I’ve been re-reading Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs. I know there are criticisms of the book, but Isaacson is a good writer/storyteller. I realized Jobs engineered a return of Apple to dominance by doing two things really well. He forced the organization to make decisions quickly without endless debate.Second, the organization was decentralized. There weren’t silos or profit centers. These attributes let Apple get ahead even though it made mistakes along the way.
Of course, Apple was able to do these things because Jobs forced the whole organization to work together for the good of the whole organization. He had a vision for the organization—to make high qualitative usable products—that he and Apple relentlessly adhered to.
I thought about these characteristics and how they play out in law firms as I listened to many of the Intapp conference presentations last week. Intapp describes itself as a connected firm management solution designed for partner led professional services firms. The conference title was Connect20, and one of the central themes was how law firms could use the data they have to make better decisions. A big chunk of time was spent talking about law firm silos. And how firms could manage themselves better if all the data in all the silos were collected and then analyzed
No doubt this is true. But given the obvious truth of this, why is it so hard to implement. Why are silos so hard to break down and collaboration among partners for the common good so hard to implement?
Law firms and lawyers have some peculiarities that cause many partners to not enthusiastically adopt the collaboration to break down silos. That prevents firms from using data effectively. To overcome this, law firm leaders must have a core driving vision