Sometimes it seems that everywhere we look we see hand-wringing operational failure, particularly when it comes to public services. Some of that failure is gross and inexcusable, like a post office management prepared to sacrifice the lives of individual sub-postmasters to cover up for a broken computer system. Or the administrative failings which contributed to the 2017 Grenfell Tower Block fire and the loss of 72 lives. Or the silencing of whistleblowers which allowed a young nurse to continue killing babies in her care.
More often, operational failings are down to blistering managerial incompetence. Like a police service which never quite seems to get it right. Where police officers are told to dance with protesters instead of clearing a way to enable key workers to get to their jobs. Police officers who took it upon themselves to strip a schoolgirl naked, without even consulting her parents, purely because a teacher imagined that she could smell cannabis. A schizophrenic who was free to walk the streets and kill three strangers because officers had not enforced an arrest warrant issued months earlier. A police service which has, it would seem, given up entirely on the types of crime which can affect all of us, like domestic burglary, shoplifting, car crime or Internet scams. Some incompetence is strategically more serious, like a UK defence capability which has been allowed to become so run down that if the worst happened, we would have to throw up our hands in surrender.
It is no better when we go to our local town centres, with so many former department stores standing empty and boarded up. That’s assuming that we can even get to our local town centre and park our car without having to navigate a ‘pay by phone’ parking system. And why is it every supermarket checkout we go to appears to be short-staffed? No wonder many of us now prefer to shop online.
If we get closer to home, we find a Land Registry now taking up to year to process even the most routine applications. It never used to be like that. And it seems that scarcely a month goes by without another local authority filing, or threatening to file, notice under section 114 of the Local Government Finance Act 1988, because it has not been able to manage its own finances. Though strangely such failings never seem to be anyone’s fault.
I’m sorry, I missed what you just said?
What about covid?
Amongst the fallout from covid was the biggest change in Britain’s working habits for a generation. I’m talking about working from home. It is something which had already been happening before covid, with the development of electronic systems for remote working and online meeting-platforms like Microsoft Teams. All that the covid lockdowns did was to force the pace. Home working for many professionals has now become the norm. Nothing wrong with that. It means the 2 hours we previously spent each day pushing our way through the morning and evening rush hours, can now be devoted to something productive, like our work. Except it didn’t quite work like that. Covid quickly became the ‘go to’ excuse for any substandard service. ‘It’s covid! Innit!’ Sometimes it just feels that no-one cares any more. Oh Well!
But perhaps you do care about your work. Perhaps you want to be part of an in-house team that does its best for its corporate client and the wider public who pays its salaries. A team that makes the best use of the resources available to it, limited as they may be. The good news is that you are not alone. There are thousands of us out there
Getting Into Management – Your Chance to Make a Difference
Here, we are talking about middle management. You are the captain leading your troop, not the general sitting in your oak-panelled office far away from battle. If you work within a large legal department there will always be management opportunities arising from time to time, many of which may not be permanent. Some of these temporary management opportunities might be planned, such as someone going on maternity leave. Or it could be sudden and unplanned, like the chief executive who fell out of a tree. Yes – it really happened!
Going into management doesn’t just look good on a CV. Leadership is a valuable life skill. It is your opportunity to make a difference. To put your own ideas into effect. To make the changes, which you always wanted to make but never had the seniority to implement. To create the team you want to create. To re-set those client relationships which had previously become soured.
In practice most corporate management is a combination of administration and leadership. But it is down to you, how much time you spend dealing with the administrative chores and how much effort you put into leadership.
In the context of administration, there are the endless staff-appraisals and half-year appraisals; attendance at management team meetings; and recruitment, both temporary and permanent. Management styles vary in how much time is devoted to administrative tasks compared with leadership. But whatever happens, the time is spent dealing with those administrative tasks should not balloon to the exclusion of everything else. And even those administrative tasks can provide opportunities for you to demonstrate good leadership. So what makes a good manager? Here are some suggestions:
- You look, act and sound like a manager. One of the first things which you might notice when you step into management is that it changes the way other people react to you. Not only the staff reporting to you. But other people as well. You are no longer one of the guys. You are the face of authority. It has to be like that, otherwise you would not be able to deal with the difficult things, like managing under-performance. Whether or not your team like you, you have to be able to command their respect.
- You do your best to create an environment in which your staff are able to work efficiently. It is about making sure that they have the best systems within which they do their work and that those systems work as well as they can. Any distractions from productive work are kept to a minimum. Whilst convening staff meetings are an essential part of management, they must be kept to the business in hand. As you are leading the meeting, it is your job to keep discussion focused on the agenda. To brief the team on the things they need to be briefed and to provide an opportunity for constructive feedback. It should not degenerate into a grumble-session or a social chit-chat, more suited to a coffee-break. And try to keep it to the time you have allocated for it. Because all staff-meetings mean that there is less time for staff to do their chargeable-work. So don’t blame them when the monthly figures come in below target. There is no law that says that the meeting scheduled for 2 hours has to last for 2 hours, if you can get through the core business in 30 minutes. Remember that everyone’s time has a value. And remember that every awayday spent out of the office, ‘bonding’ with flipcharts, has a hidden cost above the tea and biscuits and hire of the venue. Can your team really afford to lose a day’s revenue? And here are two little secrets. The first is that some staff love awaydays, particularly if there are quizzes and cake-competitions. But most staff only go along because your senior management has told them to. Wouldn’t they rather be doing their jobs? The second little secret is that when the biggest multi-nationals organise awaydays for their staff, they usually do so over the course of a long weekend. But astonishingly, no one ever complains or demands time in lieu. Why? Would you complain about being given a free all-inclusive weekend at one of the UK’s top golfing-hotels – even if you don’t like golf?
- The focus of your team is always outwards towards service delivery and not inwards towards itself. If your team does not deliver for its clients, what is the point of its existence? Let somebody else do the navel-gazing.
- You take the trouble to know everything that is going on in your team. Like Lord Alan Sugar, you know every nut and bolt in your team’s product. This is not micro-management. It is about being alert to potential problems before they become a crisis. Electronic case-management systems now make it easy for managers to discreetly dip in and out of individual case files, just to make sure that everything is proceeding as it should, and without those difficult face-to-face meetings with your reportees.
- You are clear in your communications with your team so that they know exactly what they are asked to do and that there is no scope for misunderstandings.
- Your clients have confidence that you will look after their interests. Even the grumpiest client. They know that you are on their side. That they can turn to you if they have any concerns and receive a prompt and constructive response. You are their troubleshooter. In fact, one of the first things a new manager has to do is to try to repair those client-relationships which previously had not been quite as good as they should have been. You know what your client’s expectations are. It is for you to make sure that those expectations are being met, so that their work keeps coming through.
- You lead from the front. You know the job well enough to guide individual members of your team who seek practical advice on operational decisions or solutions to problems. You don’t bat questions back with glib put-downs like, ‘have you tried looking it up?’ Unless you go further by pointing to a suggested source of reference. You take responsibility for your team’s performance. You are not like the chief of police who has never seriously walked the streets and defaults into hand-wringing mode whenever there is a major operational failure which they could have prevented. That chief of police would rather let subordinate officers ‘hang out to dry’ than take any personal criticism. It is the management culture which allowed the Rochdale child abuse scandal to happen. In practical terms, leading from the front can mean that you sit with your team instead of in the glass office at the end of the corridor.
- You recognise talent within your team and are able to ‘grow’ individual members of your team. It is not just about having people with the right experience, it is also about recognizing someone’s potential to gain that experience and become a more valuable member of your team. It is about presenting those staff with assignments which will stretch their potential to the limit. One of the advantages of a ‘dip in-dip out’ electronic case management system, is that, like a dual control motor vehicle, you can safely delegate such tasks, knowing that it only takes a moment to take back control if there is a hint that something is about to go wrong.
- You are your team’s ambassador. You provide the interface between clients and individual members of your team. You are the person clients will come to the moment they have concerns about the way your team is dealing with their work. If you’re not able to respond quickly and positively to those client-concerns, they may simply take their work away and outsource. Conversely, a job well done, can lead to more were coming through from that particular client including, possibly, entirely new streams of work. You are also someone who is able to repair client-relationships which may have previously become damaged before you even begun managing the team. So you are someone who takes the time and trouble to talk to your clients and to understand their expectations and future work-requirements as well as explaining to them what legal services your team is able to offer over and above what it is already providing to that client.
- If the bulk of your team’s work is repetitive volume work, take a tip from Henry Ford. Install a conveyor belt. Metaphorically speaking of course. It means breaking down each volume transaction into a series of repetitive tasks spread between a team of fee earners at varying levels. So someone will be responsible for reviewing the instructions, opening up the file, and downloading land registry documentation and other key information, as well as formerly acknowledging those instructions. Someone more senior will review the land-title and identify any issues. Someone will prepare the initial documentation, based on the standard template, and then issue it. An experienced conveyancer will deal with the exchange of contracts and bring the transaction to completion, including preparation of the completion statement. Someone else will deal with the post-completion work, including submission of the land transaction return, where applicable, and registration formalities. Finally, someone will report back formally to the client regarding the transaction, as completed, with any matters which need to be flagged up for the future. And of course, you will allocate a time-slot for each task. Oh! And don’t forget ‘quality control.’
- You do whatever is necessary to ensure, in terms of cost, speed of turnaround, and in the quality of the work, that what your team can deliver matches favourably with anything which the client would receive if they outsourced their work to someone else. In other words, your benchmark should be that of a commercial firm of similar size, expertise and resource.
BRUCE AND HOLLY 