Are you in an innovation rut?

Recently, I went to see The Founder starring Michael Keaton. The movie tells the story of Ray Kroc, so-called ‘founder’ of McDonald’s. The amazing part of the story is that Ray almost went bankrupt in the early days. The thing that saved him was one simple innovative idea – to invest in real estate and buy the land on which each McDonald’s restaurant sat.

Innovation can take legal service providers from struggling traditional practices to successful global market leaders. Look at Axiom and other disruptors in our market.

There are many barriers to creating an innovation environment in legal firms. These include:

• Lack of vision and strategy – many firms do not have a documented vision or a strategy on how to achieve their vision.
• Complacency – many firms don’t think that they need to think about the future and the changes that are happening in the industry as long as the cash still rolls through the door.
• Lack of skills – many firms are missing key management skills due to the way they are resourced.
• Structural issues – many firms do not have structures to support innovation. In fact, most legal firm structures still harbour traditional ‘silo’ management and limited sharing of ideas across departments. Treasure troves of individual precedents and workflows are examples.
• Routine - staff are expected to keep on doing things the way they have always done them. Timesheets and time billing are a good example of this.
• Performance management systems – most firms still reward staff based on chargeable hours and fees billed. This acts as a disincentive to be innovative and experimental.

Creating an innovation environment is extremely difficult but here are some tips that you might want to consider:

• Create a practical and achievable vision for the firm;
• Do an audit of the management skills that you are missing and work out a plan for bringing those skills into the firm either by employing the right people or getting third parties to assist you;
• Make sure that you have a strong experienced leader who is not just a ‘yes’ person but who can make the changes in the firm that are necessary;
• Consider restructuring the firm to stimulate sharing of ideas and cooperation;
• Appoint someone to be your Chief Innovation Officer;
• Review your performance management and incentive systems to support the new culture you are trying to achieve;
• Eradicate any fear that staff may have in speaking up with fresh ideas. No matter how far out of the box an idea is give it appropriate consideration.
• Introduce good internal communication systems and celebrate wins as they occur.
• Keep abreast of who your competitors are and what they are doing.
• Remove any obstacles to experimentation. Encouragement your staff to have a go at doing things differently. Continual improvements should be seen to be happening in the firm all the time.

Most of all, dare to be different!