Why billable work outweighs biz dev work (but shouldn’t)

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You are likely aware of the distinction between urgent and important tasks in the context of time management.

Assuming you have enough work to keep you reasonably occupied and compensated (even if that means doing work for someone else’s clients rather than your own), business development tends to be an important task, but not an urgent one. The activity that will lead to new work falls to the bottom of the priority list.

Improving your practice is important, but unless there’s some pain or dire need involved, that desire is less immediate than doing what’s necessary to maintain your practice. Wouldn’t you rush to replace a broken window in your home more quickly than one that might better conserve energy? You’ll do what you must to fix the broken window, but everything from social plans to routine housework to downtime might pull you away from a home improvement project. The same goes for practice maintenance vs. practice improvement.

That’s why the feast/famine cycle is so dangerous: once business development activity has resulted in a “feast” of billable work, the temptation is to focus on that work and to back off the business development activity… Until the billable work is completed and the famine hits. By working to maintain the new level of work, you not only stop working to improve it but you may even unintentionally let the improvement slip away.

Seth Godin recently offered another explanation of why recognizing the distinction between urgent and important matters. Casting the distinction in terms of competence and confidence, he concludes that “[i]mportant… is fraught with fear, with uncertainty and with the risk of failure.” Read the rest of his post for a nuanced view of how viewing business development as urgent vs. important may reveal (and validate) your expectations about the likelihood of success.

Next time you catch yourself putting off business development activity because you have too many urgent tasks (read: billable work), revisit this urgent vs. important question. Do you need to address it in the context of time management or confidence?

A valuable diversion

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Today’s newsletter may feel like a bit of a diversion. If it seems so to you, don’t worry: “pure” biz dev will return next week.

Last weekend, I read When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi. Kalanithi was a neurosurgeon who was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer at age 36. This book is his memoir, which I recommend to lawyers for three reasons:

  1. It is a book about meaning and particularly about choosing a life path in view of life circumstances. While most of us will never face the specific challenge that Kalanithi did, we will all face something that threatens to knock us off course, and we will all have to decide what truly matters to us. There is much to learn in Kalanithi’s exploration of who he might become following his diagnosis and whether to resume his career in neurosurgery, to start early the writing career he’d imagined for much later in life, or to suspend his career entirely in favor of spending time with his family.

    It’s worth pausing to ask yourself: what are your values? What has meaning for you? Are you acting in accord with those two answers?

    If you’re looking for a pure business development lesson, it lies in this search for meaning. If you connect with a reason why you want to grow your practice, you’ll be more likely to do what’s necessary to reach that objective. And if your efforts to grow your practice detract from what is most important to you, it will be difficult to maintain those efforts—and it may be ultimately pointless even if you succeed.
  2. It’s a book about empathy. Kalanithi discusses how he sought to treat his cases as individuals, to help them make the right decisions for their own circumstances and values rather than simply treating the physical problem that they presented. He also discusses his experience as a patient who received person-centered care as well as a patient who received problem-based care.

    Unlike neurosurgeons, most lawyers don’t work with life-and-death circumstances. As lawyers, we may tend to focus on the legal problem that the client presents rather than allowing the client’s objectives to govern, or we may fail to attend to our client’s worry, stress, and uncertainty. Having been both a litigator and a litigant, I know how important empathy is in practice. Kalanithi’s experience revealed in a fresh way the degree to which empathy is a professional skill, in a context that we are unlikely to face but can understand nonetheless. Empathy upholds dignity—ours and our client’s.

  3. It’s a poetic book that uses language with skill and care. Reading good writing feeds both the soul and the brain, and it can reinvigorate one’s own writing. While reviewers are not unanimous on the quality of Kalanithi’s writing, I found it beautiful, and I kept pausing to reread and mull certain passages.

If When Breath Becomes Air isn’t your kind of book, do find something that makes you continue to examine why you do what you do, what meaning your life and your work carries, and how your approach to others (and especially your clients) affects both them and you. It’s a step away from “pure business” than can only enhance “pure business.”

Innovation for the sake of what?

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Like many people these days, I’ve been reading a wide variety of sources about politics over the last several months. It’s in this context that I ran across an article in Forbes magazine discussing lawyers’ duty to society in upholding the rule of law, specifically in the context of the recent (and currently stayed) executive order on immigration.

Don’t worry: I’m not going political here. I have my opinions, you have yours, maybe we agree and maybe we don’t, but that isn’t the purpose of the conversation you and I have each week via this newsletter. (As a side note, a comment along those lines, followed by a shift in topic, is likely enough to avoid political conversation if you’re networking or even advising clients on the effects, actual or anticipated, of legislative changes.)

The article caught my eye in part because of this paragraph:

To those who engage in the popular parlor game of predicting the extent to which technology, new delivery models, and other professionals will marginalize lawyers, consider that they will never substitute for the essential work performed by lawyers– this past weekend and going forward. Only lawyers will be on the front lines of protecting the rule of law–as well as representing their individual clients. Technology, new delivery models, and other professionals and paraprofessionals will enable lawyers to function more effectively to serve the interests of their individual clients and society.

Unquestionably true: although innovation is important for effective and efficient delivery of legal services (and thus for client retention and client attraction), the services provided and the value of those services is the key. That’s a good measuring stick to use when you consider making a change in the way you practice: does the contemplated change benefit your client, or is merely change for the sake of something new? Some lawyers started sending video messages in email, for example, thinking that more personal and likely to build a better connection with clients. Did it? Maybe. But was it useful to clients? Unless the visual was necessary, probably not. In contrast, a litigator might provide a video discussing preparation for and conduct during a deposition, which might well be useful to a client who hasn’t been through the process before.

Ask yourself periodically, “for the sake of what or whom am I considering making this change?” Even if you aren’t making a change that rises to the level of practice innovation, keeping this question top-of-mind will provide you with a check to ensure that you’re making changes for the right reasons.

Protecting the past?

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This image is featured in a Leadership Freak blog post on 5 Strategies to Convince Reluctant Leaders to Move Forward,:

Technology has created (or created the opportunity for) disruption in the way that legal services are delivered. Those disruptions have occurred in modes of communication (such as e-mail, which may create the unspoken expectation of near-instantaneous response), in provision of services (such as document preparation services), in efficiency (such as various forms of automation), and in measurement of efficiency and/or effectiveness (such as large corporations’ use of data to track legal services providers), among others.

If you’re struggling to find how you can respond to these disruptions –whether that means working to overcome them and return to “normal” or working to innovate your own ways of creating value for your clients–check out this post. Let it guide your approach to serving your clients. And keep this in mind: small changes can produce big results, so don’t get wrapped up in the idea that you need to produce innovation on a level with introducing e-mail. You can create the future with small improvements, too.

Not seeing desired results? Check these.

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Business development can sound so easy: make a plan, execute the plan, land the business, rinse and repeat. And sometimes it might even work that way, or perhaps you may discover that plans need to be tweaked to account for unanticipated opportunities. That’s what a dear friend calls a nice problem to have.

Other times, though, it feels like you’re head down, plowing ahead with business development, and making no headway at all… Maybe even losing ground. You might interpret that as a sign that you’re just not meant to be a rainmaker. Chances are reasonably good, though, that there’s a correctable problem in that way you’re approaching business development.

If you aren’t seeing the results you want, check this list to see what might be going wrong:

  1. Do you have a business development plan? If you’re doing business development activity without a coordinated strategy, you’re unlikely to see great results. The Reluctant Rainmaker.
  2. Are you actually using your plan? If you created a plan and then put in on the shelf (literally or metaphorically), your results are likely to be as random as your activity. Not surprisingly, it’s important that you actually implement your plan. This sounds so obvious as to be pointless to say, but it’s amazing how often someone will overlook this step.
  3. Do you have the skills you need? If you have a plan but execute it poorly, you won’t get the results you want. This breaks down into a sub-checklist of skills, such as networking skills (are you developing relationships with the right people?), content-generation or content-placement skills (if you’re writing or speaking, are you doing so in an effective way on appropriate topics to a desirable audience?), communication skills (does all of your marketing and business development activity work together to generate attention and to inspire confidence?), and more.
  4. What do you believe about business development that isn’t accurate? Several years ago, I came to realize that lawyers who fail at business development have accepted as true myths about how and whether to engage in rainmaking activity. The myths usually center on the necessity or urgency for taking on business development activity, on the mechanics of that activity, or on the beliefs that surround the activity or the idea of working to get new clients. As a result, they touch on every aspects of business development, from the need for rainmaking activity to the professionalism and ethics of such activity. I’ve identified and explained a number of these myths in Legal Rainmaking Myths: What You Think You Know About Business Development Could Kill Your Practice.
  5. How are you getting in your own way? I’ve seen lawyers undermine themselves in business development in a variety of ways, such as:
  • building a business development plan around tasks that you dislike (and will therefore find reasons to avoid)
  • lacking sufficient time or focus to engage consistently in your business development activity
  • fighting internal conflicts (for instance, about whether you actually want to bring in new business if you’re contemplating changing firms or leaving practice altogether, for example)
  • dressing in a way that undercuts your professionalism or authority 

These problems are especially vexing because they’re hard to see without outside input. At times, we buy into our own stories without critical reflection, which makes it difficult to identify those stories or find a way out of them. That’s why it’s important to you get help from a friend, colleague, or coach who will show you what you can’t see.

Work on your habits

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So you want to grow your practice… What’s your focus? You could answer that question with many different right answers.

I recently read a short blog post from Chris Brogan that offers one answer: Focus on your habits. It isn’t rocket science to understand that your likelihood of success (in business development or otherwise) increases substantially if you have a good plan in place and you execute on your plan with consistent activity. 

Brogan’s post is unique in that it will help you quantify the habits you need to develop. That’s important because (as the old saw states) what gets measured gets done. The post covers what it means to focus on “the number before the number” to reach your goals. Reading the post will take less than 2 minutes, and you will find it’s time well spent.

What you can learn from Apple

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One of my goals for this year (not resolutions, which tend to be ungrounded and short-lived, for me and many others) is to read more. Specifically, I’m looking to read articles and books from areas of business other than law in an effort to get fresh ideas.

There’s a great deal to be learned from our own profession—I’m certainly not suggesting otherwise—but sometimes the best ideas come through analogous or even dissimilar disciplines.

And so, I offer you January’s suggested reading: The Apple Experience: Secrets to Building Insanely Great Customer Loyalty, by Carmine Gallo. The book describes Apple’s customer-focused approach, with a focus on staff (the internal customer), the external customer, and the retail environment. Quite clearly, not all of the book applies to the practice of law, but several keys points do.

Gallo describes Apple’s “five steps of service”:

  • Approach customers with a personalized, warm welcome.
  • Probe politely to understand all the customer’s needs.
  • Present a solution for the customer to take home today.
  • Listen for and resolve any issues or concerns.
  • End with a fond farewell and invitation to return.

And though you’ll have to read the book to unpack each of those steps fully, the outline provides a handy guide for conducting a conversation with a prospective client. The point that requires some analogy, of course, is that (unlike an Apple sales representative) your goal is not to provide a solution for the prospective client to implement today. Instead, your goal is to describe what the solution is, how it might work, pros and cons, and (where applicable) some sense of a likely outcome, all with appropriate caveats since you undoubtedly won’t know everything that you need to know about the matter from a pitch or consultation.

Don’t read the book thinking you can apply each point directly to your practice, because you likely won’t be able to do that. Instead, read the book, reflect on the principles it offers, and think about how they might translate for your practice.

Up for a challenge?

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Happy New Year! January always feels like a fresh start to me, just like September does, after so many years of school. I love to harness the power of possibility that comes with a fresh start.

Every January, I choose one activity that I’d like to make a habit or incorporate more fully into my life. It might be purely a business activity, or a personal activity that has broad benefits.

And then I practice the heck out of that activity for the month.  My results vary with this approach, but it’s always useful. Sometimes I do build a habit (that’s how I went from drinking more Diet Coke each day than any sane person ever should to drinking only water a couple of years ago). Other times, my concentrated activity just gives me a big boost even though I don’t continue with the same level of activity. That’s how I wrote my third book, Legal Rainmaking Myths: I didn’t finish it in January, but working on it every day got me over the starting-is-hard hump.

If you’ve done your planning for 2017, you’ve identified a handful of activities that you want to begin or to do more consistently. Choose one, and make January your month of that activity. If you want to increase one-on-one contact, for example, make a plan to schedule a meeting in person, by video conference, or by telephone every weekday. If you want to raise your profile by speaking, spend some time each day researching speaking opportunities (relevant community groups or conferences, for example), contacting organizers, and working on topic ideas. You may not get to speak in January, but if you’re diligent, you can get a lot done to set yourself up for speaking later in the year.

If you’re up for the challenge, choose your activity, decide on an appropriate commitment, and block out the time. Get your year off to a powerful start.