Do you enjoy being a professional?
I have loved my professional career. I enjoy solving problems. Working with people. The variety. The intellectual stimulation. It is so much more than just a way to earn a living.
For most of us, I suspect it is much the same.
I became a city based lawyer because I also enjoy a challenge. But I had not anticipated that when I became head of the private client department at Simmons & Simmons I would be told that unless I made a city level of profit I would need to look elsewhere for work - that was a real challenge!
I loved my work for international entrepreneurs of Family Governance, asset protection, setting up Family Offices both multi and single.
What I did not enjoy was repetitive work for clients who would not pay city rates. I did not want to do this work, but now it was made clear to me that I could not keep my team busy with this type of work either. All work in the department needed to be charged out at city rates.
I also knew that to meet this challenge I could not afford to attend meetings with other professionals which led nowhere, or to spend time collecting business cards with people who did not work with clients I wanted to work with or attend conferences or drink with people I barely knew whether it was coffee, tea or wine who could not refer to me the clients I needed to work for.
I was given no guidance, neither was I given a mentor or manual - I just had to figure it out myself.
What about you? Have you been set challenges or are you part of the management team and would like to set challenges for your staff but are restrained because you are not sure how best they can be achieve the goals you would like to set?
Maybe your goal has less to do with challenges but more to do with job satisfaction.
The question here is : shat do you enjoy least?
Research? Artificial intelligence is already transforming how professionals approach it.
Travelling to meetings? Video conferencing can save considerable time, particularly when meeting people we already know.
Administration? Technology is making some of that easier too with CRM systems and notifications.
But what about business development?
How much of your time is spent attending conferences, networking breakfasts, award ceremonies, coffee meetings and lunches?
There is nothing inherently wrong with any of these activities. There are many professionals who enjoy them. But if they produce only a low return on investment of both time and money, should it not be categorised as socialising rather than business development.
Whether I enjoyed these activities or not given the challenge my firm gave me I simply did not have the time to do activities which did not deliver a consistent return.
Neither could I rely on good quality work coming from partners in other departments. The work referred, if any, tended to be low grade personal work as favours for clients of other departments or requests for pro bono work such as setting up a charity.
I needed a strategy
I asked myself five questions:
What did I need to achieve? A city level of profits out of a loss making department.
What work would I most like to do more of?
What clients would I most like to work for?
What clients and work did I not want to work for?
Who did I already know — clients, colleagues or professional contacts — who worked with or knew these people?
It turned out to be the right place to start because within two years I had turned the profit dial out of the red and into the black. I also became one of the best referrers of good quality work to many of the firm's other departments such as company commercial, litigation and property.
I then found out that most professionals face similar challenges at different levels: management level would like to impose targets on aspiring juniors, on partners and directors to encourage cross-referral and on department heads but were restrained from doing so in the absence of a mechanism to support their staff in achieving such goals. Then there are staff on which such targets were imposed who were anxious not knowing what to do to achieve the goals imposed.
Then there were professionals who just wanted to do more of what they enjoyed and less of what they didn’t like doing
Whatever the challenge or whatever the goal my Client-Centric programme based on solid psychological research and personal experience meets the challenge and goals with the aim of reducing anxiety, improving collaboration and morale.
I develop a strategy with you to answer these five questions make better use of existing relationships, address missed opportunities and develop a more strategic approach to working with others and with clients.
A better way of working
The objective is not simply to keep you and your team busy.
It is to help professionals spend more of their working lives achieving what is expected of them and doing the work they enjoy.
For the individual, that means greater professional satisfaction.
For the firm, it means making better use of its people, developing the next generation and improving commercial performance by doing less of the activities that lead nowhere.
The right work, with the right people, at the right price.
Most firms have different priorities and goals, so we start with what you want to achieve or are expected to achieve, where you are - what is working and what is not, and then put in place a strategy that can produce a consistent flow of the right type of business for the type of work you most want to do.
If you would like to explore what that could mean for you or your firm and your staff, let's start with a half-hour conversation about what you want. Because every professional and every firm is different the programme is tailored to what you want to achieve - it is not a one size fits all and is based on extensive research and personal experience.
Caroline Garnham