How to manage your organization with transparency
Smart Business Atlanta | August 2008
Sonny Morris
Co-founder and senior partner, Morris, Manning & Martin LLP
Not paying people what
they’re worth can have negative consequences on your
company. Just ask Sonny
Morris.
Morris recalls the example of
a friend, who thought he was
underpaid at the law firm where
he was working and deserved
double his current salary. So
the friend asked Morris — co-founder and senior partner at
Morris, Manning & Martin LLP
— what he thought, and Morris
agreed the man was underpaid.
So the man approached his
law firm about the matter —
and its leaders agreed with
Morris. Then they offered to
double his salary. And then he
resigned.
“If he had not gone and complained, he’d have been under-paid, and they didn’t care,”
Morris says. “It didn’t bother
them that they were underpaying him and, thus, overpaying
others, and that’s unfair.”
Pay equity is just one thing
that Morris feels is important
to successfully running his
$103 million, full-service
commercial law firm.
Smart Business spoke with
Morris about why it’s important
to pay people fairly and why
he makes employee salaries
transparent to everyone.
Be transparent. Making sure
everybody has all the same
information makes it easier to
lead the organization. I don’t see
how you lead an organization
where everybody doesn’t have
all the facts. You can’t solve a
problem unless people understand what the issues are.
The vast majority of law firms
are not transparent. For example, there will be four or five
partners at the top that control
all the financial information and
will know what everybody
makes, and nobody else will
know. Here, everyone knows
what everybody makes and
why, so that people believe the
compensation system is fair,
they trust it, and they believe
that what they’re being paid is
appropriate for the amount of
contribution they’re making.
You may think you’re entitled to
X and only got Y, and somebody
ought to be able to explain it to
you in a way that’s satisfactory.
It helps retain your employees,
and we value long-term employment and relationships. We
don’t have a lot of turnover.
Turnover is expensive.
Know your clients. Work at understanding what the client is trying to achieve in their business.
What are their goals and objectives? We want to understand
their legal needs as part of their
overall business goals and
objectives. Not only do we
address the specific problem
but we try to do that in the context of how does it fit into their
overall business plan.
Go to their offices and spend
time in their offices, which
you’re not billing for, and figure out if there is anything that
can enhance their business.
Learn what are the key central
metrics in their business. What
are the five or six things that
have to go right for them to be a
success? All businesses have
certain key elements that have
to come together in order for
them to be successful.
Generally, the more you understand the business, the better
able you are to be helpful. You
can’t be focused on the money.
If you do a good job, the money
will flow. If you can help a business grow, then you will have a
good client, and a good client
will stay with you for years.
