BarTalk February 2004
Volume 16, Number 1

How to magically transform your practice

By David J Bilinsky

You got some power in your corner now
Some heavy ammunition in your camp
You got some punch, pizazz, yahoo and how
See all you gotta do is rub that lamp...

Music by Alan Menken
Lyrics by Howard Ashman
Sung by Robin (“The Genie”) Williams

As we all know from another passing of our latest New Year’s resolutions, desiring change is one thing; effectively implementing it is entirely another. Yet there is a whole area of study devoted to implementing change – that can take us from setting a vision to evaluation of results. Whether we are implementing a new accounting system, a new marketing program, even a new way of recording billable time – there are tried and true ways of maximizing our chances of success. Let us look at ways to get the genie out of the bottle and working for you:

Vision: Stephen Covey advises “Begin with the end in mind.” In our context, this means having a clear vision of what your practice looks like with all aspects of the change fully implemented. Often the most important part to be played by a leader in any change situation is communicating the vision of the benefits of the change for the organization and thereby assisting people to achieve their own sense of the role that they play in the overall picture and how they stand to benefit.

Champion: Every successful change project needs a champion who magically steers the project around dangerous shoals and rough waters and who watches out for the interests of the project at all times. This role is perhaps the most important of all – securing an advocate with top-level support for the project to ensure its ultimate success.

Integration and influences: Be sure to consider how your desired change fits within the overall mission of your practice. Is your desired change central to how you carry on business? Or is it more peripheral? Is it transformational or incremental? This helps determine the scope and impact of your proposed change. What other influences will your practice be subject to during the change?

SWOT: Undertake a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) to provide you with an analysis of your current situation and how your proposed change will be impacted, both positively and negatively, by these.

Goals: Write down the specific goals of your plan. Outline how the change helps meet the mission of your practice and how it will take advantage of opportunities and ward off threats. Anticipate how to guard against weaknesses. Goals should be SMARTER:

• Specific (e.g., increase our construction client base by 30 per cent);

• Measurable (you have the means to determine actual progress);

• Acceptable (those involved with execution find the goals acceptable);

• Realistic (those involved with execution agree that the goals are achievable within the established time frame);

• Time frame (the goals have a realistic time frame for completion);

• Extending (goal achievement should allow those involved to extend their skills); and

• Rewarding (there is some reward for success).

Strategies: Strategies are specific, concrete steps to be taken to reach your goals. Often, the most creative part of any change implementation is coming up with creative strategies to encourage the desired behaviours (and discourage passive-aggressive and sabotaging behaviours). The Internet can be a great source for innovative strategies for specific situations.

Objectives: It is said that if you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there. Every successful change project requires measurable, achievable objectives that allow everyone to assess progress towards your goals. Furthermore, objectives should have associated timelines that not only determine what must be achieved but also by when.

Resources: Ensure that all required resources are identified and commitments are secured for their provision (i.e., budgets are established, human resources requirements are secured, etc.)

Assign Responsibility: Objectives are not usually achieved without the assignment of personal responsibility together with a procedure in place that regularly reviews each person’s progress toward his or her objectives. Deadlines are important to ensure that all parts of the plan progress to the ultimate objective. Goal attainment should be formally acknowledged i.e., ‘sign-off’ should be part of the process. Vitally important and related to the assignment of responsibility is involving the right people. Assigning responsibility to someone who may engage in passive-aggressive behaviours for the purposes of undercutting an objective may result in the ultimate failure of the project.

Communicate: Your written plan document should be distributed to all persons who are stakeholders in the process. This ensures that there are no misunderstandings and that parties can see their role in the overall scheme.

Completion: It is important that you formally declare that your objectives have been met and that your goal(s) have been obtained. This ensures that all parties realize that you have met your objectives and that the desired change was achieved.

Celebrate: Often, the efforts and hardships that persons have undergone to achieve success are never recognized or rewarded. By celebrating success, you take the opportunity to formally thank all those who dug in and helped the project and you positively reinforce that your practice rewards extra effort. Missing this step can breed apathy and scepticism – which in turn can negatively impact your next project.

Evaluate: Look back at the entire planning process and evaluate what you have learned. Write this down to ensure that you have captured the accumulated knowledge of the process and your organization’s learning that occurred as a result of going through the process. This allows you to approach your next change project a little wiser than you were before.

While Aladdin may have rubbed lamps, today we can fall back on the genie of knowledge to grant us the power to achieve the changes that we desire in our practices.

David J Bilinsky is the Practice Management Advisor at the Law Society of British Columbia. He can be reached on the Internet at dbilinsky@lsbc.org. The views expressed herein are strictly those of the author and may not be shared by the Law Society of British Columbia.

This article originally appeared in the February 2004 issue of BarTalk and is reproduced here with permission of both the author and the Canadian Bar Association, British Columbia Branch.