So why does on competition-provoking strategy work at one firm and flame out at another? The answer may lie in Godwin Gruber’s equally tenacious emphasis on fostering teamwork at every turn, especially when it comes to credit for new business and client service. For this firm, focusing on teamwork has become a check of sorts, promoting balance in the face of the competitive forces within the firm.
One example of the firm’s pro-collaboration approach is its handling of origination credits. While there may be some working out to do between lawyers regarding their chits, the firm strongly encourages one outcome in particular: sharing. “It is incumbent on those of us on the executive committee to make sure that the internal competition is productive and not destructive,” Hurst ways.
Firms that don’t take measure to counter internal competition risk low morale and high levels of turnover, and they never fully achieve their potential market position given their expertise and capabilities, says Blane Prescott, a San Francisco-based consultant with Hildebrandt International. “They never seem to earn the income, gain the reputation with clients or build up a reputation in the community that fully takes advantage of their capabilities,” he says.
Worse yet, firms that are highly internally competitive tend to get lower grades from clients for the quality of work and the quality of their services, Prescott adds.
John Remsen, a marketing and strategic planning Consultant in Atlanta, says the less obvious consequences of internal competition and just as harmful. They include infighting over seemingly innocuous forms of recognition like the more desirable office or parking spaces, titular appointments and even getting the firm’s support – financial and otherwise – to buy a listing in the latest best-lawyer book.
Changing the Reward System
It would seem, then, that a law firm must forever police its management practices if it wants to succeed in a business environment where the link between compensation and performance ensures internal competition will never go away.
Maybe. But workplace conflict-resolution specialist Anna Maravelas says it doesn’t have to be that way. Competition, according to Maravelas of Arden Hills, Minn., is a learned behavior. She believes that organizations can shape behaviors by changing what they reward, what they promote and what they broadcast.
Remsen agrees. More and more firms have become enlightened to this concept, he says, and they now are rewarding lawyers who are good corporate citizens over those who simply bill and bring in business.
This “good corporate citizen” designation has become an additional compensation model, along with lockstep and eat-what-you-kill systems. More law firms are adopting this compensation system because, Remsen explains, it can provide the desired combination of motivated lawyers and less competitive workplaces.
Lockstep systems, once the standard for most large law firms, encouraged civility and neighborliness inside the firm, but did little to motivate lawyers to work harder or bring in more business. Eat-what-you-kill systems, which evolved after law firms began paying associates high salaries in the late 1980’s and early ‘90’s, motivated lawyers to bill more and bring in more business, but they also were responsible for promoting internally competitive environments, a lack of loyalty and a sense of individualism, legal experts say.
To successfully change a law firm’s culture to a good corporate citizen model, Remsen says management must reward the kind of behavior it wants to promote.
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IS YOUR FIRM TIPPING TOWARD TOXIC?
Law firms are unique creatures because their structure allows for independent fiefdoms instead of interdependence, says workplace conflict-resolution specialist Anna Maravelas of Arden Hills, Minn.
“If I were to draw a picture of a normal organization, it would go in a circle where Joe hands off to Betty, who hands off to Frank, who hands off to Sally before it goes to the customer,” says Maravelas, author of How to Reduce Workplace Conflict and Stress. This doesn’t always happen in law firms, she says. “A lawyer will get a call from a client and respond. There is very little interaction with one’s neighbor.”
Cohesiveness and the social interactions and trust levels that result, she says, are “absolutely essential in order for a group to go through periods of conflict without breaking into factions.” And when a dysfunctional work environment combines with a performance-based evaluation system, the results can be toxic.
How to know if a workplace crosses the line? Maravelas has identified 10 negative practices that help indicate whether a workplace has become too competitive: |
1. An increase in self-oriented behavior
2. A loss of the sense of cohesiveness between co-workers
3. Hoarding of information
4. Distorting or fabricating of information
5. A growing sense of resentment toward the organization |
6. The disappearance of good-citizen behavior
7. The lack of any opportunity for mentoring
8. A halt in cross-functional collaboration
9. People’s behavior narrowing to the criteria being measured
10. A drop in creativity and risk-taking |
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