Last year, I invited attorneys to submit questions for an interview I was conducting with Michael Gerber, the author of a number of books on entrepreneurship including the best selling Awakening the Entrepreneur Within and The E-Myth Revisited. For more than 40 years, he has been teaching business owners who possess significant technical skills but few business skills how to transform their companies into world-class organizations.

I fielded about 40 questions and was amazed at the number of those that dealt with personnel issues.  Not just finding good people, but training them and keeping them motivated.  This is something that bedevils a lot of businesses, not just law firms.

First, hire good people.  You can’t fix stupid, so don’t hire it.  Sure, we have all made hiring mistakes — people who interview great but their rubber never meets the road.  Learn from those mistakes and put together a process for hiring that ensures you get the best possible people.

Get rid of the weak links.  Bad employees kill the motivation in good ones.  As soon as you discover you have a rotten apple, toss it.

Give them freedom.  Good people hate being micro-managed, so as soon as they have proven themselves, give your employees the freedom to do their jobs.  If they have a great idea for doing something different than the way you’ve always done it, listen.  If it makes sense, run with it.  Incentivize them for ways to cut costs and serve clients better.

Make it easy.  The actual work we do is not easy, and neither is yours.  So why make it more difficult for your folks by having outdated systems or processes?  There are so many great automated tools out there to make the work process go more smoothly; invest in as many as you can and you will reap the benefits in a better work product from your people.

Celebrate!  I love to celebrate with the people I work with, whether it’s an informal lunch in the office where we can spend a little downtime just shooting the breeze or it’s a big holiday do. 

No one succeeds alone, so spend the time and effort to motivate your team and you will reap the rewards.