December 08 National Newsletter   Some reflections about practice management or why is my job so busy? Stephen Burke...Learn more

 

  

Some reflections about practice management or why is my job so busy?

At the end of the year it can be refreshing or depressing to stop and think about a year in the life of a practice manager.

How has it gone, is it always so busy, why don’t I have time to stop and think etc.

This article provides a few ideas that may be of assistance in understanding the various forces that are at work in the everyday like of a practice manager and how they can have an impact on your working day.

It’s Busy!

A typical day in the life of a practice manager can include juggling completing tasks, managing the resources, dealing with clients, training new staff, managing expectations down or up as the case may be, overseeing performance management of people and moving on to the next project! There is often a great focus on the operational management systems in these businesses. The downside of this is that there is often little time or inclination to engage in a thoughtful reflection, review and planning for the business.

A key challenge facing most dynamic service organisations now is how to identify and reduce risk within a model of practice management that incorporates features such as professional and managerial autonomy, flexibility and individual professional competences and accountability.

This lack time for reflection, review and strategic planning can then lead to an organisation in which people feel disorganised, unable ever to achieve completion of a project and uncertain about where they're going and how they will get there. This confusion, overload and ambiguity then often mitigate against a long term focus and detract from a business's ( read law firm's) ability to have a “whole of organisation” perspective.

An organisation with no formal set of systems underpinning its operations could find it difficult to engender a positive constructive culture.

Within such a firm senior managers and leaders may find their task of providing direction more difficult than warranted. People employed by the business may also have difficulty in following through local opportunities for improvement and risk management if they do not have the confidence of guidelines or procedures to proceed. Managing the practice suddenly becomes more complex and disintegrated than ever.

Management – What is it?

This begs the question - What exactly is management? A definition of management can cover a wide range of activities, thoughts and ideas.

However one description of management that can be used in the context of the professional services firm (that includes legal practices) is that it is a process that involves the activities of planning and decision making, reviewing, organising, leading and controlling.

Thus practice management would include activities involved with an organisation's people, financial, material or physical assets and the information systems in the business in addition to working with people, preparing, collating and presenting information and making decisions.

The objective of all these activities is to achieve the practice's organisational goals in an efficient and effective manner.

However for technical professionals – such as lawyers, doctors, musicians etc, in a business, the major interest and focus of their work are the technical aspects of their specific areas of knowledge. Interpersonal, financial, marketing and or information skills can often be very daunting to take on and be a distraction.

Operational Challenges

Most practice managers will have to juggle the operational demands on their role as well as keeping an eye on the strategic focus direction of the practice. As a guide there are a number of operational issues that you might have to focus on;

• Process and capacity – how well the practice’s technology works and how well the capacity is utilised (i.e. is everybody busy/is their time well utilised),
• Location – where is the most cost effective location, does the building incorporate good design and are the long term rental payments in line with your business growth plans
• Layout – how well are the workstations and offices sited and does the layout promote teamwork and communication.
• Human Resources – recruiting, retaining, training and remunerating
• Suppliers – staffing agencies, IT vendors and information service providers,
• Scheduling – arranging cover for leave, urgent work, court appearances
• Quality – are customer expectations being met, are the technical specification of the law being satisfied, are the processes efficient and effective?

So now you realize why the job of a practice manager is so busy!

Environmental Pressures

In addition to being aware of the above dimensions of operational management of a practice there are also another set of competing factors at work that come from the external environment . These factors include;

• Flattening the hierarchy (i.e. getting rid of middle management - although in many law firms the problem is that there is little middle management),
• Managing change,
• The introduction and updating of new technology,
• Finding the best organisational design for the business, and
• Dealing with the impact of globalization.

As if that was not enough, there is the overriding responsibility of the firm to ensure that it practices ethically and takes into account a degree of social responsibility.

One way of ensuring that this happens is to commit to a set program of review or practice management meetings, with an established agenda that covers these areas and an action list to ensure that the outcomes of the management process are transparent with accountabilities for their implementation.

Quality Systems

There is now well documented recognition of the fact that external quality systems have a measurable impact on how effectively a business manages its affairs. An external quality system such as ISO9000 or LAW9000 sets out a series of checkpoints or standards covering the range of activities that a practice undertakes in a logical and comprehensive fashion.

These systems require a conscious decision to recognize their advantages, invest in their implementation and to commit to their ongoing presence within the firm’s management processes. LAW9000, with its emphasis on systems, can provide a framework that is applicable to organisations of varying size and complexity to enable them to bring about certainty and consistency in their operations.

The benefits of quality systems including the LAW9000 process are that they focus on achieving consistency across all aspects of the organisation. A key concern of all of these systems is the identification and mitigation of risk. For law firms are specifically aimed in the New South Wales and other insurers depending on local conditions there is also the additional benefit of the PI Discount that is also available – so the benefits are both tangible/quantifiable as well as intangible.

Quality Management Framework Benefits

Earlier surveys undertaken by QL have found that the quality and effectiveness of leadership is a prime determinant of the degree to which quality process and philosophy will be adopted by an organisation.

Quality systems are part of a strategic investment approach to business building with the aim of embedding consistency and good practice into business systems.

Practices that have undertaken the quality process describe it in terms of long term investment with a payback measured in terms of heightened morale driven by empowerment of individuals in their work, competence in the carrying out of their responsibilities and confidence in review and improvement of processes.

Such practices generally report a high degree of engagement by their people with the organisation.

Practices which adopt a quality focus are better equipped to view client relationships within a long term strategic relationship focus rather than one determined by the immediate transaction to hand.

Practices with a culture of quality report less incidence of client “horror stories” where a cluster of omissions, non compliances and/or unmet expectations produces a situation which requires a correspondingly complex analysis and solution.

Need for Consistency

Uncertainty and inconsistency together with their colleagues, ambiguity and ignorance, mitigate against a long term focus and detract from a business's (read law firm's) ability to have a global “whole of organisation” perspective. An organisation with no formal set of systems underpinning its operations could find it difficult to engender a positive constructive culture.

Within such a firm senior managers and leaders may find their task of providing direction more difficult than warranted. People employed by the business may also have difficulty in following through local opportunities for improvement and risk management if they do not have the confidence of guidelines or procedures to follow.

LAW9000, with its emphasis on systems, provides a framework that is applicable to organisations of varying size and complexity to enable them to bring about certainty and consistency in their operations.

Conclusion

So we agree that it’s a busy life, that days can go by and it can be hard to recall any one thing that was achieved or concluded - however you can recall being busy from the time you walk in till the time you log off ( at home having checked your email from home – Naughty!)

Some pointers to being able to recognise what is happening in this role would include the feature of operational management, pressures from the external environment and the benefits that a quality system can bring about in providing a systematic and consistent approach to managing the practice.