I run a global legal team of 20 lawyers and am really struggling with how to apply the Feedback Model to poor quality work product.
I have been a MT listener for about 8 months now and am working my way through the podcasts on my daily commute to work, but this is my first post.
I am a huge fan and thank Mark & Mike for all the time and effort they put in to give us the benefit of their knowledge and experience. Thanks also to everyone who posts on the forum.
To give some context, my lawyers are responsible for reviewing, commenting on, drafting and negotiating complex contracts that vary in value from €200m to €3bn.
I understand that the Feedback Model is all about encouraging effective behaviours in the future (not about past behaviours) and must only focus on behaviours (which I understand includes work product).
Here is my dilemna - what do I do when I review a contract (during a gate review) that has been produced by one of my team and the quality is poor (content and/or form)? In these circumstances, I have two primary goals - (i) the immediate priority is to bring the quality of the contract up to an acceptable standard before we sign it; and (ii) improve the performance of my direct for the future?
I can give feedback along the lines of "when you submit a contract to me that is of a poor quality, it creates more work for me, which takes me away from other important tasks; it delays the process for finalising the contract; it puts into doubt how much autonomy you can be given etc etc, what can you do differently?", but this does not seem to address either of my two goals.
I would really appreciate anyone's thoughts.
Kind regards
David
Contracts and Poor Quality
"Poor Quality" is a judgment you have made about the contract. What specific errors/shortcomings in the contract lead you to this conclusion?
Provide feedback on specific behaviors, "When you improperly cite a decision here's what happens..."
Rolling Out the Trinity
David,
Welcome to the Boards! Glad you've found MT.
Before you give feedback, I'd have to ask if you have good relationships with your team. Are you doing One-on-Ones? Have you checked out the four-part cast on Rolling Out the Management Trinity? If you haven't been doing One-on-Ones and building those relationships, I'd hold off on the feedback for now. The time will come for it soon enough.
Assuming you've got the solid relationships, I think you can address your second goal (improve performance) by encouraging effective behavior towards producing quality work (that is, quality up to acceptable standards). Freeborn's right on: "quality of the contract" and "acceptable standards" are slippery. Do you have metrics you and your team use to measure quality and dictate what is acceptable?
Also, try to keep the feedback short and concise. Let's say that you have a metric about the number of typographical errors in a contract ("no more than two typographical errors per page"***). Feedback might look something like, "Can I give you some feedback? They say "Boy, oh boy, I'd love you to!" "When you submit a contract that has five typos per page, our clients notice and draw conclusions about our attention to detail. Can you do that differently?" They say "Yes" and it all took under 10 seconds.
- BJ
*** By the way, if you don't have good metrics, check out these casts for more information.
I've actually done this....
David-
Yep, I've actually given feedback to lawyers on contracts. Go figure.
The earlier comment is right - you want to drill down when you give feedback. In the same way that you wouldn't give feedback that a meeting was "great" , you don't want to give overall feedback on a contract (unless you're doing so at the end of a detailed feedback session. [And I wouldn't even do it then, because it would just be a downer, I think.]
What you do is set up a review session with the lawyer to go over the contract. They've submitted it, you've read it, you've noted it for necessary revisions and additions, etc. And now you have a (half hour, hour?) phone or in person session where you're going to go over their work for their next draft. [For you non-lawyers, this is pretty standard stuff, multiple revisions of documents by lawyers, back and forth between their managers and partners to get it right.]
This is also a situation where we recommend the use of the never before published GLOBAL STEP ONE, where you only say CIGYSF? one time at the start of the session. [PLEASE, folks, don't overuse this. It's not as common as you want it to be, and it only lasts for one meeting/session!] Then, for the rest of the session, all of your feedback is just steps 2, 3, and 4.
When you write this like this, with the introductory clause HERE, it leaves open the question of who assumes the risk in the event of failure. Would you rewrite that please?
When you don't define the steps clearly here, we run the risk of having to negotiate when we'll both be at risk. Please take another shot at that.
When you put this comma here, it suggests that there might be multiple events, when this contract is written for just one.
AND PLEASE, if you want them to get better, don't rewrite it for them - have them just repeat drafting until there are no errors. They'll get better because they're having to write, and they'll hate having to re-do stuff.
Hope that helps!
Also I think it is important
Also I think it is important to look at the ratio of adjusting feedback to affirming feedback, around 1 adjusting to 9 affirming seems to be the accepted norm. If you are being specific about the feedback I am sure there are some good quality stuff you can affirm.
I have been doing my best to give regular feedback for about a year and have not given much adjusting feedback at all. I am not sure if I have great folks or if I am not critical enough but hey I am happy with the performace of my team.
4751
Thanks & Follow-Up Qs
Thanks freeborn, BJ, PBeaney and especially Mark for your great feedback. It always amazes me how Mark & Mike find the time to respond to so many posts on the forum.
I realised that my original post didn't make clear that we are an internal legal department in a global engineering organisation. Not sure it really makes a difference, but maybe it gives you a clearer picture.
BJ, I have been doing weekly One on Ones with my team for the last 4 months and can confirm that it has had a really positive impact, both in terms of relationships but also on freeing up time. No surprises there, heh!!
Great comment regarding drilling down the feedback. I was having difficulty trying to reconcile the concept of feedback being quick (10 seconds) / like breathing and the fact that specific feedback in this context cannot be quick. Mark's post has identified for me that this is really a specific category of feedback, requiring a slightly modified process (Maybe a podcast on feedback in a professional services environment?).
Again, I was also having difficulty with how to roll out the feedback model with only affirming feedback for up to 6 weeks, when I cannot allow poor quality contracts to go by for that long. Again, I now can see that I need to treat this slightly differently from other behavioural feedback. I have to say, though, that I have struggled with this principle anyway as I am eager for performance improvements and have difficulty letting ineffective behaviour go by (perhaps that the perfectionist lawyer in me ...).
Mark's actionable guidance with specific examples (the MT trademark) is very helpful.
However, I now have some related follow-up questions - Given the time-critical nature of this work and the potentially significant consequences to our business' bottom line of poor quality contracts, what do I do if:
- the direct says "no" to the Global Step 1 (I cannot simply let the feedback "go" ); or
- the direct starts to debate the specific feedback (the "shot across the bow" approach does not appear appropriate); or
- the direct agrees to go away and redraft the contract as per the feedback, but again does a poor job?
Thanks again. I really appreciate everyone's thoughts.
David