Legal
A little less conversation
How to stop talking and start doing to move your business forward
By Kristy J. O'Hara
Smart Business Dallas | March 2008
Steve Good
partner, Gardere Wynne Sewell LLP
Growing up in Little Rock,
Ark., Steve Good worked for the city’s weed control
group, where he was charged
with removing weeds from
vacant lots. But while others on
the team used tractors to do the
work, he was the kid who got
stuck with the hand cutter. The
strenuous work helped shape
Good’s life, as he learned he’d better get an education and find
a job better than cutting weeds
all summer in 100-degree heat.
Today, Good is managing partner
of Gardere Wynne Sewell LLP,
a $175 million law firm. And
instead of cutting weeds, he’s
trying to stay out of the ones
that many leaders get caught up
in when trying to implement
their strategies.
Smart Business spoke with
Good about what you can do to move your business forward and what "fat smokers"
have to do with achieving your
goals.
Create a plan. Leadership can’t
be, ‘What do you all want, and
that’s our plan.’ You have to
have some direction and
spend some time and effort
figuring out where’s the best
place to be going.
You have the analytical side
of it -- what are the business
opportunities? You’re trying to
identify where the opportunities are, not only within the
legal industry, but what are
our clients doing? What are
their needs? What are our
resources and skill sets, and
how do we respond to that?
We try to identify that through
a strategic planning process.
Then solicit input and feedback and say, ‘Here’s what we
think we ought to be doing,’ and
identify the solutions and let
people be a part of that process.
Get people excited. You have to
have a core vision that you’re
going to move toward, and the
consensus-building is around
the edges. Convince them it’s a
good idea.
You’ve got to convince them,
at the end of the day, it’s in the
best interest of the firm, and
it’s going to have a positive
impact on them individually, as
well. When they see it’s going
to have some positive benefit,
they’re going to get excited
about it. If it’s something you
say, ‘Here’s what you have to
do because we sort of proposed it from on high,’ people
don’t get very energized and
aren’t going to do a very good
job with it.
Get people involved. Once you
have an overall picture, we
have practice group leaders
implement it through our practice groups. They’re trying to
figure out, ‘OK, here are the
big-picture goals we’re trying to accomplish, what can they do
to attempt to accomplish some
of those overall goals?’ Identify
the problems, and more importantly, identify the solutions.
At the end of the day, they’re
the ones that are going to
accomplish, or not, the solutions. If they don’t have that
commitment to it, it’s just a
strategic plan that somebody
puts on a piece of paper, and it
sits in a drawer, and three
years from now, you look at it.
In marketing, for example, if
you don’t have some idea what
you’re trying to do, it’s impossible to decide what direction
you want to take on an advertising campaign.
What’s it going to say if you
don’t know what you’re doing?
‘We’re good lawyers, we work
hard, whatever.’ If you say, ‘Here are four industries we’re
focused on,’ you can come up
with a message targeted to
that industry. It gives you
something to focus on.
Take action. I’ve started to read
a book by David Maister,
‘Strategy and the Fat Smoker.’
You know what the problem is -- i.e. a fat smoker. I know I’m
fat and smoke, and I also know
how to fix it -- I can quit smoking, exercise and eat less, so
why is it that we have a country that’s full of fat smokers?
That’s true of any organizational leadership issue.
The ones that are successful
are the ones that don’t just
identify the issues but are
proactive in actually doing.
You have to say, ‘OK, let’s stop talking about it and go do it.’
Your second meeting, someone ought to come back and
say, ‘Well, here’s what I got
done.’ If your second meeting
is, ‘Let’s revise our plan,’ you’re
not getting things done.
You’re not going to have perfect information. Make a decision, move, see if it works. If it
doesn’t, modify it in the hopes
that it will work, but you have
to make the decision and
move on and not look back.
You can’t second-guess.
You’re not going to get them
all right. Learn from it, but you
can’t wallow in it.
Take a long-term, disciplined
approach. Get yourself out of
the day to day, and focus on
what’s important strategically.
It’s too easy to get lost in the bushes and lost in the weeds.
We all know what the problems are, and we all know
what the solutions are, generally. Have the discipline to
invest time in those types of
issues. It’s just every day doing
a little more in those particular
areas. It’s like interest on a
bond -- it compounds.
Do a little bit every day. If
you’re looking for a home run,
you’ll never get there. You’re
never going to lose 50 pounds
at once. You’ll lose it one ounce
at a time, so if I can lose an
ounce a day, at the end of the
year, I’ll have actually accomplished something.
Have the discipline to do a
little bit toward your goal every
day instead of trying to hit
home runs.
HOW TO REACH: Gardere Wynne Sewell LLP, (214) 999-3000 or
www.gardere.com
