respondents identified two broad areas:

  • • Making sense of the confusing marketplace
  • • A resource – information about coaches; research, practice, etc.

Where next?

Looking forwards, participants were focused on –

  • • Positioning coaching more as a developmental tool for high-performers
  • • Embedding it within their organisations
  • • Broadening its use – for a wider range of individuals and purposes

Several expressed a wish to establish (or, in some cases, expand) internal teams of coaches.

For more information and a full copy of the survey findings, please get in touch.

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How Effective is Your Team? Is it like a well-run Arsenal or more like Rangers?

Posted on 24 April 2012 by tonyreiss
Arsenal crest

Does your team need an Arsene Wenger?

Law firms are made up of lots of teams. They spend hours in meetings. But how effective are they?

There’s the board, perhaps with the role of looking at the strategy of the firm, looking for appropriate firms to merge with or open up offices in new locations etc.

You might have a management committee looking at more day-to-day operational issues such as IT procurement, secretarial workflow, recruiting support staff etc.

Then there are client teams with the role of ensuring each client is delighted with the service they’re getting. And there are matter teams and probably other teams.

Each of these teams clearly has an important role. But how many of them are really effective?

Sherwood has worked with many teams to help them become more effective and we’d like to offer you this checklist to help you diagnose how your team is doing.

Invite each team member to review the following list and say whether:

  • You would agree strongly with the statement
  • You would agree somewhat
  • You would disagree somewhat
  • You would disagree strongly
  1. I am clear what the purpose of this team is
  2. What we do as a team really matters
  3.  I am clear what the team expects from me
  4. Our meetings start and finish on time
  5. We use the time well
  6. We are decisive
  7. Once we have made a decision we stick with it and do it
  8. Our process for reaching decisions is clear
  9. At the end of each meeting we are clear what has been agreed
  10. At team meetings we need to speak frankly, without causing or taking offense, if we are to arrive at good decisions which stick
  11. I am fearless in speaking up at team meetings –  expressing my hopes, opinions and concerns
  12. All the other team members are fearless in expressing their hopes, opinions and fears at team meetings
  13. My views are listened to with interest and respect
  14. The firm is counting on us to deliver
  15. We won’t succeed unless we all perform at our best
  16. I have a critical role to play – If I don’t do my bit we may fail

Then invite team members to talk about their responses and share any different opinions.

Whoever is chairing this discussion needs to ensure everyone is listened to and that views are respected and acknowledged.

In our experience, an open discussion on such matters helps air issues and helps team members become a more effective team.

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Why Partners Don’t Do the Business Development You Want Them to Do

Posted on 17 April 2012 by tonyreiss
A hitter gets "roofed" by the blockers.

More 'blockers' getting in the way!

I’ve recently been approached by a big law firm asking me to deliver a speech to get the partners ‘out there doing more business development’. I told them that this approach was unlikely to work without understanding what the ‘blockers’ were – what was getting in the way of the partners doing more BD.

Here’s a potential list of reasons (some of which have been previously recognised by David Maister):

  1. The partner doesn’t understand the importance of BD.
  2. The partners see the action’s importance to the firm, but don’t see what’s in it for them personally.
  3. The partner doesn’t know how to do BD.
  4. The partner knows what to do but is just not very skilled at it and senses the risks of looking foolish.
  5. The partner doesn’t want to do it. They’d rather stick to their technical discipline.
  6. The partner doesn’t want to introduce other partners to their clients – they might make a mess of the relationship.
  7. The partner doesn’t want to introduce other partners to their clients – the clients might prefer them!
  8. The partner has lost his or her enthusiasm for BD (perhaps a recent initiative hasn’t worked.
  9. The partner hasn’t been given the support or tools to do BD.
  10. The partner thinks the firm (in spite of its exhortations) really wants them to focus on billable work only and not to engage in non reimbursable activities.
  11. The partner thinks that participation is optional.
  12. The partner views the activity as a long-term investment, and they’d rather work on things that provide more immediate gratification.
  13. The partner feels more accountability and pressure for other things; they intend to do or would like to do the action, but they feel that they don’t have the time to do it.
  14. The partners feel that the action is not “valued” by their peers: the corporate culture doesn’t reinforce the action.
  15. The partner views the action as a personal choice and is not thinking of team-level approaches.
  16. The partner perceives that reward for the activity will only be given for high levels of performance — so why should they even try?
  17. Perhaps most important of all: When the partner doesn’t do it, no one reacts (except perhaps once a year at performance evaluation time). Since there are no short-term consequences for non compliance, why bother when there is so much else to do?

The list is incomplete, but the key point is clear: there are lots of reasons why partners don’t engage in various initiatives like BD and other aspects of client relations, knowledge management, associate training, teamwork, and a host of other supposedly positive behaviours for the good of the firm.

The Solution

An approach that looks at the drivers for change and the blockers for change is a good start. Those of us looking to make the changes need somehow not to get frustrated by these blockers. Venting our frustrations are likely to make matters worse. It can help to recognise that all of us can find such change difficult – particularly when it’s being imposed on us.

I recommend a consultative approach, involving the partners in a dialogue and allowing partners to choose what they feel comfortable with. Then the blockers, whatever they are, need to be addressed. Fears need to be allayed. Skills provided. Support given.

And, ultimately, non compliance needs to be dealt with. Management needs to demonstrate that this stuff is not discretionary.

Source: see davidmaister.com for more of his thoughts on this important subject.

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How to Make Those Difficult Conversations Easier

Posted on 17 April 2012 by tonyreiss
The Big Show arguing with referee Scott Armstrong.

Wouldn’t want to argue with him!

Life in any firm can be hard. One of the things that makes life difficult is having difficult conversations. Here are some examples:

  • There’s the colleague you’d like to talk to who either hardly ever turns up to group meetings, or arrives late or spends most of his time tapping on his smartphone – this irritates you and you’d like to say something to address this behaviour.
  • You have had feedback that several messages have been left with your secretary but that the messages have not been passed on accurately. This is not the first time that she has failed to pass on messages, though it’s the first time a client has specifically complained to you. When and how would you tackle this issue with her?

In most firms people either don’t say anything because they’d be embarrassed or frightened of the consequences – or they handle it so badly that matters escalate and they end up regretting giving it a go!

One of my sources of inspiration for this article was hearing a mother having a difficult conversation with her teenage son. It went like this:

“Stuart, when I see two balls of soiled socks under the coffee table and another three next to the TV, I feel irritated because it’s important to me that the rooms we share in common are tidy. Would you be willing to put your socks in your room or in the washing machine?”

Instead of the usual display of teenage rebellion, a conversation followed and the matter was addressed painlessly and quickly. I found out more about how the mother deals with such situations and she told me about Non-Violent Communication (NVC). Before looking further at NVC, let’s have a look at the usual tactics of having difficult conversations and why they often don’t work long term: 

Punishment (eg “if you don’t do this, I’ll do that….”) – this can be effective, but you’ll need hierarchical power (ie you’re the boss) for this tactic to work. But the problem with this approach is that there is the risk if used inappropriately that they’ll subtly get you back somehow sometime… It’s usually more effective if you can get the other person to want to do things differently.

Rewards can be better – the other person might change their behaviour, but there is eviodence that they probably won’t repeat the positive behaviour without another reward, so again this doesn’t tend to be a sustainable solution.

Expressing your frustration/anger with their behaviour – Using judgemental or emotive language usually makes matters worse. The other person will feel personally criticised and react emotionally by denying your assertion or arguing back.

So what about the NVC approach? There are 4 steps, as follows:

Step 1 – Make the observation, without judging the other person 

First, we should observe what is actually happening in the situation: what are we observing the other person saying or doing that is not (in NVC language) ‘enriching our life’? The trick is to be able to articulate this observation without introducing any judgment or evaluation—to simply say what the other person is doing that we don’t like. It might help to imagine watching the incident on a video camera and then asking yourself  ‘what am I observing them doing? It’s harder than it sounds.

It is important not to imply that their behaviour is causing you to feel angry. For example, the phrase “when you do that it makes me feel annoyed” is ‘violent’ communication. It implies the other person is causing you to feel annoyed.  They may have been the stimulus for your anger, but not the cause.  How we feel is down to us. An NVC equivalent approach would be: “When I see you doing x, I feel y because I have a need for Z ”. In other words, annoyance is caused by our own thinking, not by the behaviour of others.

Step 2 – Express your feelings

Next, we state how we feel when we observe this action: are we anxious, annoyed, disappointed, frustrated, irritated, perplexed etc.? Allowing ourselves to be seen as vulnerable by expressing our feelings can help resolve conflicts.

Step 3 – Connect your feeling to your needs that are not being met

And thirdly, we say what needs of ours are connected to the feelings we have identified. This avoids blaming the other person and decreases the chances of them blaming us in return.

Step 4 – Make a clear request

Not a demand. Requests should use positive, action language and should say what a person should do – not what they shouldn’t do. Requests should be specific – ‘I want you to listen/respect/consider/realise….’ are all too vague.

It can be hard to distinguish between a demand or a request – if our objective is to get what we want, then it’s probably a demand!

It’s never going to be easy having a difficult conversation. Clearly, the better the relationship you have with the other person the more chance the conversation will work. If it can work for sons and dirty socks, it might work for colleagues and their behaviour in meetings!

I offer a couple of prizes for the best scripts attempting to deal with either of the scenarios described above. Send to tony.reiss@reiss-consulting.com

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Tips For Great Teamwork – It’s not what you say, but the way that you say it!

Posted on 16 April 2012 by tonyreiss
Nederlands: Nederlands jeugdteam WK 2006

An Effective Team - All Pulling Together

We all know the great experience of being in a team where it all just clicks. You feel good. You see good things happening. You’re enjoying it!

Alex “Sandy” Pentland did an experiment at MIT’s Human Dynamics Laboratory where people wore electronic sensors called sociometric badges. They captured how people communicated in real time. He discovered that some things matter much less than you may suspect when building a great team – getting the smartest people, for example.

In HBR’s April Spotlight on Teams, he describes in detail the new science of building great teams, as follows:

  • Communicate frequently. In a typical project team a dozen or so communication exchanges per working hour may turn out to be optimum; but more or less than that and team performance can decline.
  • Talk and listen in equal measure, equally among members. Lower performing teams have dominant members, teams within teams, and members who talk or listen but don’t do both. 
  • Engage in frequent informal communication. The best teams spend about half their time communicating outside of formal meetings or as “asides” during team meetings, and increasing opportunities for informal communication tends to increase team performance.
  • Explore for ideas and information outside the group. The best teams periodically connect with many different outside sources and bring what they learn back to the team.

You’ll notice that none of the factors outlined above concern the substance of a team’s communication (ie what people said!). The badges only captured how people communicate — tone of voice, gesticulation, how one faces others in the group, and how much people talk and listen.

This is important. It turns out that the ancient biological patterns of signalling that humans developed in the millennia before we developed language — which is a relatively recent development — still dominate our communication.

The old adage that it’s not what you say, but how you say it, turns out to be mathematically correct.

Source HBR Online Apr 2012

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