In-House Counsel

The Road Not Taken: Creating Conditions For Success From Within (Part 2)

If you show you can help the business as a whole move projects towards success, you become a valuable team member instead of an obstructionist, and ultimately irrelevant, outsider.

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Last week I discussed creating conditions for success from within in an in-house capacity after reading Turning the Mind Into an Ally (affiliate link) by Sakyong Mipham, a book about mindfulness practice. Mipham begins one chapter with an observation by his golf instructor, who remarked that most of us look to outside conditions for success instead of creating the proper conditions for success from within. I provided a list of five elements that I believe are necessary to create the conditions for success from within in an in-house capacity.

The five elements I identified were:

  1.       Communication
  2.       Known Goals
  3.       Continuity & Laying Groundwork for the Future
  4.       Setting and Meeting Expectations; and
  5.       Tracking and Evaluating Results

Last week, I discussed elements 1 and 2: Communication and Known Goals. This week, I’ll finish out the list.

  1. Continuity and Laying Groundwork for the Future (if everyone in the department lottery pool hits the Powerball, will those who pick up the work know what your intentions were?)

It is a fact of working: we are all visitors to our positions. Some visits are longer than others, but we all leave eventually; whether from job re-assignments, promotions, or leaving organizations. We leave, but the work continues. If we document, communicate, and appropriately preserve the necessary information to allow another colleague to come in and take over the work with minimal frustration, I call that a success. Business continuity is important and non-legal functions frequently maintain business continuity plans for large disruptions in operations. Business continuity for in-house legal work on a micro level is obviously different than a functional macro-business continuity plan, but the structure is similar. If you left, how would the work continue? If you don’t use standard naming conventions for files, how will your colleagues find your documents? How will they figure out your outstanding actions? If your practices make it easier for your colleagues to pick up where you’ve left off, you are putting them in a position to to succeed in transitioning work.

  1. Setting and Meeting Expectations

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If the expectation is impossible, you can never succeed. If the expectation isn’t high enough, meeting it is not a valuable accomplishment. If your expectations diverge from your colleagues’ on any specific project, you will both be disappointed. One will be disappointed in the result and the other will be resentful that his efforts to reach the result are unappreciated. Big dreams may need to to be refined to realistic opportunities. Those difficult conversations need to happen before the end of the project or effort. Moving the goalposts at the end of the game kills credibility and suffocates enthusiasm. Know where you are going as a team so the team can celebrate when everyone gets there.

  1. Tracking and Evaluating Results

When the team gets where it wanted to go, memorialize it. Track it. Record it as a success. Take credit for it and for your part in achieving it. Industry loves metrics to evaluate performance. Tomes have been written on the premise that “if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.”  Law is a tough place to distill metrics, so make your own. Then publicize your success. If you didn’t meet the expectation, figure out why and make a plan to avoid those obstacles in the future. Incorporate the complication of those obstacles in developing future plans and expectations (to make the expectation realistic). When you show you can help a team get what it wants, you show you are useful. When you are useful, you are valuable. Metrics provide a yardstick to measure your value. Nobody wants to be beholden to metrics, but in insecure times, it is better to have evidence on hand than to say, “You can’t measure what I do.” If your organization doesn’t have its own yardstick, create your own.

Much of these criteria for success stem from standard goal-setting criteria, but are here modified for the nature of in-house legal work. Legal departments are easy fodder for internal criticism and resentment. If you show you can help the business as a whole move projects towards success, you become a valuable team member instead of an obstructionist, and ultimately irrelevant, outsider.

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Celeste Harrison Forst has practiced in small and mid-sized firms and is now in-house at a large manufacturing and technology company where she receives daily hugs from her colleagues. You can reach Celeste directly at C.harrisonforst@gmail.com.

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