Every firm's executive committee knows the changes that their partners need to make: some combination of more entrepreneurship, greater collaboration, higher leverage and more. The challenge isn't to identify these necessary new behaviors; but to get partners actually doing them.

As I talk with firms across a broad range of size and profitability, I hear of a common set of obstacles to partners changing in these ways. But we also discuss a robust set of ways to work around them. The following is a synthesis of these conversations and represents a set of workarounds for the typical obstacles that arise on the road from "knowing" to "doing." They are grouped under four headings:

1. Aspiration: Partners need to be bought into something they're trying to achieve as a group as reason for changing their behaviors.
2. Goals: Partners have to translate what achieving this group aspiration means in terms of concrete changes they individually will make.
3. Coaching: Partners need to be helped with guidance, encouragement and accountability in order to achieve their goals.
4. Leadership: Leaders need to hear in a way that is specific to their situation, and that can't readily be ignored, how they too must evolve. This typically encompasses modeling the changes sought in others, handling difficult partners assertively, and avoiding any appearance of cronyism.

Aspiration

The real reasons that firms have to change are twofold. First, the demand environment has changed: Market power has shifted to clients who have increasingly capable alternatives to traditional outside counsel. Second, increasing profitability is important to a firm's long-term competitiveness, as it's crucial to retaining the strongly commercial lawyers in rising generations of partners.

Because we are approaching a peak in the business cycle, and demand volume and profitability are thus at all-time highs, these are not reasons that currently resonate strongly with partners. So, what should firm leaders do? My take: Shift the focus from financial performance to enhancing the nature of the partnership. I know of no partnership that does not believe it can improve how its partners get along and their demonstrated levels of individual initiative, hustle, mutual commitment and collaboration. I see enormous potential for improvement when I poll partners on their agreement with statements like, "Partners at my firm would do anything or go anywhere, at any time, to help me or a client I serve." Hence, an aspiration that focuses on the nature of the partnership, termed something like "next-level partnership" or "a partnership of entrepreneurs," is one that resonates with partners and that can be a motivator of change even as we approach a market peak.

Goals

It is common for firms to set a firm-level aspiration and then leave it to partners to translate this into individual goals. It's common, too, for firm leadership to be exasperated that partners don't have individual goals derived from the firm-level aspiration.

The disconnect typically arises at two levels: Partners aren't bought into the firm aspiration, and partners don't know how to translate a firm aspiration into individual goals even when they are bought into it. On the former, most firms recognize that developing a strategy statement or other aspiration at the level of the executive committee and then handing it down to partners is dead upon arrival. Accordingly, they take approaches that include broad partner participation. These are only marginally more successful. Why? Because executive committees underinvest in providing enough time and opportunity for partners to truly develop jointly what the aspiration should be; they sidestep rather than engage the skeptics; they rely on the views of outside "experts" (of whom partners are rightly skeptical) as purveyors of wisdom; and the aspiration is something that comes across as requiring partners to change while requiring no change of firm leadership themselves.

It is understandable that executive committees are impatient with slow, highly participatory processes. After all, the aspiration, or the other to-dos that come from such processes, are obvious. But executive committees would do well to reframe how they think of the aspiration phase. Its objective is only 10% about getting to the substantive answers; it's 90% about getting partners to accept the need to make the desired changes.

There are two common approaches for translating a firm's aspiration into partners' individual goals: Leave it to partners to do on their own, or have members of staff (often business development) work with partners to do so. Neither is very effective. The former stalls because this translation is not the kind of thing with which lawyers have any experience. This fact is easily overlooked by consultants, because in no other business do people reach professional maturity without engaging in some sort of planning—by the standards of normal businesses, law firms are necessarily planning-light environments.

The use of staff to help with translation is well intentioned, has a compelling rationale, and may work for some (typically more junior) partners. However, its efficacy is limited. My take: The only broadly effective approach is to have partners sit with other partners to brainstorm through this translation. Without the signal this sends that goal development is worthy of serious thought and engagement, it devolves into a form-filling, administrative exercise. Partners can be prevailed upon to comply with such administrative demands, but their sense of professional self-respect prevents them from actually being induced to change by them.

It's worth mentioning another way I've seen goal development be killed: have executive committee members sidestep the goal-development process. This can take various forms: not developing goals for themselves, not helping others develop their goals, or ostensibly engaging to help others but being unprepared to serve as effective thought partners. Obviously, such evasion sends a clear signal to partners, and tolls the death knell for the whole effort.

Coaching

A goal without accountability is merely a hope. Hence, for goal setting to be worthwhile there needs to be accountability. However, partners recoil from accountability. How could they not? They are owners of their firms; accountability suggests hierarchy and partnerships are avowedly flat organizations; and they chose careers that avoided anything smelling of bureaucracy. Accordingly, accountability in the sense that business consultants recognize it is a nonstarter in a law firm partnership.

What to do instead? My take: coaching. The essence of the difference is this: Accountability centers on goals set by someone else and for which you'll be graded and perhaps admonished—its focus is on evaluation and judgment. Coaching centers on goals one sets for oneself and on helping you achieve them through support, advice, concrete door-opening, and encouragement—its focus is on development and growth.

To be clear, by coaching I don't mean engaging outside trainers or consultants; rather, I mean partners coaching partners, or peer-to-peer coaching. A partner acting as a coach agrees upfront with another partner on what they will do and how they'll know they're progressing. The coach will check in periodically in ways that are low-key and personal. The coach is informed, talks about the other person, is not critical, focuses on to-dos, projects confidence and, where they can, offers tangible help (makes introductions, reviews material and more) and is reliable (does what they say they'll do). The partner in the coach role is typically someone more tenured but should not be someone perceived as sitting in judgment of the person being coached.

In general, the coach can't be a member of staff or someone from outside the organization. A possible exception is that sometimes leaders benefit from an outsider in the role, as insiders too often pull their punches on feedback and guidance to firm leaders.

Leadership

The leadership teams with whom I speak comprise hugely capable and accomplished individuals. With few exceptions, they are thoughtful about what it takes to lead effectively in a non-hierarchical environment of individually motivated professionals. However, there is one thing they commonly lack: honest guidance from those they are trying to lead on how they are performing and how they could be more effective.

I have a suggestion on this: Leadership teams would do well to solicit anonymous feedback from their partners. Topics include: Are they focusing on the right issues? Are they listening effectively to partners? Are they communicating openly? Are they modeling the changes sought in others? Are they avoiding cronyism? Are they addressing problematic partners—those whose behaviors are counterproductive to the overall change agenda? What more could they be doing? What should they stop doing or be doing differently?

This is not to suggest that the feedback be taken as directly indicative of what to do. Leadership is not a popularity contest. But even where it doesn't guide on substance (the "what"), it will offer useful guidance on the "how"—where to focus, how best to communicate.

Soliciting honest anonymous feedback isn't comfortable. It takes courage. Indeed, in my personal experience, the responses are best read late on a Friday afternoon to give one time to, well, digest before coming back to work. That said, garnering feedback is avowedly worthwhile for two reasons. First, there is no quicker way to grow as an effective leader than to hear honestly from those you're endeavoring to lead. Second, it sets an invaluable tone and precedent. It is the leadership team asking for coaching just as the leadership team is asking partners to invite coaching for themselves from others. For this second benefit alone, leadership teams soliciting feedback should be a standard practice at law firms, just as it is at elite consulting firms.

Hugh A. Simons is formerly a senior partner and executive committee member at The Boston Consulting Group and chief operating officer at Ropes & Gray. Early retired, he now writes and teaches about business aspects of law firms. He welcomes comments and reactions at [email protected].