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Category Archives: Managing Change
How to Improve Practice Group Profitability
Do all the practice groups in your firm make an adequate margin? If not, what is being done to address the deficiency? I’ve been involved in several projects which have looked at how to improve profitability. Here’s my proposed approach, … Continue reading
Influencing Skills for Professionals – The Six Principles
We all need to get better at influencing others: clients, colleagues, friends etc. Here is a summary of the best-selling book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. I’ve adapted the themes and applied them to the world of professionals such as lawyers and accountants. … Continue reading
Could Law Firms Learn from a Football Club?
Sounds like a bizarre question. But the answer is yes and firms could learn lots from the Civil Service and GB’s track cycling squad and so many other sectors. Here’s why… No sector has a monopoly on good ideas. As … Continue reading
Posted in Leadership and Management, Managing Change, Strategy
Tagged ideas from other sectors, innovaton
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Merging Firms with Different Cultures
Mergers are still in the air – law firms, accounting firms, banks, even stock exchanges! Yet we all know that most mergers fail to deliver added value. One of the main reasons attributed to these failures is that the merging … Continue reading
Posted in Leadership and Management, Managing Change
Tagged allow & adapt, facilitation, integration, mergers, preserve & protect
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Are These the Reasons Women are Leaving Law Firms?
Sherwood Consulting has carried out an online survey with woman lawyers to find out why so many talented women are leaving the profession. We received 59 responses and here are the key findings: Only 30% are getting sufficient developmental feedback, … Continue reading
Sherwood Report on Gender Balance in Law Firms – Could Try Harder!
Imagine it’s coming up to the end of the Easter term at school. Report time for law firms! Some A’s, a few B’s, but on Diversity and Inclusion, I’m afraid it’s a ‘Could Try Harder!’ My Sherwood partner Ann Collier … Continue reading
Posted in Leadership and Management, Managing Change, Strategy
Tagged diversity, gender balance, inclusion, unconscious bias
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The Future of the Legal Profession According to the Susskind’s
Some radical developments are on their way for law firms – if not already happening! We have entered the Fourth Industrial Revolution (see below) and all those engaged in the knowledge professions need to be aware. Law firms might need … Continue reading
Diversity Fatigue in Firms?
In the week that Sherwood Consulting presented our findings on women in leadership roles in law firms there was an interesting Schumpeter column in The Economist. If you’re interested in gender balance and diversity in firms, read on… The column … Continue reading
The Drain of Female Talent in Firms
Most firms tell me that they meet many more impressive young women than men when they’re recruiting. So there’s something wrong when this talent chooses not to stay and become partners. And firms are missing out big time! A major … Continue reading
Law Firms Need to Use More ‘Nemawashi’
The Japanese can teach us about decision-making and successfully implementing change. They use an approach called Nemawashi, which roughly translates as ‘smoothing around the roots before planting’. Toyota has pioneered the use of nemawashi (see http://blog.toyota.co.uk/nemawashi-toyota-production-system). Basically the nemawashi approach … Continue reading
