Change and Transformation

Culture, by standard definitions, is “how we do things around here”. It is essential for how the workplace is experienced, for attracting and retaining talent, for learning and adapting to changing requirements. The challenge is to understand a firm’s culture and to develop it further, so it becomes a driver for achieving one’s strategic objectives. Analyzing a firm’s culture with tried and tested scientific methods across those dimensions that have a measurable impact on business perfomance we provide you with the necessary insight to devise change and transformation programmes that matter.

With clients facing major disruptions, driven by economic, ecological and societal crises, corresponding regulatory pressure and challenges to their license to operate, their legal advisors need to think through their own wider contribution to business and society too. Uniting your firm behind a common purpose is essential to inspire partners and teams and embed constant change and transformation in deeper, more long-term meaning. The good news: every firm does have a purpose. We help you uncover and frame it in a way that your team not only understands what you do, but also why.

In today’s knowledge society, brain workers strive to develop, grow and shine, be it in day-to-day work or in a strategic initiative. Leadership provides the framework, orientation and security for individuals and teams to live up to their own aspirations and do their very best. However, few firms have leadership principles and practices in place that allow them to consistently manage employee engagement, performance and satisfaction. We help law firms establish comprehensive leadership frameworks, and coach leaders to systematically improve their teams’ culture, productivity and profitability.

Change and transformation are constant. And yet, in these turbulent times, change and transformation fatigue is just as constant too. “Tried that, didn’t work. Why would it this time?” That’s the question any change leader faces. Understanding the need for change on an analytical and factual level is one thing, embracing it emotionally, changing one’s own mindset and behaviour is another. Successful change and transformation programmes address both levels in one comprehensive approach. We design a bespoke change architecture and process for your strategic initiative and help you follow through on what you set out to achieve. The probability of “making it this time” goes up significantly.

Often mixed up with change management or, worse, being considered a repair shop for lack thereof, proper communication significantly raises the probability of successful change and transformation management. Inspiring change leadership very much depends on the leaders’ ability to communicate. We help crafting a compelling case for change and transformation narrative and help you design and implement communication programmes that ensure buy-in and embracing the change.

Do you seek to make more transformational changes to the legal function, such as set a long-term roadmap with bigger, structural moves? It can involve implementing large-scale business self-service capabilities or wide-range automation to streamline and speed up processes and workflows or rolling out systematic embedment of legal know-how and GRC into business operations and IT systems. We can help you set targets and step-plan roadmap, can help you implement and can support your initiatives with our substantive change management expertise.

Mergers and large reorganisations offer an opportunity to zoom out and revisit organisational design and operating model, seeking out synergies in costs and operational efficiency. How can strengths be leveraged, overlaps be eliminated and other opportunities be seized? In setting a new operating model you need to move beyond the people dimension and also look into how processes and ways of working can be improved, more tech be implemented and new external partnering options can be used. We help you set your target operating model and build the roadmap to get there.

The future is digital. What tech initiatives will your legal function drive, or team up with others on, to support the company in being where it sets out to be in the next 3-5 years? What will you automate, what business enablement will you build, how will you package and distribute legal know-how or embed GRC into IT systems? How will you contribute with business intelligence in the legal space and what insights on efficiency, productivity and spend will you need to capture to be able to optimize and develop our function? We help you set your vision, your targets and your step-plan roadmap, and help you identify and build the capabilities you need to get there.

When you set out to implement big change, you need to get people onboard the change journey. People must embrace new mindsets and approaches, and let go of some of the old ways and assumptions in the process. There is a need to develop team culture and reward new behaviours and ways of thinking, such as continuous learning and development, constant improvement mindset and innovation. Our change management expertise can support you in your change initiatives and we can help build the right capabilities and mindsets in your team through our training and team workshops.