Effective internal comms: it’s all about outcomes, not just outputs

When you spend over twenty years working in legal marketing as I have, you end up thinking an awful lot about how to harness the power of communication in all its forms to achieve your desired objective, whatever that may be.

With this in mind, in today’s issue of Si’s Matters, I want to talk about the importance of treating internal communication like a three-dimensional process if you really want to effect change. Currently, I think there is often too much focus on just two dimensions, namely inputs and outputs. What is frequently missing is the all-important third dimension: outcomes.?

In a former life, I used to love walking to the office along a route which led me from my home in Highbury through the streets of Islington and down to the Square Mile. During this daily perambulation, I would occasionally amuse myself by pausing to gaze at the ever-changing array of posters prominently displayed in the windows of Islington Council’s Contact Centre. These sought to educate the populace on such important topics as quitting smoking, paying their rent on time and generally being an upstanding and health-conscious citizen.

However, despite often being very eye-catching and well-designed, I had my doubts as to whether these placards actually led anyone to change their behaviour after seeing them. Would someone pay their rent just because they’d read a sign imploring them to do so? Don’t “No ball games” signs become targets for shooting practice??

I also wondered whether the council had any system in place for analysing the outcome of these campaigns (“did we effect change?”), or whether it was all just about input (“we have to educate people on issue X”) and output (“we have designed, printed up and displayed posters about issue X in places where the target audience are likely to see them”).

Too often, I see this same, two-dimensional approach to communication play out within law firms’ internal comms strategy. In many instances, the ambition appears to be centred around the actual act of communication, rather than its intended effects.?

The checklist seems to be, “Did we issue the information that needed to be issued?” (input), and “Did we do so via the appropriate channels, i.e. in the place where the stakeholders are likely to see it?” (output). But what is missing here is an all-important third question: “did any of those stakeholders do anything differently as a result?” (outcome). To my mind, the gap between output and outcome is where comms teams really need to be focusing their energy, rather than on simply generating more inputs.

Here’s the thing: we don’t actually need to ask lawyers to do more things. In fact, we are essentially still asking them to do the very same things as we were 20 years ago: to pick up the phone to their clients. To build and use their internal and external networks. To provide thought-leadership in their field. To embody the firm’s values in their conduct. The music may change, but the dance remains the same.?

So rather than bombarding lawyers ad nauseam with ever more requests to do thing X or thing Y, the approach we need to adopt as marketers is to demonstrate to them the benefits of doing these things. And to guide them through the steps they need to take to feel safe in putting themselves out there in picking up the phone, working a room, posting on social media, or taking the firm up on its new shared parental leave policy. Show and tell, not just tell.

It’s the crucial difference between buy-in and engagement. For example, most every lawyer will already have intellectually bought into the logic that doing more BD will help them build their practice. But what’s really needed to make them take action is emotional engagement and a sense of safety – neither of which marketing teams can ever instil by themselves. This is where the help of the firm’s mavericks and senior management comes into play.?

Mavericks are the people who have blazed their own trail and are already successfully using the BD tools available to them. The marketing team can distil these pioneers’ work into a formalised strategy and thereby make it ‘safe’ in the eyes of the majority, who are the non-mavericks. To make it even safer, what then needs to happen is for the senior management team to publicly celebrate the work of the mavericks, publicise the marketing team’s structured approach, and commit to adopting it themselves. Leadership by example, in other words.

The transformation of a firm takes place when you encourage the behaviour (engagement) rather than merely publicise the policy or strategy (buy-in). Only once senior managers are routinely posting on LinkedIn, or working a four-day week, or taking shared parental leave or winning new business mandates, will these things be rendered safe, legitimate and normalised in the eyes of everyone else in the firm. Now that’s real emotional engagement, and it is worth any amount of intellectual buy-in.

In other news

British Transport Police launches scholarship to atone for past sins

As reported by the Independent last week, the British Transport Police (BTP) has launched a university law scholarship for Black students in collaboration with King’s College London. The ￡75,000 bursary has been set up to make amends for the actions of BTP detective Derek Ridgewell, who framed innocent Black men during the 1970s.

What price record NQ salaries?

Another week, another broadsheet article on the potential pitfalls that come with record-breaking salaries for junior lawyers: this time, the Observer speaks to burnout-prevention coach and friend of TBD Leah Steele about the physical and mental toll of working the brutally long hours demanded by many law firms to justify huge salaries.

The Magic Circle records another bumper year of profits as dealmaking returns

On Sunday, the FT reported that a rebound in M&A work this year has seen some of the City’s leading firms record double-digit increases in profits. This marks a sharp improvement on the preceding year, when profits stalled in the face of a slump in dealmaking.

State-school representation in law firms

Law.Com International ran a feature this week examining which law firms have the most state school-educated lawyers. Of the 39 law firms to disclose their diversity data to Law.com’s researchers, Gowling WLG, Mills & Reeve and Womble Bond Dickinson dominate the top end of the table, but there is still a long way to go.

A bump in barrister numbers – but women and ethnic minorities still lag behind

The Times reported yesterday that barrister numbers are on the increase, with 238 more practitioners donning the wig and gown this year than in 2023 – not a massive increase, but still a healthy growth rate in a profession whose demise the doomsayers have been predicting for decades. According to the Bar Standards Board’s annual report, female representation in the profession follows a similar trajectory to that of solicitors in terms of attrition rate: more than 52% of pupil barristers are women; yet women make up only 41% of the profession as a whole and only 20% of King’s Counsel. Just over 22% of pupils are from ethnic minority backgrounds, compared with 16% of the profession and 10% of silks.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this week’s edition!

Si

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