Can we talk about Purpose?

In my role leading the Mindful Business Charter, I have lots of conversations with individuals and teams about the sources of the stress they experience, on the simple basis that if we can talk about them, we might be able to do something about them.

Very often, particularly, but not exclusively, in my conversations within law firms, there is a large grey quadruped in the corner which we generally find easier to ignore. Sometimes we talk about it, but largely in despairing tones, the prevailing sense being there is nothing we can do about it. So, people talk about the billable hour, the daily/weekly hours targets, the billing targets, the relentless focus on the headline profit per equity partner (PEP) figures and so on.

In a conversation the other day with an enlightened and unsatisfied law firm partner we dared to address the elephant. She talked to me about the pressure she felt under as one of the highest billing, and therefore highest earning, partners in her firm, and then the pressure that other partners who billed less than her felt, and the pressure forced upon them all by the legal league tables which seem to value the success or otherwise of a firm solely in financial terms (and, even then, purely on the eminently unreliable PEP figure). And then we talked about how the whole unhealthily comparative and competitive edifice was enabled and underpinned by a regular flow of information to her and all the other partners from the finance department listing every fee earner in the firm with their weekly recorded hours, billed hours and recovered hours. I asked her why she and the other partners received this information and what they were supposed to do with it. She shrugged and said something along the lines of “because the finance team send it to us”.

The elephant was silent throughout the above.

We then began to wonder. It was at this point that the elephant, duly addressed, began to listen. We tossed about a few questions that we thought we’d like to ask the partners:

· What is important to you in your work?

· What are the most important values to you in your work?

· Thinking back to a younger you, what made you want to be a lawyer in the first place?

· What made you join this firm as opposed to any of the many others?

· What are the qualities and values of a good lawyer?

· How do you like to describe the firm to potential recruits?

· If you have children, how do you describe to them what you do?

· Would you describe law as a calling, a profession or a business — or some combination of the three?

· How well are the above all reflected in the way you are managed/appraised and rewarded?

We recognised that some of these conversations would go differently from others, and we might want to think about whether we should have some as focus groups and some as individual conversations. And then we imagined holding up a chart of the cumulative values and purpose of the partners on one side and what was counted and rewarded by the firm on the other. We didn’t want to pre-judge any exercise, and we haven’t done it yet, but we fancied there may be some tension between the two, some misalignment. (And, of course, that tension could be in different forms. It may be that the collective values of a firm’s partners are principally about making the most money they can. That is, obviously, fine, but be honest about it and manage the firm on that basis. I had the sense from the partner I was talking to that in the case of her firm the tension would take a different form.)

The elephant was nodding along in agreement. He seemed, however, to think we hadn’t finished.

I am hopeful we will return to the conversation and that we might go so far as having those conversations with the partners and, if we are right in our hunch about that tension, help them think about how to address it.

It was only afterwards as I was reflecting on the conversation that I realised the connection between all this and the work of the MBC, and possibly where the elephant was wanting us to get to.

Tension causes stress. If there is a tension between my purpose and values and the apparent purpose and values of the organisation for which I work, this will cause stress. If there is tension between what the organisation says it is about (perhaps on large granite blocks in the reception area or coloured boxes on the internet) and the reality of how I am managed and rewarded, this will cause stress. If there is tension between how we describe what we are to potential recruits, or clients, or our family, and the reality of our day-to-day experience, this will cause stress.

These will all cause us stress regardless of where we sit in the organisation. If we are in senior leadership positions, say a partner, and people expect us to be answerable for the organisation and its culture, and indeed perhaps we thought being a partner meant we would have some influence there, then this creates a special kind of stress. (I am reliably informed by my colleague, Charlotte, who is a psychotherapist in her other life, that in the trade this is termed incongruence.)

There are many sources of stress in our work, some avoidable and unnecessary and some that go with the territory of what we do. Some may be, partly at least, in the gap between the two. The tension induced stress that the elephant wanted us to talk about, around our purpose, is at the very least in that gap, if not more to the avoidable side of it, if we are prepared to be brave and talk about it.

I know very well that law firms that employ lots of people who rely on them for their livelihood need to be profitable. I was a law firm partner once and my family depended on my PEP. I get all that. But I know also that a significant part of the stress that led to my breakdown in 2011, was the tension between my purpose and the senior law firm partner I had become. In our annual budgeting to produce ever greater levels of PEP we never asked the question how much would be enough. We also never reflected on the probability that a clearer connection with our purpose, an alignment between our individual and collective values on the one hand and how we really managed the firm and the people in it on the other, would have removed a considerable source of tension and stress and made us better lawyers (possibly also more profitable lawyers) and better friends, spouses and parents.

If you think you and your partners would be up for an honest, brave, open minded and safe chat about the elephant in the room, get in touch and we can talk about how we might make that happen.

Richard Martin, Executive Officer for the MBC

You can contact us via email — info@mindfulbusinesscharter.com, or via our website.