Many law firms fail to address the real barriers to performance

Lawyers often ask for training because they think it is what they need to improve their performance. Unfortunately, their proposed solution is often wrong because they are working from the incorrect assumption that training equals better performance.

The most that you can say is that training increases potential, but this is certainly no guarantee of improved performance. Training is such a fundamental part of common culture and thinking in the workplace that people do not realise the fallacy of their assumption.

Instead, start by considering what lawyers really want, which is to achieve key performance metrics. Talk about the performance gap they want to close and what behaviours need to change to close that gap. Most people who are asking for training have not thought through in any detail what they want that training to achieve. They will be unable to describe in detail the behaviours that are needed to close the performance gap and how to recognise them when they are occurring.

What does good look like? How does that differ from what is happening currently? What do the more successful employees do differently?

Barriers to behaviours

When you have agreed on the required behaviours the lawyer wants to achieve,
you can start by exploring the barriers.
These are typically:

1. lack of knowledge;

2. lack of skill;

3. lack of motivation or wrong attitude;

4. physical challenges; and

5. environmental barriers

Notice that the first four points above are related to the competence of the person doing the job (the performer). Point five is related to the 'competence' of the environment, or the stage on which people are performing. You need both the performer and the stage to be competent before you can deliver good performance.

A good tool to delve into these barriers is the Ishikawa cause-effect diagram (see Figure 1). The effect being investigated is
the behaviour gap. Use this twice: once for the possible causes relating to the performer and then again for causes that arise from factors in the environment.

FIGURE 1: ISHIKAWA CAUSE-EFFECT DIAGRAM

Many times, the barrier lies within the environment surrounding the performer, perhaps related to the system, procedures, technology, resources, management or organisational culture. Yet, even when it is an environmental barrier, we still often blame the performer and decide they need fixing. This encourages the notion that training is the solution.

When you have a list of the barriers, you can start addressing them. There are usually environmental barriers to performance that are simple and quick to fix - they are the quick wins. This might be a simple change of procedure or better access to records and files.

So much of the environment that surrounds someone doing a job is the result of the efforts of their manager. The quality of the management service they receive is almost always a factor in performance. Unfortunately, many managers try to sidestep this responsibility by blaming the team member and sending them off for training.

If the primary barrier is a lack of knowledge, then training may well be the answer, but a better and cheaper solution could be on-the-job performance support, especially if the knowledge is required infrequently or is changing regularly.

Different approaches

It is often better to put knowledge into the environment than try to train it into people. Streamline and simplify processes rather than try to train people to adhere to complex ones. When the real barriers to performance become visible, people will let go of their initial knee-jerk training requests and ask for what they really need.

Paul Matthews is the founder of People Alchemy (www.peoplealchemy.co.uk) and author of Informal Learning at Work and Capability at Work.