Motivating through visibility

Most firms have targets such as billing, cash collection and chargeable time. By setting the correct targets and giving everyone visibility of progress against these targets, you can help ensure everyone is focused on those things that are truly important and helping everyone feel part of the firm.

In many firms achievements against these targets are printed out and circulated at the end of the month. Often these are in the form of tables of figures and take some time to arrive with the lawyers responsible. Where a target has not been achieved there is nothing the lawyer can do about it (in that month) - instead they need to try and recover the situation in the next month.

However, if there was some way of showing progress for the current month, then lawyers could see they need to take action and actually do something about it. For example if they have a billing target and they can see what they have billed to date in this month they know they have to raise bills.

At asb law everyone now has their own personal target and progress against those targets presented to them each day on their own Intranet Home Page. If any element is not as expected, they can click on the chart or figure and drill down into the detail. Presentation in a graphical form as well as numbers has also had a big impact for some - the old saying "a picture is worth a thousand words" is true here. Some staff have found the graphical presentation has really helped them understand and has been a major motivational factor.

It has also been important to closely link the new graphs and information with clear training and messages about what the targets are and why they are important. The whole process has brought out the more "hidden" areas such as the need to get bills paid in a timely manner or the lost "opportunity" cost of unbilled chargeable time. In addition, the daily update means that where time was "missed" it now gets entered as it is immediately obvious the next day - making it realistic to enter the missing records - something that sometimes did not get done on the previous monthly reports.

However, setting the targets and showing progress against those targets is not the whole story. Lawyers may know they are down against their target but they need help to find out what to "do" about it. For example, say they recognise that their Work In Progress is too high - how are they going to find which matters they should bill? By providing enquiries where a lawyer see all his matters - showing highest WIP first - makes it easy to identify matters which need to be billed.

Other targets need different approaches - one common target is to ensure that all chargeable time is billed - however time is often not billed as the original estimate was overrun but the lawyer didn't spot this until it came to raising the bill! At this point the conversation with the client can be somewhat "difficult" - not surprisingly some lawyers hate this and do anything to avoid it (including not booking the chargeable time!). By providing an early warning system that the estimate is being exceeded the lawyer can raise the point with the client before the estimate is overrun - providing real choices as to what to do.

Thus closely associated with the targets there are a series of early warning systems and tools which help the lawyer to achieve their targets and be automatically reminded of "administrative" elements of the work which are not so "legally" important but are critical drivers in making the firm profitable.

So the keys here have been:

• Easy access to your own targets and achievement against target.
  
  
• Daily Update.
  
  
• Training to reinforce what the targets mean and why they are important.
  
  
• The ability to "drill down" into the detail
  
  
• Tools to allow you to find the matters / bills / clients which need your attention to achieve your targets.
  
  
• Pro-active system warnings of situations that may need your attention to achieve your targets.