No Shortcuts

I'm back on a running kick at the moment and, having avoided running through the spring, I have suffered in the summer as I regained some fitness and some strength in my legs.

I was thinking about this yesterday morning as a hauled myself through Wimbledon Common on a cold and rainy early morning. If you want to run some distance, there is no shortcut to building up the fitness. No matter how much I might want to, I can't just start running a 10k distance - I have to build up to it. I have to put the time in doing the less glamorous things, the boring preparation.

It is exactly the same in business. I speak to lots of clients and potential clients who suddenly decide that change is necessary and then want to implement that change tomorrow. This is especially true with staffing decisions. 

I understand the frustration of dealing with staff, I really do. The firm - or chambers - may have put up with poor service for a long time and finally enough is enough. So they call me - or someone like me - and want 'something done'. Often we then have a difficult and frustrating conversation along the lines of it not being that simple. It takes time, it takes planning, it takes procedures. It takes patience if we are to do the thing properly.

There are no shortcuts in business. Plans have to be considered and then confirmed. Strategies have to be arrived at and then followed. Procedures have to be in place (and then followed). I cannot come up with a plan that gets around employment law...

If you want to run a business, you have to put your time in to understand the business, to understand the industry (so far so good for some lawayers) but also to understand staff and people, to understand the technicalities of how businesses work and of how to get the best out of them. That's the tricky bit.

So as in running, so with business. The boring preparation has to be done. The hard early work has to be put in. The plan needs to be established and followed. As with running, that means some difficult early mornings and evenings of just slogging away. As with running, however, it is all worth it in the end because suddenly you are in a position to not just do things better - you can do better things.

Training, then. There are (sadly) no shortcuts.

Loyalty..

I've been talking with clients this week and the subject of loyalty has come up a few times.

In most cases, it has been barristers talking about the need for loyalty from their staff. For many sets - particularly for regional chambers - times are very difficult and there seems to be a general feeling that, if the staff were really loyal, they would be taking some of the pain too.

Sadly this simply reflects a failure of some barristers to recognise and appreciate the pain that staff have already taken. I can't think of many sets that have given staff a pay increase in a good few years. Many sets have reduced the number of staff they have - getting rid of 'non essential' staff (whatever that means). Staff are being asked to extend their jobs, to work longer, to do new and additional tasks. Few sets commit to training their staff and many like to police staff expenses to the point where it's not worth their time to try to claim.

Of course, it is the same in most industries, but that doesn't sound as if it builds much in the way of loyalty, does it? Loyalty works both ways and chambers must be loyal to their staff if they expect loyalty from them. If staff are to take pain at the moment, it should be on the understanding that they will share in the upside when that comes.

It's not just about the money, though. Members of chambers should take a few moments to consider the work done by their staff. Not just the clerks - all the staff. Your receptionist (assuming you have one) has to put up with callers in all sorts of moods and continue to show a calm and professional exterior no matter how angry or irritated they are inside. Your marketing and/or development staff keep coming up with new areas of practice and keep smiling when members complain that it's difficult or far away or just plain new. Your clerks keep slogging away no matter how they are shouted at and no matter the fact that any bad news is their fault.

Spend a little time building loyalty in your staff before demanding it from them - it will be better for everyone in the end.

Starting Right

I've been looking up a few clients today - it seems to be officially the first day back from holiday in most Chambers.

In between hearing about holidays and adventures and quite a bit of drinking in the sun, I've had a couple of discussion about the things to focus on when just back at work. From a management point of view, this is a good time to check some of the basic - Risks, Staff, Marketing & Processes. Yes - it sounds a bit boring, but now - before the work of chambers winds up properly - is a good time to get some of these things done.

So - let's just have a quick look at these four areas. There are some things that you can check quickly...

Risks

Check your Risk Register - you do have a Risk Register, don't you..? Make sure that your list of risks is up to date and reflects any changes that have happened since the last time you checked. Make sure that your Risk Team/Group/Committee think about all the risks and have thought about how Chambers might react if the incident or event happened (and, of course, you do have a Team/Group/Committee...). Then see what you could do now to reduce the possibility of the incident or event happening. Simple.

Staff

Are the staff motivated for the year ahead? Do they know what Chambers is trying to achieve (and it really isn't obvious, I assure you). Make sure that they know the Plan (you do have a Plan..?)  and make sure that you have spoken with them about their role and Chambers' expectations. Talk with them about their expectations - you're likely to be pleasantly surprised. Are the staff happy? It is well documented that happier staff are more productive staff, so it is one of those rare win-win situations where everyone ends happy.

Marketing

Check your marketing plan (you do have...) - is it still appropriate and does it address the needs of Chambers. Have you got the required resources and budgets and to all the right people know what the plan is,, what they can spend, what they should spend and how they and the plan will be measured. Make sure that members of Chambers know what their role is and what they will be expected to do - and how they will be measured. Make sure that the marketing is part of the members' practice reviews.

Processes

This is the most boring one, sorry. If Chambers has some standard ways of doing things (we consultants like to call them processes because it sounds more complicated that way) then members of Chambers and staff will finding doing those things a little easier. Things like Petty Cash; Expenses; Marketing Spend; Practice Reviews. If the standard ways of working are available in a process then everyone can do them in the same way, be measured in the same way and know that their 'thing' will be done fairly, just like everyone else'.

Simple - honestly.

Of course, I would be delighted to help with any of this. See my web site for more details - http://www.mar-aon.co.uk.

In This Severe Weather...

We are, apparently, experiencing extreme weather. Anyone from outside the UK may find that rather difficult to understand. My brother, for example, lives in Sydney in Australia and so thinks of thirty celcius as Spring-like.

Whatever your own thoughts about the temperature, the chances are that your staff (and colleagues) think that the weather is extreme and so it is. The fact is that you, as a manager, will have to deal with it. Happily, it is possible to deal with staff concerns and do some good for the organisation at the same time.

• Be a little more relaxed about the hours that people work. Is it really necessary that everyone works between the hours of 8:30 and 18:00? Why not let some people come in at 7:30 and so avoid a hot and sticky commute (in both directions probably?). Why not let some come in at 10:00 and leave at 20:00?
• Be a little more relaxed about what people wear. If they are not customer facing, do they really need to be in a suit and tie? If there is no air conditioning in the office, why not chill a bit about the dress code (see what I did there?).
• Buy some ice cream for your team. It's a simple thing - and don't be fooled into thinking that they will love you forever - but staff will notice and acknowledge your gesture. The British, too, find ice cream almost sinful, so you can all share that 'naughty' moment together.

Goodness knows - if you manage to get through the next few weeks being flexible and buying ice cream, you might be able to continue this for the rest of the year too. All the positive benefits that come from these simple actions might surprise you - or you may, of course think that it's all madness!

Building a Network

My alternative title for this blog was "Developing People Out The Door", but I was told that was rather negative, so...

I have been chatting to law firms this week about staff and fee-earner development. This is not really my field, but I'm able to discuss it at a strategic level and to put clients in touch with some functional experts. I've been interested to see that for most senior managers, staff development is seen as a pain and something that 'just needs to be done' - so far as I could see, there was no value placed on it at all.

I disagree with that point of view. Partners, fee-earners and staff should all be developed and trained as much as possible. It adds to the resources of the company, helps people to do their jobs better, can be a valuable asset for clients, and make those who have been developed and trained feel valued by the firm. In a classic piece of 'consulting-speak' it is 'win win'.

The point that is so often raised is that people take the training and the gain in experience and then leave the firm "and so all that good stuff leaves the building", to quote a client earlier this week. That is only true if you let it happen.

Training staff and lawyers is a good thing (see above) and if that means that they then leave the firm to get a new challenge then so be it. As the sponsoring firm, however, you do need to ask yourself why they are leaving. If they are good people, why haven't you been able to provide them with the challenge they are looking for? Why not promote the hell out of them and keep them in the firm?

Of course it's not always that simple. Sometimes there aren't any promotion slots for people, almost no matter how good they are. In that case you should be celebrating the fact that they are moving on. Make them feel great about it and help them in every way that you can. Keep in touch with them, whether during a period of gardening leave or afterwards in their new post. Communicate with them regularly and arrange meet ups - partly just to keep in touch but also so that you know what they are up to, what skills they are learning and what they are getting better and better at. That way you will know if there is a good time to entice them back to the firm.

A strong alumni network can be a great asset - but only if the firm works at it. I have been asked to join a few, but there has never been any follow up (to the point that I don't know if I am still a member or not). The communication needs to be regular, frequent and useful. In an ideal world, firms would work almost as hard with their alumni as the do (or should) with their client base.

So - work hard to develop and train you people. Celebrate their success - even if that means the move to another firm (even a competitor). Keep in touch with them. Even when they no longer work for you, they can continue to be an asset to the firm.




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Attentive readers, and my blog stats assure me that there are some, will have noticed a bit of a gap since my last posting. The joy of the sole trader, self-employed consultant, is that jobs are 'lumpy' - I am usually either too busy or too quiet. For the last six weeks or so, I have been running all over the place both in the UK and on Continental Europe. I had some jobs 'stack up' - where a piece of work that was going to fit perfectly around other clients had to move suddenly. In those circumstances we all just work a little harder, or a little longer - and try to look forward to the quieter times coming!

The Virtual Director

Staffing in a barristers' chambers is always a contentious issue. Sets are under pressure as never before (particularly those involved with publicly-funded law) and members of chambers are very keen (understandably) to make sure that their staff are good value for money - no matter who they are, what they do and what they cost.

The current fashion in many sets is to move to a Chief Executive model. It sounds good - have someone to come in and run the business of chambers. In smaller sets - and nowadays fewer than 60 barristers is a small set - it is, however, difficult to justify the expense of a professional general manager. Often what chambers mean when they say they want a Chief Executive (or Chambers Director or whatever name is decided on), they actually want someone who has a primary focus on sales - not even marketing. This probably requires the prospective CEO to have a marketing background and to enjoy the sales role - and to be able to sell to solicitors, insurers, corporate clients and public agencies (a difficult task as we all know).

Having sales at the centre of a small business like a set of chambers is entirely correct. Unless chambers is large enough to support a marketing/sales function (that a good general manager can then direct), the senior administrator will be responsible for sales (it is likely that it will be referred to as marketing, but generally it is sales).

So - how does a set of chambers get access to the strategic thinking, the strategic administration, that a good, experienced, general manager can provide.

This is where the 'Virtual Director' comes in. Chambers can find an individual or an organisation who has the administrative skills required  - but who does not join the payroll. Chambers then has access to an individual who can offer advice about:

• strategic thinking
• regulatory compliance
• purchasing and procurement
• supplier contracts
• supplier liaison
• staffing issues
• leadership coaching
• soft skills training
• etc

These are all issues that arise in chambers. It can be quite a challenge for a Marketing Director or a Senior Clerk or a Director of Clerking to (a) know about these sorts of things and (b) have the time required to address them properly.

This is where the Virtual Director comes in. With an up to date understanding of the regulatory framework (as it applies to the business of chambers) and expertise in running business, the Virtual Director can offer expert advice to chambers as well as its members and staff. There is generally no on-going commitment (although chambers can choose to pay a retainer which will ensure that the Virtual Director does not work with any chambers engaged in the same area of law) and payments can be decided in advance for project work. On-going advice is simply charged as done - rounded to the nearest minute.

Smaller sets of chambers now have access to the sort of expert advice only normally available to the very largest (richest) sets.

The Sales Bit...

I would be delighted to discuss your requirements and to discuss how the Virtual Director might work in your set of chambers. Email Peter Blair for more information.

An Operational Wow

I was at the Olympic Games yesterday. As an ex-Ops manager and as someone who delights is seeing a good system working, I was fantastically impressed.

My daughter and I managed to get tickets to the Hockey yesterday and decided that, since the first match started at 8:30am we needed to be there early (we both hate to be rushed). We arrived at the main venue just before 7:30 and already the volunteers (sorry the 'Games Makers') were there, cheerfully guiding us along and getting us ready for security. There seemed to be hundreds of security staff ready to check us and get us onto the site and we didn't seem to stop moving at any time. Alright, we were very early, but even at that time, there were plenty of 'in case it gets busy' people. The organisers certainly seemed to understand that the best way to avoid queues is to never let them start.

In the site itself, the organisation was staggering. Thousands of people (and there is absolutely no exaggeration in that number) - all in the right place at the right time with the right things to do their job. Most impressively, they had all been trained well. They knew why they were doing the job they were doing, they knew the answer to most questions, they knew who to speak to if they didn't know an answer - and all the time they were polite, cheerful, and interested in us.

By the afternoon, there were tens of thousands of people on the site. All seemed to be moving in the direction they wanted, all seemed to get food and drink when they wanted and seems to find any queues acceptable. I did hear one fellow spectator saying to a friend that it had taken her an hour to get to the hockey stadium and wondered if the system was slowing down under the weight of numbers. It turned out, however, that it had taken her less than an hour to get from Stratford tube station to the venue - say 10 minutes from the tube to the park, 30 minutes walk from Stratford Gate to the hockey venue which is at the other end of the park, 5 minutes to get into the venue and 10 to find her friend. So  about 55 minutes in total - I'm not sure that there was a queue in there at all. Impressive.

Anyone who has worked in Operations understands that it is, and it should be, a forgotten field since if it is working well it is invisible. If you have gone to the Games, please just take a moment to look around you and to think about the complexity of your experience - the people, the venues, the technology, the cleaners, the signs. Everything. I salute the Operational Managers of the Games - well done!

Pride and Confidence

I have really enjoyed the first week of the Olympics. One of the most interesting features has been the way that London seems suddenly to have embraced the Games. As any regular readers will know, I spend  quite a lot of time in coffee houses, and there has been a palpable change from cynicism to confidence and even pride in the whole event.

In the weeks running up to the start, most people I spoke with were quite negative about the Games - complaining about the disruption which would be inevitable and worrying about how cliched and embarrassing the opening ceremony would be.

And then... Well the ceremony was, in my opinion, an absolute triumph. The right note was struck - there were plenty of 'wow' moments, there was great music, and the whole things was funny, anarchic, a little confusing and passionate. In fact, very British. The next morning I had so many conversations with people about how great it had been. There was a real sense of relief - but on the back of that was the beginning of confidence that these Games would be good, that London would look good, and that we would be impressive in front of the rest of the world. And on the back of that was pride.

The overwhelming impression now - after the first week - is pride. Every Londoner I speak with expresses this pride - the city looks great and we all seem to be helping visitors and enjoying the games.

This is how it can happen  in business too. The Brits are difficult people to get excited and engaged with an organisation. We tend to be cynical and generally sure that change is bad and that there is no point in trying to hard at anything since it will all end badly.

If we try, however, great things can happen. By staying positive and by constantly encouraging a good leader can bring people along with them. You can encourage engagement - and having engaged you can show your people that trying is alright and that success is possible. Soon, slowly, you will start to notice pride.

So there is the lesson. Keep trying. Keep trying hard. Keep positive. Keep encouraging. Success will come and with it will be pride. Once your organisation is positive and proud - it can be unstop-able!

And continue...

I've had a busy few months. Since January I have been working exclusively for a set of Chambers in London. It has been a mad, busy time, but with the arrival of August, I am done.

I have restructured the staffing and helped to facilitate significant changes of personnel - something that the Chambers management had wanted for a while. That took about six months, but then staff issues have to be very carefully handled and since I respected the people I was working with I wanted to make sure that it was handled as well as possible. I believe that we managed to get the best result for everyone - including the member of staff who ultimately left (and who looked much happier last time I saw him).

I also project managed the complete change of all the IT systems. We moved platform for Chambers Management System (to Lex from Iris - and I'm sure I will go into more detail in a forthcoming post about the mess that Iris made of the transition); we moved hosted systems platform (from Iris to CBSIT); we moved versions of Office.

It is right and proper that most of the barristers in Chambers saw little in the way of inconvenience and have no concept of how difficult that all was. If you have been part of a transfer like that I'm sure you can sympathise. There was a huge amount of planning and then quite a few weekends and over-nights to get things working. The hard work of the two project leaders (Damien Briengan for Lex and Mike Sutton for CBSIT) was invaluable and contributed to the success. We were a bit of a victim of our own success - because the process was, for most people, painless, they assumed it was simple.

Those were just the 'big ticket' items. We sorted out a number of suppliers and replaced a copier contract (these things are notoriously easy to get in a mess with). We introduced some formal risk management. Communication is better, policies are in place, documentation is up to date, financial reporting is much improved, etc etc...

With all that done, the focus has now changed to Sales and Marketing. While I have run successful Marketing teams, I am not a Marketing specialist and am certainly not a Salesman. So the time has come to move on and see what new challenges and new organisations are out there.

Looking forward to it!

Spot the difference

Two news stories today - both from "Roll on Friday" (always a good source!).

The first is about Eversheds who are, apparently about to outsource its entire fiance team. Well, I say outsource - the story in fact says that the team will be made redundant and the work moved to an outsourcing firm in India. Outsourcing does seem to be the current "thing to do" - last year it was redundancy, this year it's outsourcing. Eversheds are also, apparently, looking at outsourcing some legal work to regional firms.

The second story is about Edinburgh firm Shepherd & Wedderburn who have just announced that they will be compensating those members of staff who agreed to take unpaid leave last year. In the height of their recession, S&W asked staff to take unpaid leave to avoid further redundancies. Apparently 98% of their staff agreed with the proposal and the firm survived. One year on and now that things are recovering, S&W have announced that they will be repaying 50% of the amount staff lost by taking unpaid leave. Patrick Andrews, the firm's CEO (and I won't get into the whole subject of a law firm CEO who is really, at best, a Managing Partner) in on record as saying that "...[it] without doubt the right things for us to do for the medium to long-term". Absolutely - let's acknowledge that the staff did something for us when needed and so we will repay that trust in the firm as soon as we can.

Spot the difference in approach to a firm's staff. In one firm, staff appear to be thought of as drones who do not add any strategic value and who can be replaced by either cheaper people or machines. In the other firm, staff are people who contribute to the strategic future of the firm and who make a contribution which is recognised and acknowledged by the firm's management.

I know which I would rather be working for.

A sinking feeling...

I read "The Lawyer" today and was hugely depressed by a story about CMS Cameron McKenna. I quote the section that gave me a particularly sinking feeling:

The quarterly associate time recording (ATR) bonus was still paid as usual to associates who recorded 400 billable hours in the last quarter. However, an additional performance-linked bonus available to senior support staff has not been paid.

What is being rewarded here? Associates are being rewarded for running up the clock while senior support staff are effectively told that, no matter how well they do their job (and we have to hope that the performance measures used will be (a) sensible; and (b) linked to longer term things like profitability and good staff management), they will receive no bonus.

To summarise: don't worry if you are doing good, profitable work so long as you are cranking in the hours.

Oh dear.

Coaching not Training

I read today an interesting article from the CIPD entitled "Most firms still using coaching despite recession". It reported survey results which found that 90% of respondents were using coaching in their organisation. The survey also found that there was a shift away from using coaching for development to using it for performance.

I have to admit that I was astonished that 90% of firms were coaching and, in my cynical way, wondered how formal this coaching was since it includes coaching by line managers. Perhaps it is my background in legal sector management which has driven this cynicism. I'd also be surprised to find that UK law firms matched the survey in that only 20% of firms surveyed reported a reduction in their coaching budget. In my very unscientific survey of law firms (otherwise known as ringing some contacts) I didn't find a firm that either properly separated their coaching and training budgets or that had not seen a significant reduction in their training (and so coaching) budgets.

In my opinion, coaching is probably more important than ever and should be at least preserved in every firm - if necessary at the expense of training. Coaching deals, generally, with the softer aspects of work - relationship issues, conflict issues, performance appraisal and management, motivation, for example. In difficult times, and in an industry savaged by redundancies, coaching is vital to keep performance high.

So - if you are a partner or an executive in a law firm, please have a look at the article from the CIPD and look at some of the other resources that the CIPD offer (someone in your HR department, at least, will have a membership and so be able to get hold of the information). Examine the coaching your firm is already doing. Formalise the process if necessary and look to expand it. Done well, everyone benefits from coaching - the firm, partners and staff.

I know that this is my second blog about the CIPD - no I don't work for them and no, I'm not currently pitching for work their either...

Why search for growth?

Growth - most law firms are at it. I have yet to speak with a law firm of more than six partners which was not focussed on growth - ideally in PEP (Profit per Equity Partner) but most often also in revenue, profit, number of partners, number of offices, etc etc.

Why? My light reading over the last day or so has been the "The Lawyer UK 200 Annual Report 2009" (available as an active PDF here). One of the lead articles is entitled "The Power of 10" and examines the top UK firms in 2009 compared to the first year of "The Lawyer Annual Report" in 1999. As the article states:

"But with all these changes during the decade [mergers, european expansion, referring work to cheaper parts of their organisation], the most astonishing thing about the top 100 in May 1999 is how similar the pecking order is to today's leaderboard. Although most firms have doubled or even tripled in size, they have been running to stand still."

All that trouble, all that expensive growth, and all that has happened is that, so far as this particular ranking is concerned (and see here for some other thoughts about rankings), most firms have stayed still. "The Lawyer" holds Linklaters out as a success story since it managed to claw its way from the bottom of the "Magic Circle" - that it, from the bottom of a group of four. The article does admit to "difficulties" at Linklaters over the decade - with two major restructurings.

What would have happened a firm had decided in 1999 that it was large enough, or that the partners earned enough, or that they saw no need to expand into Germany? It would have fallen down the rankings - that's what. My point here is - so what? I would argue that a group of partners who had agreed on a strategy that did not include growth might well have been more profitable (on a percentage basis) and are likely to have had more contented staff and partners. It's likely too, I think, that clients might well be more content. They will not have lived through a decade in which their legal advisers grew more quickly than they did and so in which they became a smaller and smaller client.

The last decade for law firms has been a little like the decade before for commercial companies - one of expansion followed by contraction. This was matched - as it is now for law firms - by swift hiring and firing of staff, outsourcing followed by insourcing followed by outsourcing. Management along the lines of "if it's done in-house, let's outsource it. If it's done externally, let's bring it in-house...". I can see these cycles repeating themselves now.

Growth for growth's sake is a strange idea - I'm not sure who it benefits. It tends to drive an aggressive culture in a firm and in an industry. I do not pretend that any large firm will read this blog entry and think "he's right, you know, we should be happy as we are...". Partners in smaller firms - this appeal is for you. Think carefully about the strategy you want and consider whether you need to add growth to it. Perhaps a strategy which includes excellence in service to clients, and a fair reward for effort is good enough?

It is more important to be sure of a strategy that all the partners are comfortable with rather than to automatically assume that everyone wants growth.

The Cost of Redundancy

"The Lawyer" has a report today on Evershed's latest round of redundancies (see here for the article). Apparently they are looking to shed 22 people from their Real Estate practise offices.

Regular readers of this blog (and I'm delighted to know that there are some) will know that I have a pet topic of "knee-jerk" management and short-term thinking. I think I've stated before that law firm partners tend to like redundancy as a reaction to poor results or difficult times because it's easy to understand and a visible action on behalf of the firm (the "look - we're doing something" school of management).

It was very interesting, therefore, to read a report from the Chartered Institute of Personnel & Development (CIPD) titled "False Economy? The cost to employers of redundancy". It it an good, if technical, read and includes the formula: CR = nR + xH + xT + ny(H+T) + Wz(P-n) to find the true cost of redundancy by examining such variables as the number of people to be made redundancy, the redundancy payments, number of people subsequently hired, the hiring cost etc etc.

The key point for law firms is the cost of re-hiring people. This article reports a survey which found that it was cheaper to keep a lawyer inactive for 15 months than to fire and rehire. This will obviously depend on the level (and so cost) of the lawyer in question - but does not take into account the increased cost (through ineffectiveness) of of training a lawyer in the way the firm works, nor does it account for issues of staff morale.

The CIPD article ends with a comment that more firms (by which it means commercial firms rather than law firms) have been using methods other than redundancy such as reduced working, flexible working allowing for natural wastage and recruitment freezes to cut expenditure. They may have been doing this partly because they understand the cost of redundancy - but also because they have fewer "spare" staff.

I suspect that most law firms have now rid themselves of any spare staff who may have been hanging around. Care must now be taken to ensure that a proper analysis of all the costs is done to ensure that firms do not go through the damaging exercise of redundancy only to find that, within a short period (say 15 months), they need to rehire staff.

There is a danger that partners find that, rather than saving money, redundancy increases costs this year and re-hiring increases costs next year. There is another possibility - that by having a comparatively savage redundancy policy, re-hiring costs are greatly increased in subsequent years - when the good times return (as they inevitably will) staff jump ship to an employer who demonstrated staff-care.

"Our staff are our greatest asset"...

Stating the Bleeding Obvious

I remember being told many years ago, by one of the line managers I respected the most, that "the difficulty with the bleeding obvious is that it does need to be stated".

This phrase has never been truer than in the days of layoffs. Surely we all know that it can be incredibly expensive to lay staff off - and yet it sometimes appears that it is the first line of defence in some companies (and many law firms). Consider this post from the "Director Magazine" - the in-house publication from the Institute of Directors. Called "Think before you fire" it reminds us of the drawbacks to firing staff which I summarise here:

1. Increased cost
2. Lower productivity
3. Brand damage
4. Damage to leadership reputation
5. More claims from remaining staff

The article goes into more detail, obviously, but it's not rocket science is it? Surely we all know this stuff? And yet...

There are a number of reasons that it goes on - and why it probably shouldn't:

1. Many organisations have gained "slack" in their headcount - those people who are not performing, but who have been just a little too tricky to move out. In this economy, the pain is, perhaps, worth it. Think how much the firm would have saved, however, if they have been management properly all along.
2. It is a very visible expression of management action. "Look!" say the Board "See what we are doing to improve PEP this year. We are cutting costs!". Cutting costs - really? This year costs will be high because of redundancy payments and associated costs, and next year costs will be high because of recruitment fees.
3. It's something that people with limited management experience and knowledge understand. Well yes - but that doesn't make it the right thing to do. As far as cooking is concerned, I basically understand two dishes and know the number for pizza delivery off by heart - that doesn't make it a good diet, though. Good management is available to every firm. Hire professionals to do the job - not enthusiastic amateurs.

Perhaps this will define the next stage of my career - stating the bleeding obvious...