Welcome to The One Minute Manager. Our goal is to provide you with quick tips that will enhance the success of your practice. Within 60 seconds you will gain an idea that will increase your profitability or simply ease the burden of a difficult management issue. We hope you will find this a valuable resource.

The One Minute Manager . . . . .

Motivating, engaging, and developing a committed workplace for lawyers and staff should be management's top priority. What flows from this environment is attentive client service, high productivity and quality work. This in turn ensures marketplace success, which leads to economic success.

Many law firms adopt the motivational tools based upon A.H. Maslow's motivational theory of meeting higher order needs. This results in staff parties to support social needs, offices furnishings to support status, and professional development to support self- actualization. However, repeatedly giving the same reward often diminishes the impact on motivation. People are only motivated by what they are seeking.

Although you must do your motivation housekeeping by the above measures, you should recognize that law firms are different. A law firm is a high pressure and tense workplace staffed by high achievers. Lawyers are mostly motivated by achievement - a drive to overcome challenge, advance and grow. In fact, lawyers enjoy the pace and the demands of the work, and become dissatisfied in "country club" settings.

Dr. Judith Bardwick, the author of Danger in the Comfort Zone, may be a better study for motivating your lawyers. Her controversial theory is that a certain amount of tension will raise employees to higher levels of achievement. A law firm that fails to push the limits of their lawyers - to keep them within their comfort zone - stunts the growth of the individuals and hurts the law firm.

A partner faced with poor work should deal with the issues. Often the partner simply excludes the lawyer from future work rather than disturb the comfort zone. Such an approach is de-motivating and damages the lawyer's career. Tactful skills in constructive criticism can turn the event into supportive motivation.

"The best organizations are not always kind. Instead, they create conditions of productive insecurity that allows individuals to soar and organizations to succeed." Judith Bardwick, In Praise of Good Business