This week I have been thinking about and discussing career development. When we start our professional lives a career path looks quite linear and straightforward; as our careers progress this road starts to look more nuanced. Most of us initially aspire to be a head of practice, a partner, a general counsel or equivalent, and these are all laudable ambitions which many of us achieve. We want to be recognised and rewarded and climbing the, sometimes slippery, pole of management and title looks the obvious way to do this and achieve recognition and reward.

What is perhaps less appreciated is that as professionals there are legitimate alternative or parallel paths to a rewarding working life. I say this admittedly with the perspective of having been fortunate and privileged enough to have done many of these things.  However, I think that the lesson I have learned and seen in others is that before, after and even during leadership roles professional work has its own rewards which are independent of formal positions in any organisation. This is because the tasks which we do – negotiating a complex multi-million pound outsourcing agreement, acting on a major corporate deal, or carrying out a complex medical procedure – require immense skill and care and often leadership of a different kind as you work with clients and fellow professionals around you to achieve a common goal.

In order to appreciate this subtlety of professional life it helps to have an open mindset, being ready to consider alternative routes to creating a filling and rewarding working life. See Carol Dweck’s great book Mindset: Changing The Way You think To Fulfil Your Potential in which she extols the virtue of being open to new ideas. She describes the opposite, a fixed mindset, as "Believing that your qualities are carved in stone—the fixed mindset— creates an urgency to prove yourself over and over."

In reality everyone is at times a leader. Even traditional leadership styles, with a linear relationship between bosses and workers,  are evolving into a more flexible approach. Established top down hierarchical management systems no longer always works. There is a move towards more fluid structures utilising networks. See this article Beyond Leadership by Matthias Molleney who says work and workplaces are undergoing fundamental changes enabled by  digitisation but going deeper observing “Less visible, but just as important are the new structures and processes being created that require a new under- standing of leadership. Traditional management methods rely heavily on clear reporting lines and the physical presence of the managers and the managed. Modern organizations, however, are saying farewell to hierarchical structures and are instead relying on agile networks.” He cites an approach by Patrick Cowden a former CEO of Dell Germany who in his book Neustart advocates focusing on people not tools and processes. “His solution is based on the idea that people achieve more together if they are not working next to each other or with each other, but instead FOR one another, if they feel connected to each other, and if they are committed to jointly agreed goals. The traditional power struggles and jealously guarded fiefdoms within an organization do not stand a chance if participants are connected with each other. Cowden calls it ‘the power of connect’.”

In this context we are all networked leaders to some degree and can contribute richly to any work or project and have a fulfilling role without being formally nominated and selected as “the boss”. See this Forbes article We’re All Leaders Here which explains “Why encouraging a leadership culture will become the new standard in employee experience.” and proposes “embedding a culture of leadership throughout [an] organisation” commenting that the “lesson starts with empowering employees to lead within their area of responsibility by optimizing, re-designing, and adapting as needed. When employees have this freedom, organizations are more agile, customer-centric, and resilient. Perhaps more importantly, it  lays the ground for the next evolution of the employee experience, which is centered on worker agency and innovation.” 

It is against this backdrop that having the, albeit entirely laudable ambition, to be the boss or take the next step up the management chain is not the only way to achieve a rich and fulfilling life as a professional. Indeed there is an argument that it gets in the way. I remember the senior partner of a law firm I worked for bemoaning the fact that his role prevented as much contact as he would have liked with his clients. He like others I have worked with and for as a lawyer in private practice and industry, returned to a fulfilling life doing client centred work after his time as senior partner ended.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not advocating a world without leaders: I have worked for and been inspired by a number of leaders in my career and hopefully at times have inspired others. I just think  that being the “nominated” leader in any professional practice is not the be all and end all of career aspirations. We can have rewarding and productive professional working lives influencing and doing, and leading and learning in our own right and context, without having to be in the C-Suite.

The American author John C Maxwell said “Everyone is a leader because everyone influences someone.”

And the author Robin S. Sharma once commented “Leadership is not about a title or a designation. It's about impact, influence, and inspiration. Impact involves getting results, influence is about spreading the passion you have for your work, and you have to inspire your team-mates and customers”.

While the philosopher and writer Lao Tzu said “A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves.”
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Professional working life is, as with most of life, about getting the most out of every day and every work opportunity - whether or not you are the designated leader.
 

This week I had an important personal appointment about ten minutes’ drive away. It was at a location on an industrial estate I had not visited before so I determined to leave plenty of time for the journey. I got in my car and drove down our local road – only to have a tyre pressure warning light come on after about a minute. I stopped to discover I had a puncture and the tyre was virtually flat! After a moment of panic, I realised there were alternatives. I limped home and organised an Uber. I got to the appointment on time, only to discover as I sat in the reception that my mobile phone had fallen out of my pocket in the Uber! Not really my day. However, I managed with the help of my son to contact the Uber driver who kindly returned the phone to the gate office on the industrial estate where my appointment was. I also then managed to get my car to limp to a tyre repair garage who could replace the tyre, albeit the next day.

My point here is not so much as to record my personal travails, but to recognise that some crises are inevitable in our personal or professional working lives, no matter how hard we try to avoid them. I think it helps in the heat of the moment to get your work or personal crisis in perspective. I was reading on the news this week how 20,000 people are being evacuated from the northern Canadian town of Yellowknife because of an approaching wildfire. That is really a serious crisis. If push came to shove I could always have rearranged my appointment which, while inconvenient, was not like losing your home and your town. 

Crisis is defined by the Oxford Learner Dictionaries as “a time of great danger, difficulty or doubt when problems must be solved or important decisions must be made.” While this guide Business continuity and crisis management defines a business crisis as “an event, or a series of events, that causes major disturbance for a business. A crisis typically occurs suddenly and poses intense difficulty or danger for the business, usually in a situation where time is short and decisions have to be taken quickly.” It concludes “The process of managing and dealing with crises is known as crisis management. It involves dealing with threats before, during, and after they have occurred, focusing on minimising the damage and enabling the business to recover quickly.”

You tend to know a crisis when you see it. In my working life the breaking up of a law firm in which I was an equity partner is probably the most intense I can recall. It brought together potential business and personal concerns which were eventually resolved but not without considerable difficulty and complication.

It helps to concentrate on how to remedy the crisis, not panic because it has happened. And no matter how prepared you are with a disaster plan (see my blog in June Have a Panic Room), these events always take you by surprise. See this Forbes article 5 Steps To Help You Respond To Crises At Work which make some sensible recommendations including:

• “Take a deep breath, and remember that you are paid to handle challenges
• Gather and synthesize the information you have on the crisis.
• Engage stakeholders and subject matter experts to help inform your response.”
  

And concludes “Make a decision on the crisis, or provide educated recommendations to leadership to make a decision.” It discusses involving others like your manager which is sensible observing that “When you are faced with a challenge, collaboration is crucial.” However, if you are the manager then sharing the situation with peers and your direct reports almost always helps. My son helped in my personal crisis.

See also this Stanford Graduate School of Business article Responding to Crisis: A Spotlight on Your Organizationwhich points out the opportunities provided by a crisis commencing “Rather than be derailed by crises, seize the opportunity to articulate what you stand for — at a time when everyone is listening.” It quotes its professor Steven Callander who says “A single crisis under the glare of the spotlight is more effective at getting your message out about who you are and what your organization stands for than a hundred meetings or a thousand speeches.”

While this blog The importance of responding to a crisis says there are three key elements speed, accuracy and consistency observing “Responding quickly and effectively enables your organisation to control the narrative around the incident.”

I also found this perceptive Harvard Business Review article Are You Leading Through the Crisis … or Managing the Response? which as the title suggests draws a distinction between leading and managing through a crisis saying “Crises, replete with both complexity and change, require executives to both lead and manage effectively.” And cites leadership traps including taking a narrow view “The human brain is programmed to narrow its focus in the face of a threat. It’s an evolutionary survival mechanism designed for self-protection. The trap is that your field of vision becomes restricted to the immediate foreground. It says “Leading through a crisis requires taking the long view, as opposed to managing the present.” Observing “that crises are most often over-managed and under-led.”

See these great quotes about coping with a crisis.

"Crises are part of life. Everybody has to face them, and it doesn't make any difference what the crisis is." Jack Nicklaus.

"The most fortunate of us all in our journey through life frequently meet with calamities and misfortunes which greatly afflict us. To fortify our minds against the attacks of these calamities and misfortunes should be one of the principal studies and endeavors of our lives." Thomas Jefferson.
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"Crises and deadlocks when they occur have at least this advantage, that they force us to think." Jawaharlal Nehru.

As technology shifts the boundaries for professional practice from AI enhanced law to robotic medicine it is no longer enough to be a proficient professional. We need to be seen as adding value to our clients and patients. 

I was standing on Cobham station in Surrey a few years ago waiting for a train when I overheard two fellow commuters discussing a deal they were involved with. One asked how their lawyers were getting along. His companion replied with words to the effect that “both sets of lawyers were argumentative and obstructive to the point where they were jeopardising the deal. So, they put them in a separate room to discuss wording and dot the "i's" and cross the "t's" whilst the real negotiations took place in another room.”

John Harvey-Jones who was chairman of ICI in the 1980's once remarked that he wanted his lawyers “on the fast track” with him when he was doing a deal. That way they understood what was happening and could contribute much more effectively and could also bring their skill and experience to the structure of the transaction, not just be a glorified scribe translating the ideas of others into suitably watertight wording, with some occasional legal advice thrown in for good measure.

It is absolutely pointless being the greatest lawyer or accountant or business consultant if nobody has the chance to hear your views - or does not want to. It is to my mind imperative that you get on the fast track with the senior executives in the business you are advising. Providing your input through some form of intermediary is just not the same. You need to be a trusted business adviser in the (right) room with a seat at the table or on the Teams or Zoom calls where the decisions are made.

Here is an interesting Law Society article on the topic How the in-house legal team can add value including:
“know your CEO
To understand what the business values, look to the top and find out what your chief executive officer (CEO) values
understand risk appetite
99 per cent right may be wrong in private practice, but 10 per cent right may be enough in-house if the business is prepared to accept 90 per cent risk, or just needs a steer to get to the next stage in a hurry
take time to chat to your commercial colleagues
Regular coffees with key people are important so you can understand their pressures and drivers.”

See this excellent Forbes article How Does The Legal Function Demonstrate Value To Business? which commences 
“The legal function is being reimagined to align with the needs of digital companies and their customers.” 
observes 
“To achieve customer satisfaction in the digital age, the legal function must understand its customers’ challenges and be part of their solution.  This requires law to adopt a business mindset to meet the legal function’s expanded remit.” 
and concludes 
“The legal function cannot prove its value to business unless it aligns with it. That means partnering with other corporate functions and focusing on customers— how best to anticipate and meet their fast-changing needs and expectations.”

I also like this Thomson Reuters article  How does a lawyer’s business understanding add value for clients? which commences “Clients most often cite their lawyers' ability to understand their business as the number one way that law firms can increase their value in clients' eyes” and goes on to propose ways to achieve this including:
“1. Admitting what you don’t know
……lawyers are not comfortable admitting they don’t already know something.
2. Spending the time to build relationships
…… partners are rarely incentivized to spend time off the clock learning a client’s business, even when their firm cites this as a top priority.”

Interestingly this approach whilst of course vital to in house functions is pretty important if not more so for private practices. See above and this Lexis Nexis article 5 ways law firms can add value to their clients which says 
“These days, it is not enough for lawyers to handle clients’ instructions in a professional, timely, and cost-efficient manner. The market for legal services is extremely competitive and clients are increasingly looking for firms that go the extra mile by investing in providing ‘added-value’ services, usually free-of-charge.”

and proposes a number of ways to achieve this including sending lawyers on secondment, facilitating industry networking groups and producing thought leadership reports.

Industry networking is a great way to find out how colleagues in different companies and firms are getting on and how they address problems and opportunities. I am a former chair and fellow of the Society for Computers and Law (SCL)and a past chair of the ITechLaw in house committee. I have found these great ways to see beyond my firm or company and gain an understanding of what others are doing and how they add value. 

See also this comprehensive list from the Association of Corporate Counsel 51 Practical Ways for Law Firms to Add Value which includes, by way of example, engaging a third party consultant to carry out an in-depth client survey.

While I have focused here a bit on lawyers, the profession I am in and understand the most, adding value is pivotal for all professions including commercial, HR, financial advisers, medicine and business consultants. We need more than ever before to move up the value chain, and I suggest right away, or we risk becoming at least partially redundant as AI and robotics advance apace.

As Henry Ford pithily said “If it doesn’t add value, it’s waste.”

While Albert Einstein observed “Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.”
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And Warren Buffett commented “Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.”

During the Second World War there was a phone in the Cabinet War Rooms in Whitehall that Winston Churchill used to speak to the US President Franklin D. Roosevelt on key issues. It was located in a small cupboard that was made to look like a toilet for Winston Churchill to preserve its secrecy! They mainly communicated via encrypted telegrams but on occasion they needed to speak in person. The phone line used top secret American Technology called SIGSALY – see this article Churchill’s top secret line to the President. “It was a system that digitised the human voice, mixed this with a randomly generated noise and then sent the combined signal via radio waves across the Atlantic. Once received, the random noise was separated from the digital voice signal, which was then converted back into recognisable human voice using a vocoder.” The UK terminal was installed in a sub sub-basement of Selfridge’s department store in central London with an extension to the War Rooms and became operational in July 1943. Allegedly neither leader wanted to be seen as initiating the call so their aides would open the call and then get them both on at the same time. This may have been true, but SIGSALY in fact relied on “perfect synchronisation at both ends of the chain.” This way they were able to resolve critical issues and manage the United States involvement in the war.  “Churchill and Roosevelt developed both a positive working relationship as well as a real friendship during the war. They occasionally had differences of opinion, and there were some causes of tension between the senior political and military leadership of both countries, but they were still able to work together and to eventually triumph against their shared enemies. The existence of a cutting-edge technological link within easy reach of both leaders underlines how valuable – and valued – this alliance was.”

There is, despite the vast changes in communications technology from the 1940’s to the present day, still an uncanny link to current professional practice. When you can’t meet in person sometimes a phone call is needed to “cut to the chase” and resolve an issue. This week, for example, I acquired a complex and urgent matter that needed immediate resolution with a third party suppler. It was hard to work out exactly what had happened from the email chain. Nevertheless, I tried to email but to no avail; so I simply picked up my mobile phone and called up - and agreed a way forward. Last year I helped to close a particularly difficult matter with a phone call to the lawyer on the other side – who was travelling and on holiday but still helped resolve the final issues. Internally you can use a Teams call (not just Teams messaging) for the same purpose.

See this blog The Importance of Telephone Communication in Business which comments:

“Telephone communication may be slower than its new-media counterparts, but it still has benefits in an increasingly impersonal world. The telephone call, which connects a caller with a human voice, creates a connection that other media may lack and is still an important business component.”

And observes:

“On the telephone, the tone you use gives dimension and emotion to words, increasing the effectiveness of the communication. Certain body language, such as smiling and standing while talking, may come through in the conversation. Texting and emails are simply words open to interpretation by the receiver, without the benefit of voice tone or body language.”

See also this blog which says “A pleasant phone conversation with a company representative increases the likelihood of a consumer developing a positive relationship with your brand.”
and cites a US survey 60% of Customers Prefer to Call Small Businesses on the Phone.

While this article The Importance of Telephone Communication cites benefits including Rapid Results and Convenient Communication -  “Telecommunications workers don’t just use their words to communicate, they also use their tone of voice. This can make the difference between misunderstanding and reassurance, helping the customer to make a connection with the person, and with the company they represent.   Phone conversations also allow for small talk and follow-ups that email chains don’t, helping a rapport to build.”

 This Harvard Business Review article Research: Type Less, Talk More supports the theme. It  commences  “because communication also involves maintaining social relationships that are critical for our happiness, health, and the smooth running of a business, reaching out to others requires deciding how best to do so. And in this regard, the value of voice is key.” and cites the results of experiments which show that “A sense of connection does not seem to come from being able see another person but rather from hearing another person’s voice. This is consistent with several other findings suggesting that a person’s voice is really the signal that creates understanding and connection.”and “Being able to see another person, in short, did not make people feel any more connected than if they simply talked with them. A sense of connection does not seem to come from being able see another person but rather from hearing another person’s voice.”

See also this Forbes article The Power Of A Phone Call which says “A phone call is the most intimate form of connection a person can have with a brand, and it remains one of the most effective ways businesses can break through the noise to attract, engage and support customers. Human interaction cannot be mirrored with emails, SMS/texts or “live” chat bots.”

It is going to be hard even for artificial intelligence (AI) to quite mimic the richness and tone of a phone call between two human beings. Some will say texting is the answer as it is immediate and can convey information and mood. But for really critical conversations especially in a business context I advocate remembering the humble phone call.

Returning to Winston Churchill he said that “The difference between mere management and leadership is communication.”

And the American author and speaker Simon Sinek commented “Emails get reactions. Phone calls start conversations.”

While Richard Branson shrewdly observes “The quality of business communications has become poorer in recent years as people avoid phone calls and face-to-face meetings, I can only assume, in some misguided quest for efficiency.”
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So, over the next few days look for opportunities to “pick up the phone”.