Clued in

Ira C. Kaplan doesn’t think his law firm is ready for the final verdict.

Kaplan, the managing partner at Benesch, Friedlander, Coplan & Aronoff LLP, has been helping to push the firm toward getting all 300 people to better understand and involve themselves in where the firm is headed. The results are coming along, but the process is continuing.

“We’re not even close to perfect,” he says. “But I think, I hope, we have a handle on how to get better at what we value and people sense we’re moving in the right direction. And I hope that we’re effectively communicating it.”

But while Benesch isn’t a finished product, Kaplan says that the firm’s efforts have been helping to get everyone on the same page, motivating them in their work and in their ability to help the firm succeed.

Smart Business spoke with Kaplan about how to involve the next generation of leadership and why putting an existing vision on paper gives it new life.

Put your plans on paper.
One really important thing is being conscious of effectively communicating with your stake-holders so that they understand where the business is going and they understand how you’re going with them to get there, and they understand what the challenges and opportunities are. Very often, businesses don’t have a vision as to where they’re going, and too often, they don’t effectively communicate it.

We adopted a set of core values at the beginning of this year, and we communicated those to everyone in the firm and have little palm cards that say what our core values are. They are posted on our Web site, they’re in our firm literature, they’re in our lobby, and I carry them around with me and I hand them to clients when I go visit them because it is important for them to understand what our core values are.

So I wouldn’t say that those values are new, but putting them on paper is new, and we’re trying to use that to indicate more clearly how we manage our firm and manage our relationships, both internally and externally. And that helps.