Editor's letter: Defining success

A pop song by Meja captures the challenges facing many law firms today: "It's all about the money… I don't think it's funny to see us fade away. It's all about the money… and I think we got it all wrong anyway."

Most management initiatives these days need to be justified in the context of return on investment (ROI). This is notoriously difficult to measure - how do you financially quantify ?how well partners are collaborating on a project? It is easier to measure the impact of improved business development following attendance of a recent training programme. ?But, there are too many worthy projects and desirable behaviours whose impact is hard to measure in financial terms.

Another difficulty with using ROI as a measure of success is that it can be easily manipulated. Software vendors, keen to demonstrate that their products have resulted in time savings of hundreds of hours, sometimes fail to mention the countless extra hours of work that their new 'streamlined' and 'automated' processes create, in addition to the time required for staff to learn and adapt to the new technology.

Sometimes, shiny new systems are just less effective than those that were around ?a decade ago - but nobody ever sold a new product with that attitude. Vendors tend to ?focus on the top-line figures and functions, while the myriad implementation and time ?usage costs are hidden deep in the footnotes.

So, how can you measure the effectiveness of a new initiative? And how can you ?ensure partners are rewarded for not only bringing in new income but also saving the ?firm sizeable costs by more cautious client take-on, for example? There is no easy ?one-size-fits-all solution unfortunately.

At the end of the day, you will have to decide which metrics are best suited for each initiative, even if that means abandoning any hope of demonstrating a definitive financial ?ROI. And, it should go without saying that your definition of success must be agreed ?with key stakeholders well before a project is launched and funds are put aside to ?develop it - or your firm could face seeing all that money fade away.

Until next time,