Recently I asked expert Coach and Performance adviser, Sarah Platts, Director of Catalyst, for her tips on developing the strategic ability of early-career lawyers. Sarah’s suggestions are universal for professional services firms. These five approaches apply just as well to the development of accountants, business advisors, financial consultants, and corporate in-house teams.

During early years of lawyer development focus is typically on learning and perfecting pin-point technical skills.  As technical credibility grows it is not uncommon to hear as next step development feedback… “you need to be more strategic”. It’s almost a rite of passage!

The reality is, if we think of developing strategic capability as a higher order skill, as a next step in a linear progression, we may be doing development a dis-service. Start early by creating learning opportunities that support the development of strategic capability.  The accumulation of information that combines for a strategic point of view takes time to mature into insight.

FIVE ways to sharpen your strategic skills

Here are five approaches that provide small and regular moments of reflection and stimulus.

1. Engage in industry insights

Taking an interest in, and regularly tracking, industry / sector dynamics (outside of the law) is critical to the understanding of commercial and operational trends and drivers of risk and performance.

2. Follow insights and thinking in other professional services organisations

Go to the same places as the clients for best-of-breed professional services thinking. Understand what they, as fellow service providers, see as news and trends. Understand their service offerings and methods / channels.

3. Client commercial context

Understanding client’s businesses by tracking publicly available information on strategy, performance, competitors.  What parts of their business is performing, what isn’t, and why? Avoid making generalisations as conclusions - be specific.

4. Practice asking questions without pre-supposing an answer and remain curious

An indicator of strategic proficiency is the ability to formulate “show stopping” questions. Questions that no-one has an answer to, but once formulated compels a body of work to fully unravel and design a way forward. In these cases, “the way we have always done it” appears dissatisfying against the size of the opportunity or the challenge and true experimentation and debate follows.

5. Debate and predict

Practice foresight by conducting peer-to-peer discussions triangulating information into market or industry predictions. Create predictive statements supported by external evidence points then determine the business or legal themes that might arise.

Strategic reflection and continual exposure to broad stimulus will give rise to more options or courses of action on matters, diverse client servicing strategies and broader business development opportunities. Those who invest small amounts of time regularly can transfer strategic insight into their everyday approach taking the ‘drum roll’ away from the pressure of ‘big bang’ as the only course of strategic execution.

Sarah Platts is a Director of Catalyst and a specialist in executive performance.  Sarah specialises in facilitating business and people strategy, talent development and performance management. 

© Catalyst. Please respect Catalyst’s copyright and the effort taken to produce the original material in this article. This article, and any portion of it, may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author, Sarah Platts.

This article was first published in the September 2020 issue of CLEAA Talk - the newsletter of the Continuous Legal Education Association of Australasia (CLEAA) and is reprinted with permission.
Sue-Ella is a member of CLEAA’s Executive .