I've previously posted on delegation and needing clarity on your goals before rushing into pushing your work to other team members.
Here's a follow on tip for partners and practice managers with responsibility for ensuring effective utilisation rates across the team more broadly.
You need to set expectations around effective delegation when the team is quiet, not when it's busy - what tasks do you expect seniors, juniors, paralegals and PAs to perform?
When people are busy, they tend to double down under the stress - doing more, and lacking the headspace to step back and try something new.
"It's quicker if I do it myself"
This is the wrong (worst?) time to try and enact behavioural change.
Conversely, you may see a different dynamic play out when teams are quiet - the billable work will remain stuck at more senior levels with over-utilised Senior Associates hoarding work with juniors twiddling their thumbs (relatively speaking!)
This sows the seeds for bottlenecks for clients and potential burnout for your fee earners.
The seniors don't practice delegation when they have the headspace to do so, and the juniors don't learn how to pick up the tasks.
When the upswing in work comes, the seniors double down doing the work themselves and the juniors get scraps from the table, or drop the ball through lack of practice.
But in this quieter time is your opportunity to reset expectations around delegation and team roles.
If you're managing these dynamics within your practice group, you need to be clear with those more senior fee earners as to what they should be doing, if not billable work.
If your seniors are shooting for a hefty billable hours bonus this year, and there aren't enough hours going round for all to achieve this, then you don't have a team working together, you have a group of individuals competing with one another.
The goals and incentives drive the behaviour - these are better set up front when the team is quiet, not when the team is busy.
What do you think? Join the conversation on LinkedIn
Comments