| Teaching Your Team to Miss Deadlines |
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By Ronda Muir A busy litigation partner is once again asking her associate why his work is not in on time. "I wanted to get this brief out yesterday; I've spent the last two weeks asking and pushing and it still isn't ready; now it won't go out until tomorrow, at the earliest, which is unacceptable." This partner, let us call her Barbara, is highly organized, produces a massive amount of work and religiously checks everything before it goes out to make sure it is up to her standards. Her work pace can get frenetic and seems only to be spiraling higher. She desperately needs for her associates to produce good work on time, which will make her more productive and therefore more valuable to the firm and also ease her personal anxiety quotient. Does she realize she is teaching her team to miss deadlines? Beware the logic trap. The logic behind what Barbara does is unassailable. That is why lawyers, logical creatures that they are, often fall prey to this trap. If I want something done on time, and I am not sure the person will get it done, I can improve the odds by checking on the person regularly and inching up the due date, just in case. Then I will have time to redo everything, if necessary, and still get it out on a reasonable timetable. I might even get the work out a day or two early. The goal, of course, is unassailable. We all want to produce quality work within an appropriate time frame. And the above strategy may be reasonable if you are dealing with someone for the first time and do not expect to work with him again. The problem lies in getting the people on your regular team to efficiently and reliably do their part over and over again, without you having to double-team every word or race around chaotically the day before delivery. Barbara is smart and organized. Why is she at the end of her rope? She is at the end of her rope because she has taught her associates to miss deadlines. She has taught them that i) the deadlines she gives are not real, so that even when the deadline rolls around there will be time to improve the product, ii) she, not the associate, is the one responsible for making sure that the associate’s work progresses at an acceptable pace, so he does not have to pace himself because she will inform him if he is off-track, or better yet, just catch the project up herself, and iii) whatever the associate produces, she is likely to redo, so it is not worth his spending a lot of time and effort on what he hands in to her anyway. The result is a partner who suffers through all-nighters rewriting every page, who loudly excoriates the incompetence and laziness of young associates, and who then gives out another assignment bound for the next round of disappointment and reprisal. None of which improves either the blood pressure or work product of the team involved. What to do? The following guidelines can help you teach your team to meet instead of miss deadlines. Clarify everyone's expectations. In order to do that, you must know what YOU expect and also listen to the associate’s expectations. The exact scope of the work-- who it is for and what their interests are, how long you expect the finished work product to be, how much time you think it should take, which references you think should be consulted, and whatever other relevant information you want considered-- should all be included in the assignment with clear instructions to the associate to come back if there are questions or unanticipated problems. The emphasis should be on empowering the associate to do whatever it takes to get the assignment completed as best as he is able within the designated timeframe and to encourage "checking in" with you periodically to assess direction and timing. Start by giving practice deadlines. This is an absolutely critical step. The key here is to clearly identify the deadline as a "false" one: "Although I'm hoping to send this out next Friday, let's set the prior Monday as the due day to see how we work together on this." Structure a formal “where we are” meeting. This meeting should be one that you, the supervising attorney, insist on and should be scheduled about one-quarter to one-third through the time frame. If the associate is given a week to complete the project, make this date for two days after giving the assignment. While you are the one doing the scheduling, let the associate run this meeting—his or her comments and questions should tell you a lot about the state of the project. Be open to hearing that the associate would like to make changes to your project. Allow the associate to think out of your box. This can be one of the hardest things to ask of yourself, but despite your high regard for your own work, this is how you will develop real thinkers in the next generation of firm leaders. You want fresh, thoughtful viewpoints, even if on first blush they seem ridiculous. Be open to hearing that your project will take more time. Remember, this is an area where you want an absolutely honest assessment so that you can be spared the last-minute Chinese fire drill. When you are in a panic staring at the finish line, you will be sorry that you put your hands over your ears the week before when the associate was warning you of just this possibility. Assume that the associate’s assessment of time is right. You have to guard against all the arguments that will come flooding to mind as to why what your associate is telling you is not true. You may simply want the project to take less time or you may have based your expectations on a different take on the scope of work. You may be the sort that likes short horizons, living for the adrenaline rush that only kicks in when the deadline comes within view, while he may require a paced schedule with time for multiple rewrites. Or this associate may just take longer than you or some other lawyer would take to do the same work. It is almost axiomatic that he is coming at this with much less experience than you or others have, so there is likely to be additional time required for learning. But the associate may not have good judgment as to how much time he needs, you say. He is, after all, less experienced in that area, as well. For these initial learning purposes, once you have clarified that you both agree on what is to be done, give him the benefit of the doubt by using his time frame. You can judge how well he uses that time later, when he is more adept at this process. The important point to remember is that you want him to produce a product that you will not have to redo. Once the associate understands that, respect the way he gets there. Help your associate get the time or support he needs. Once the associate’s opinion of the time frame is clear, do what needs to be done to give him the time he says he needs to deliver the product you want—arrange for his other work to be offloaded or delayed, explore the possibility of adding other lawyers or support staff to keep the project on schedule, or determine whether a different time frame for sending out the project is possible or whether it can be delivered in separate pieces on several dates. Drop the rose-colored glasses. One of the persistent problems in meeting team time frames is often the supervising attorney’s, not the associate’s, delusions about what can be done. Learn to allocate time in your and your associate’s scheduling for other matters that you know will have to be attended to, for those out-of-the-blue emergencies on someone else’s matters and for the inevitable complications on this one. Do not over-use bunker-style engagement as the primary method for dealing with a lot of work. It is unlikely that you will clear your backlog this weekend or any other weekend, for that matter, by sleeping in the office for a couple of nights. Unless you change the way you process your workload day-to-day, once the weekend is over, matters will likely to continue to take more time than you expect, and unanticipated out-of-left-field glitches will once again arise. Same goes for your associate. Spending the week chained to his desk may indeed move this particular project forward, but it does not develop any skills in how to do the next project and the project after that more efficiently. Resist the impulse to do a minute-by-minute heartbeat check. Letting go is hard to do, but that is exactly what you have to do in order to give your associate a real-life learning experience. There is nothing that will impair your associate’s performance faster than showing that it is really you and not them who is tracking this project and therefore it is you and not them responsible for its on-time delivery. The more frequently you show up to check on him, the more quickly and gladly the associate will consider himself off the hook. Hold tightly to the practice deadline. Accord it the same sanctity that you accord client deadlines, and allot sufficient time to review the product in a meaningful way so that the associate can make changes before a second practice deadline, or the real deadline. Honestly evaluate the end product. Once a project is handed in, whether for an interim check or a final evaluation, provide specific feedback on all aspects of the work. Oddly enough, this is where many lawyers run off the tracks. Who knew that we are such a sensitive bunch we cannot spit out the bad news? The culprit in our thinking is more often that it would be easier to redo a project than to articulate to someone else exactly how to do it “your” way. This is when you really have to take the time to spell out each concern—training has its time-intensive moments and this is one of them. Distinguish between style and substance. Differences in style are not the same as deficiencies in advice. Many types of legal work product have a defined style—interrogatories, depositions, briefs. Some have less strict styles, like an interoffice memo. Make the hard call as to whether the integrity of the project is compromised by differences in style and be open-minded about the inquiry. Might the client find this style more refreshing or even more comprehensible than the one usually used? If you are not certain, consider asking another lawyer, particularly one involved on the project, to give you or the associate feedback. Do not let the associate off the hook until the work is in the condition you require. Having made the plug for open-mindedness, I would now exhort you to not accept inferior work. Keep sending it back until you have the product you want with the substantive issues addressed properly. There is no better way to convey what is being asked of the associate than to keep pressing until you are satisfied. If for some reason you do find that, up against a wall, you have had to redo a project yourself, make sure the associate knows with great specificity exactly what was done and why and also that you do not expect to redo the product next time. Give another assignment and another assignment and another assignment using the same procedures. Same drill: clearly state what you expect, make clear this is a false deadline, get the associate's input, and see the project through to the end. As the delivery gets more efficient, you will have learned valuable information about working with this associate. Finish by making sure your deadlines are real. Once you are on the same end-product page, it is absolutely imperative that you make your deadlines real. That is, that you send the product out on the date you specified. If not, you have a lot of explaining to do. This is the obligation of the supervising attorney, and not one that you can blame on others. It is one thing for the client to change the date that THEY want a product; it is an entirely different matter if you have made your team jump through hoops when they did not have to. Do not say to your associate that you will finish up all the stray ends of all the other projects you are working on and also send out this big matter this weekend, so he has to have his part done by Friday, when the likelihood is much greater that it will not go out until Monday at the earliest. Set reasonable deadlines and not "wouldn't it be nice" deadlines. To do otherwise is to wreak substantial havoc on your team, with nasty repercussions for a long time to come. No professional is going to go the extra mile on what is billed as a time-sensitive project once they see that your deadlines are only wishful thinking. You may enjoy the charge of adrenaline in the home stretch but you will alienate able workers who do not. Resist the Rescuer Mentality. For those of you who cannot bear to see an associate suffer (and there are some of those out there, as unlikely as that might seem), try not to swoop in at your associate’s low point and rescue him from his assignment. Going up in flames instead of handing in something resembling decent work product is a possibility. Let it happen. That is why you have a practice deadline. Once it becomes apparent to the associate that he is so far off-track, he will learn that much more quickly and better what he needs to do to get back on. Believe. The weight of psychological research makes it clear that your beliefs and those of your associate can dramatically influence what he can do and how well he does it. Do not forget to tell him that you are confident he can accomplish this project and then really believe it. Say it out loud. Believing was not enough to make the fairies appear for Wendy in the children’s classic Peter Pan -- she also had to say it out loud and clap hard. Believing is not enough in your situation either. You have to say out loud, clearly, what you and your associate are trying to accomplish each step along the way and that you are certain of success. You can forego the clapping. In our age of video/audio saturation, think of it as a running voice-over to the visuals. “Our goal is to develop a working relationship where we can produce a product together that is satisfactory to both of us by a specified deadline. It is critical to me and the firm that our client product be of the highest quality and that deadlines be met. I am confident that you can do this and do it well. In order to learn how we work together, I’m going to give you an assignment using a practice deadline. I’ll tell you everything I’m expecting the finished product to contain. I would like to hear how you expect to do the work and how much time you think it will take. I also want any suggestions you might have for improving the product or making the process more efficient. This first assignment is for Client X, a long-term client that wants practical responses.” Etc. It obviously does not have the pizzazz of dialogue from Sex, Lies and Videotape or the book-on-tape version of Get Shorty, but it is still a critically important story for you to tell. Over and over again until they have learned how to meet deadlines. ------------ Ronda Muir is a Consultant with Robin Rolfe Resources , Inc. Drawing from a broad background in law, psychology and conflict resolution, Ronda is able to offer business-savvy, psychologically sophisticated evaluations of, and real-world solutions to, the personal dynamics issues that are unique to law firms and law departments. |