Law firm strategic planning has a bad rap. Many firms spend significant time, energy, and resources developing a strategic plan only to see it falter. Often, the reason strategy fails isn’t the plan; it’s the lack of support and management tools needed for implementation, particularly when it comes to the strategy for growing top-line revenue.
Abandoned on a Bookshelf of Good Intentions
To be sure, many law firm strategic plans fail because they are too aspirational, too tactical and fail to truly stake a claim on where the firm will play and how it will win. Yet, even when firms get the strategy piece right, they risk being abandoned on a bookshelf of good intentions because they struggle with one or more of the following:
- Communicating the strategy in a way that engages the entire firm around what is potential and possible.
- Flexing when unanticipated challenges arise (think global pandemic, geopolitical instability, etc.).
- Aligning and measuring returns on investments that cross industries, practices, and markets.
- Measuring and managing short-term revenue growth against a long-term strategy.
- Maintaining momentum over a multi-year effort.
Before abandoning an existing strategic plan or embarking on creating a new one, consider the tools you will need to execute on your plan once you set your strategy.
The Solution: A Strategic Growth Toolkit
To equip firms to activate and accelerate strategic growth, GrowthPlay is advising law firms on how to better execute their strategic vision with a set of strategic growth tools designed to help leaders anticipate and lead through their strategic growth journey. The tools include:
Growth Charter
A growth charter sets the firm’s direction by communicating the strategy and serving as a decision-making framework to help leaders navigate the unanticipated VUCA challenges (volatility, uncertainties, complexities, and ambiguities) that will arise once a plan is launched. Having a Charter allows a firm to be flexible and adjust to changing circumstances while remaining committed to the strategy’s core.
Client Investment Portfolio
A Client Investment Portfolio is a tool that helps firms align revenues with client investments to create consistent and sustainable growth. By managing the firm’s revenues using a classification system that is consistent across industries, offices, and practices, firms can not only improve the way they measure and manage growth, but they can also better align marketing and business development efforts with the firm’s growth strategy.
Activation Blueprint
Functioning as a game plan, the Activation Blueprint puts the firm’s three- or five-year horizon plan into digestible stages and steps so the firm can mobilize as quickly as possible. This tool creates a roadmap for implementing the strategic plan along with critical checkpoints to enable leaders to evaluate and adapt the playbook for success.
Revenue Acceleration Framework©
Strategic growth is not possible without individual business developers armed with skills and confidence in business development. GrowthPlay’s Revenue Acceleration Framework is a proven development methodology that supports the strategic growth implementation by helping individual contributors and teams accelerate success. This type of approach helps build a culture of business development by bringing a shared language, approach and philosophy to the firm.
When and How a Strategic Growth Toolkit Can Help Make Strategy Stick
There are four situations in which the Strategic Growth Toolkit can be especially helpful:
- Strategic Growth Readiness: Firms just getting started on designing a strategy for where to play and how to win.
- Strategy Activation or Refreshing: Firms who have completed a strategic planning process or are looking to refresh an existing plan and need help with implementation.
- Marketing and Business Development Alignment: Marketing and Business Development Leaders looking to better align what they do with the firm’s strategy.
- Building a leadership operating rhythm: For leaders looking for tools to help build buy-in and maintain momentum to improve leadership effectiveness.
These tools create engagement, build buy-in, and help measure and manage growth. Most important, they help firms manage multi-year growth by establishing a leadership cadence to maintain momentum after the shine of a new plan wears off and the hard work begins.
