Taking the Time to Make Time
“I wish I had more time for my family, friends, interests.”
“I know business development is important but work is so busy I struggle to find time to do it.”
“I know I should give associates more feedback but it’s hard to find the time.”
“I should exercise more, but it’s so hard to fit in to my schedule.”
“I know I can be curt with people when I’m under pressure. I feel like I have more options and as a result I’m calmer.”
“I struggle to complete assignments on time and as a result the work product isn’t where I believe it should be. I feel like I budget enough time, but often I need more than I thought - or something urgent comes up."
Many of the challenges faced by the lawyers I work with comeback to one thing: time/project management. This isn’t at all surprising – time is infinite, but next week there are 168 hours, so it is a scarce resource. To be able to balance competing demands of life and work, of our many projects, of the urgent and the important, and to do the things big and small that make us successful means that we need to be able to manage time—exceptionally. Time/project management are the foundational skills for success. Sure, you can survive without great time/project management skills—play whack-a-mole daily—and get pretty far. But at some point it catches up with you. You don’t take time to develop business, you don't exercise, you get a reputation for being grumpy, unreliable, not invested in developing your practice and on and on.
I believe time/project management skills are less a lawyer development focus than they should be. Most firms provide some programming for attorneys – but not often enough and insufficiently tailored to the actual needs of individual lawyers. Time/project management skills should be a central part of development programs for mid- and senior-associates, new partners, new leaders and partners with rapidly expanding practices. Each brings with it challenges that require a lawyer to develop new skills. And a portion of this should be 1-on-1 support—success requires adapting general principles to an individual’s strengths, practice and team. (Yes, coaching is part of the solution – but so is better equipping partners to support the development of project management skills in others).
Related, no matter what the issue or challenge presented when working with an attorney, I explore their approach to time/project management. If they struggle with it and we don’t work on it, it is unlikely that they will be able to successfully address the issue that brought them to coaching (BD for example). This is something I recommend to partners frequently – no point, for example, giving writing pointers if really the challenge is that they didn’t leave themselves enough time.
Taking the time to make time can be a challenge but is possible – and makes so many things easier and better.
