As a lawyer, you may have people who work for you and who work with you. In our industry, these team members are often thought of as “cost centers” or “production centers”—not as people.
But this view actually undersells the value your employees and coworkers can bring to your firm.
Yes, balancing the costs and productivity of your “human capital” may fit easily into a spreadsheet, but that math ignores potential. The unseen value of your staff is a large reserve waiting to be tapped. Leaving that resource untouched makes your employees check out, lose confidence and interest in their job, and ultimately make your clients suffer. In an age of worker empowerment, that’s an existential crisis for your practice.
So what sources of team member value might you uncover? And how can you take full advantage of those hidden resources in an empowering and thoughtful way?
Here are five sources of value that each person brings which often go unutilized:
Original idea value
Brainstorm value
Knowledge value
Experience value
Network value
Let’s talk about each of these sources of value and how you can maximize them for the benefit of your firm and clients.
Original Idea Value
As feel-good football coach Ted Lasso once said, “Every person is a different person.” That manifests in the workplace as new ideas and unique ways of thinking.
The person in the desk next to you has a singular brain and methods for solving problems. These mental shortcuts are called “heuristics.” The greater the variety of heuristics you have on your team, the better.
To tap into your coworker’s unique way of thinking, you need to foster an environment where they will actually bring their ideas to the table. Sometimes even if someone has a good idea, they may not feel comfortable speaking up about it. Consider what barriers to sharing you can tear down. Employees should feel empowered to share ideas even about things outside their direct responsibility.
Business power structures can sometimes instill a “stay in your lane” myopia, but a culture of experimentation is better for innovation than a culture of efficiency. See if you can define a place and time where your coworkers feel invited to offer their own ideas born of their unique mental heuristics.
Brainstorm Value
Ideation improves simply by having someone else in the room to ask exploratory questions. By involving team members in healthy brainstorming, you can improve your own ideas.
In design thinking, the “five whys” help hone ideas. This refers to the habit of asking “why” five times in response to a new idea. That repeated scrutiny can uncover the root cause of a problem. A team member can guide you through the five whys to help improve your brainstorming. As you explain your thinking, you actually improve your thinking.
Knowledge Value
Your team members possess actual knowledge that is different from what’s in your head. Their training and personal interests have given them access to skills and information that you can add to your firm’s service offerings.
A classic example of this knowledge diversity is technology. As schools and colleges improve their technology training, younger employees often learn about tools that you may never have used before. Avoid assuming that every younger employee is a “digital native” who can act as underqualified IT support, but do a real inventory of your team members’ technology skills.
As author Neil Gaiman says, his best ideas often come from confluence: combining two disparate ideas together. By tapping into the unique knowledge of the person next to you, not only do you gain their knowledge, your creative problem-solving improves exponentially as more combinations present themselves.
Experience Value
Mental heuristics have to do with how someone thinks, but perspective also changes with each person. Your team members each have unique experiences that help them tackle problems from different directions than you might on your own.
Talking to your coworkers or employees about their first job or entry-level work can give you a clue about their hidden experience. Maybe they worked in the service industry and could contribute some great ideas on designing the firm’s processes; or they might have been a legal buyer before and have helpful views about the experience.
Even someone who worked at McDonald’s or filled out a DMV form online can share a useful perspective on service design. It’s tempting to dismiss those common experiences, but your team’s perspectives each add opportunities for improving the client experience.
Network Value
Finally, every one of your team members knows somebody. They inhabit large networks filled with even more unique perspectives and heuristics. Think of the power contained in that network.
Obviously, these social networks can be useful for finding clients. Referrals among people with loose social ties are common. Make sure that each team member feels comfortable sharing information about the firm by predefining appropriate language. You don’t want employees making promises for the firm that push up against ethics prohibitions, so create approved scripts and canned responses. This will allow employees to share your firm’s offerings.
But don’t stop there. Every social network includes people with skills that could help you serve clients. Maybe your firm could incorporate the services of a financial advisor or therapist—don’t just look through the phone book! Tap your employees’ personal network to source skills you don’t possess.
Recognizing your team members’ many ways of contributing value will strengthen your firm. This is a practical strength of diversity and an idea-inclusive culture. Fostering this culture includes building interdisciplinary teams, creating networks, and finding different ways to pull knowledge into your firm from outside. But right now, you’ve got someone who works right next to you that you are perhaps undervaluing and underutilizing.
Finding these hidden values is not only an untapped resource for your firm, it’s good for your employees’ well-being too. It will keep them engaged in their work, which is often heavy emotional labor. Incorporating them in one or more of these ways will increase their engagement. They will feel like they don’t just have a seat at the table, they have a voice as well.
It’s not only the right thing to do, it’s a good business decision.
