Molly McGrath is the founder of Hiring & Empowering Solutions, LLC.
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“I wish my team cared as much about my firm as I do” is a frequent comment I get from my law firm clients when we first start working together.
Inspiring your employees to care about your law firm as much as you do—especially since the employment landscape shift of 2021—isn’t easy, yet it can be done when you understand what to focus on.
Many businesses want to see the entrepreneurial spirit in their team members. The problem with that line of thinking is that what your team needs in order to care about your law firm as much as you do is intrapreneurship, not entrepreneurship.
Entrepreneurship Versus Intrapreneurship
French economist Jean-Baptiste Say coined the term entrepreneurship, which is best expressed as a desire to undertake or cut your own path. It’s about going out and getting. You, as the law firm owner, most likely possess a spirit of entrepreneurship. You went out and took the risk of starting a law firm.
What your firm needs in its employees isn’t more “go out and get.” Instead, you need the mindset of “we’re in this together.” Intrapreneurship is about capturing your team’s desire to cut their own path and directing it inward. When you’re able to do that, your employees will likely start caring about your firm as much as you do, and your firm can reach heights you may not currently believe are possible.
You’re probably wondering why that is, and what it takes to nurture intrapreneurship in your firm. It’s actually simpler than you think. Intrapreneurs and entrepreneurs both thrive on growth and challenge. Both enjoy seeing their creative impulses come to fruition.
Nurturing Intrapreneurship
Nurturing intrapreneurship in your employees means renovating your law firm culture to something that both empowers your team to explore their ideas and demonstrates that, succeed or fail, you’ll support them every step of the way.
When addressing law firm culture, I recommend the following strategies to foster an intrapreneurial spirit in your team:
• Build and bring outside-the-box thinking to every client engagement.
• Implement daily snapshot reporting.
• Create weekly key productivity indicators (KPI) reporting, tracking and measurement for every team member.
• Enact specific strategies to support and protect attorneys' time, energy, confidence and family.
• Roll out a law firm culture of adult responses (instead of knee-jerk reactions), conveyed in an honest, yet respectful, manner that’s free of drama and meltdowns.
Putting these strategies in place can seem like a lot of work, especially if you're already overwhelmed with what’s on your plate. What’s important to remember is that a productive workplace can’t come from drama and micromanaging employee productivity. Instead, it comes from building the trust your team needs to step forward and take responsibility for their role in your company, and in so doing, fully express their own talent and leadership capabilities.
Once the intrapreneurial spirit (along with strategies to support it) is alive and well in your team, you as the law firm owner can enjoy more time freedom, because fostering intrapreneurship allows you to stop accepting tasks you, as the firm owner, shouldn’t need to do.
Inspiring your team to care about your firm as much as you do means giving them positive reasons to care and the opportunities and support to act on those reasons. Put the reasons and support in place, and watch as they step up and start caring!
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