There are very few Chief Growth Officers working within law firms. It's a role that places an emphasis on value, revenue and on the business benefit that marketing and business development can bring.

On this episode of the CMO Series, James Barclay is lucky to welcome Susan Hollender, Chief Growth Officer at Michael Best, to see how she and her team are delivering value and growth through legal productisation. 

James and Susan delve into:

• How Susan arrived in her current role as Chief Growth Officer and at what point on that journey she became familiar with productisation in the context of legal service
• The synergy between disruption and growth and how to position yourself to have the mandate to do things differently
• The definition of Productisation and how it works in a legal context
• How Susan identified that productisation was something that would have an impact at Michael Best
• The processes that helped establish those products within the firm
• The level of cultural acceptance the firm needs to adopt these practices
• Advice for others trying to lead growth in their firms

Transcription: 

Intro: Welcome to the Passle podcast CMO series.

James: Hello and welcome back to the CMO series podcast. My name is James Barclay. I'm CEO of Passle Inc here in the US.

Now, there are very few Chief Growth Officers at law firms. Our research turned up only four. It's a role that places an emphasis on value, on revenue and on the business benefit that marketing and business development can bring to a law firm. And today, we're lucky to welcome a good friend of Passle, Susan Hollender. Susan is Chief Growth Officer at Michael Best, headquartered out of Milwaukee. And we're going to discover how she is delivering growth and value through legal productisation. Susan and her team have a unique and effective mindset about what a law firm and law firm growth looks like and we're excited to dive into that today.

Welcome to the Passle CMO series, Susan!

Susan: Thanks, James. Thanks for having me.

James: Not at all. It's great to have you here. So let's get straight into it. To kick off, I have two questions in one. Number one is, how did you arrive in your current role as Chief Growth Officer? And at what point on that journey did you realise that prioritising productisation was important in the context of a legal service?

Susan: Yeah. So I started at Michael Best as Chief Marketing Business Development Officer and it was the first C-Suite officer role at the firm. And I came in, you know, doing what a lot of us in these executive roles do, listening tours, kind of understanding the team, the culture and most importantly, and as important real, are the attorneys and their culture for business development and marketing and client service. And I did all the things that a CMBDO would do in their roles, get our people and talent and build trust,  show experience and successes and what I would call a lot of our operational structures and framework, websites, client service programs, things like that. And got that all under the way. 

And three years into the role, my managing partner and having our year-end conversations about the team's growth, the overall successes that we've all built together and said, "Well, what's next for me?" And you know, as we sat there thinking through the things that really made disruption was around the ability to take our legal services and the things we did and show success, measure the success of how it really changed the behaviours of not only our attorneys in continuing to really understand what business development meant for themselves as well as the support they were getting, but we were able to show success through client growth. And so as we sat there and we talked, we kept on saying growth all the time that and revenue. And at the end, I said, well, I don't want to be Chief Revenue Officer. It makes me sound like I'm gonna go out, you know, collecting taxes from people or in accounting. 

So here we are, we  googled it, we put in Chief Growth Officer and, you know, it meant different things in different industries and there wasn't a whole lot in our legal industry and, and we knew it would stick and that's how we came to the Chief Growth Officer role.

James: No, that makes absolute sense. And then that's the second part of the question. At what point in that journey did you realise that actually productisation within the law firm, and that kind of change into Chief Growth Officer was important?

Susan: I think the word productisation is unfamiliar in our industry. Everyone always says, well, you're selling what's in the experience of someone's intellect, their experiences are human. It's in their heads, you know, it's the interactions they have with their clients and you know, you get conditioned that way and you're in the people business you think through. Well, you're right. You know, the lawyers are lawyering, they're selling to their clients, the ability to service and solve, you know, compliance and legal solutions and kind of getting their clients to that next advisement. And I said, but productisation is exactly that. It's really being able to simplify what it is that differentiates your legal service, skills and abilities to look at how to resolve a situation or a project. But it's simplifying that message. When we all talk about what's on brochures and websites, you look at all of our competitors and we're all saying the same thing and clients at the end say, well, you're all experts. I understand that you all have the knowledge and expertise and lawyers are great at that. But at the end of the day, how are you gonna solve my problem? How are you gonna convey a level of proactive solution to the situation at hand?

And really the productisation became more simplifying the capabilities of our lawyers and all of their skill sets.  And it was not easy to do, but it was taking sort of the long-winded paragraphs and descriptions of all of our areas of practice and saying, well, what are you really trying to get at, you know, what at the end of the day are you trying to simplify in that capability? And that's the way we looked at productisation it’s how you simplify the solution that you are trying to convey to your client.

James: And by way of an example of that, what would you, how, where would you say that you've done that most successfully?

Susan: One area we looked at was around Intellectual Property. And as an example, you look at the practice area of intellectual property and there's all levels and areas of IP, there's the trademark and there are areas of patent, there's a prosecution that goes with that. And the more you talk to an IP attorney, the more confused you can get because they get so into the weeds of the special technical skills that they have and all of the volume that data-driven portfolio management and it's all great. It's a service, absolutely. 

But at the end of the day, when we look at the intellect electoral property assets, you look at the bigger picture and you say, well, how would that really apply to a client's perspective when, as an example, they look at their assets for M&A for transactions for things that might not be something that even the client's culture might look at as part of their IP assets. And we said, let's get together and let's think through how are different attorneys in different practice areas in their skill sets, what can we come up with that might be something that an executive a GC would want to hear from us. And how can we do that in three or four sentences? And that's a very hard exercise to go through when you have a lot of attorneys in the room who have a lot to say. And at the end of the day, I remember spending some time in that room and coming up with this product, which was how to protect your IP assets. And we said, well, how would you go about conveying that message to your decision-makers on the client side, and to come up with three sentences that might open that door for us, which was, are you looking at your IP portfolios in the perspective of not just protection but also as an asset value when you get ready to either sell your company or acquire others? And when you do that, what value do you put on your IP assets and then comes the solution. 

And our solution at that point was around technology and how we aggregated data and presented the value of the IP portfolio to a decision-maker in less than 2-3 minutes. And that's what helped us to discipline our product, powerpoint presentations, that helped us to message for all of the folks going and speaking to our clients in 3-4 sentences. And it was a door opener. It wasn't about all of the situations of how you do the work. It was more about the conversation in the beginning to say, why would we hire Michael Best to socialise and talk to us about how to value your IP assets. It was very specific. And that's really the art and the science of how we perceived productisation is how do you simplify the things that you all do that affect the day-to-day needs and issues and concerns from the client's perspective and start to change the culture of how we message our capabilities to our clients.

James: Yeah. No, that's fascinating because it's the packaging it and the presentation from a client perspective, which is key rather than from the lawyer's perspective, I suppose, and from the law's perspective. And you know, and we spoke about this before the podcast, it seems a lot of the initiatives that you have driven as a Chief Growth Officer like that move towards product, their movement away from the way things have traditionally been done. How how do you think that that disruption that and that growth have gone hand in hand? And how did you position yourself so that you could do things differently because it's obvious that you've driven this with the support of senior management and it's a whole Michael Best approach as opposed to just a Susan approach.

Susan: No, absolutely. I, you know, I think there are a couple of disciplines and patience. I start with patience because you've got to take the time to build credibility relationships and you build that and you start to socialise change and disruption. And what I mean by that is when you're in a law firm or you've got a partnership model, got a lot of owners, stakeholders who all have very different perspectives in the way they look at sort of the holistic growth of a firm. They've been conditioned in a certain area of practice, they take on different roles within their firm. But really at the end of the day, they're conditioned by the identity of the way they practice. 

So to be able to look at the perspective of other areas, it's not that there's no interest or respect, it's just not the way they're conditioned to service their clients and other things. So when you have a management committee, and this was really part of the growth that really excited me when I joined the firm was, the firm was already down a path of change. And it started from the top, the management committee was already committed to a 10-year growth plan. And one of the areas of growth was around hiring talent outside of legal to come in and make that disruption. So I think first and foremost is overall support as well from leadership.

And then with that you as an individual has, has to go out and start to build those relationships and really show the return. And I know we use ROI quite a bit in our industry and sometimes it's not that easy to measure because a lot of it is subjective. Sometimes it's great timing. It's a situation episodic moment. But when you really think through the discipline of having a plan, having a 10-year growth plan, then disciplining yourself to what your short-term plan within the next two years. And from there going backwards to an annual and quarterly measure and you communicate with that discipline, people see order, people see sequence and progress and it's not overnight. And so you draw through this discipline of the journey, the things you're working on and how you get there. And we built this momentum of always being able to deliver on progress. And within that progress, it showed the ability of the team, it showed the ability of leadership as a whole. And we moved all of our risks and initiatives forward and we were able to give progress on that. And then there was buy-in because there was support. 

They saw the movement change and then it started to change the quantifiable measures and successes that we were trying to meet. And it was that continued momentum of that beating of the drum of getting through the processes, getting through the journey of meeting our timely measures. And we got ourselves to a point where our audience was expecting the next change, next idea, the next progress. And at the end of the day, I always joke and say this is what corporations do, this is what they do. They put themselves in a discipline to move things forward and it really made our stakeholders really understand. And at the end, that influence bleeds down to the rest and that discipline to continue to move things forward, the progress of support and taking risks together shows a culture of change in the movement. And it happens slowly but it happens with thought and it happens with intent and it happens again with that discipline, you've gotta keep going.

James: Absolutely. And what I suppose on a practical level, what does that mean? What does that actually look like? Because a lot of firms will talk, we will talk about the progress and the plans but are actually on a practical level when you're kind of getting your hands dirty. What does that look like on a week to week, on a month to month, on a quarterly to quarterly? You know, but when you talk about that progress and the sharing of that progress, what meetings do you have? How do you actually achieve that practically?

Susan: Yes. So we have teams that really focus specifically on each of these products, we call them service offerings. And it's an account management sort of model where our marketing and business development folks are tied - their growth, their evaluations, their success in building and moving a lot of these different products and service offerings - they're account managers. We've got identified partners who are key stakeholders and champions of the product. We have folks from different corporate departments that are part of that account, which includes finance, knowledge, management, marketing and BD, and research services, and it builds that group. And as an example right now, we have six that we’re productising for 2023, those six are really core account teams that build their goals, their metrics for success. And at the end of the day, they are given the discipline to report each quarter to our management committee. They get a spotlight at the management committee and they report on how they're doing within those product service teams. So there's accountability and support from not just giving and putting teams and talents together, but there's also the accountability and support from top because it's not just sort of a business plan that ever flows around and circulates and people are not quite sure who's in charge of what.  

We go through the account management team aspect and perspective because it's really part of an inclusive team that comes together and really builds the support for each other's success. And that has absolutely been a cultural change for us to have business support, departments from different areas, as well as key practice leaders come together to build that account team versus it being the separation of practice groups versus the support. We bring that together as one inclusive account team.

James: You said earlier that the cultural aspect was really important to that. And you said it was slow at the beginning. How are you measuring your cultural change? And how are you measuring the success of it because it's one of those things that we often throw out, isn't it as well? It's like we're building a great culture. But how do you nurture that and how do you accelerate the change that you want to drive?

Susan:  I think culture is something that every single employee and every single attorney and partners all have the responsibility to do so. I think ideas and programs can work from their weight from the core up and the support could be from the top and bottom as well.

You know, when I first started here at the firm, we were a size where darned if you do and darned if you don't, but they weren't quite sure what marketing and business development really meant. And so we were able to come in and the team and myself, we were able to come in to change that narrative, but we didn't have a whole lot of past to break a habit of any sort of assumptions or any negative experiences or positive, there wasn't a whole lot of noise, you know, that could be great or that could be a really strong and long journey, right? A very long journey because people are just not gonna accept it. 

I believe that the culture starts to change because there is a defined plan. I was going back to that 10-year firm growth plan. Well, that growth plan isn't just for one department. That's for the overall vision of where the firm wants to go as a whole. You mentioned, the headquarters of Milwaukee, we’re about to celebrate 175th anniversary this year. You know, we even change that narrative of not being headquartered but the founding office, you know, we give tribute to the founding history of that office, but we don't have a headquarters, there is no headquarters, because every one of our offices has some ability to continue to come together and there are no measure measurements of revenue by offices. We don't tie geographic independence that way. We tie it all together and we say the firm's plan is the firm's plan. We don't have different office plans. This is the firm's plan and here are the things that we're doing together.

So we've been able to sort of break that boundary by the way we're planning the growth of the firm business planning, not by independent or decentralised groups, but centralised planning as a firm and how all the other groups Sprinkle down to support it is really a way that discipline, the way we all looked at, the formality of how we're going to move as a firm together. And that growth and that discipline I think really brings, when you do it in the beginning and that's all people know because they had nothing else before, people are gonna follow it and they'll be fine with that. As long as there's accountability and success, right? There's change, there's movement, there are things that are happening that are a positive impact. And so really, there was a whole lot of pressure for a group of us to make sure once you got a great idea, that's great. You've got risks you wanna take, we will support it, but you gotta do it. You know, once we give you the green light, you gotta keep moving and once you move, you can't stop. And I think that's the part that's sometimes a hard it's a hard point to now look at yourself and say, “Oh well, you're in the spotlight now. Now you've got the stage, what are you gonna do and what are you gonna keep doing to bring that audience back?”

James: And it seems a kind of crucial part of that and really wrapping this up, I suppose is, as a Chief Growth Officer, your team in BD and marketing are seen very much as a revenue centre. And I'm assuming that was a kind of conscious decision by you is that with the branding of yourself as a Chief Growth Officer and also as your team that their revenue not cost.

Susan: Absolutely.And one of the things that we even disrupted within our own team was around when we all through the global pandemic and had to work remotely and whatever back to normalcy was 2, 2.5 years later, there was a workforce change. You know, a lot of the talent around legal marketing, business development was absolutely disrupted. And we went through an exercise where we said, you know, we keep and continue to strive towards being revenue and that cost. And we look at our team, we say how we're gonna train the next group, how we're gonna successfully bring the next generation who are gonna be interested in staying in this industry. And one of the changes we made this year was really to be accountable to the younger staff that get into this industry and say, “why should I stay?” 

And we made an intentional workforce change by going out to undergraduate colleges and giving folks in their last year before they graduate from an undergrad summer internship to come in and look at the things that we're doing in our department. Sort of a, a similar equivalent maybe to a summer associates program and start to get them to understand what marketing and business development could look like in a business services, professional services world. And we start from scratch. And it's been really enlightening to see sort of disruption. And even in the way we look at our team because a lot of the folks coming out of universities now have an in-depth knowledge in the way they look at how to innovate, how to disrupt. And it's been a really great eye-opening for us to realise we thought we were going to train them. And at the end of the day, they were, they were teaching us so much so that continued disruption even within our team has been a great level of even innovation and efficiency and how we look at the way we go about interacting with not just each other and other quote-unquote human beings, but how we bring platforms in to make things more efficient. So the disruption continues, the disruption continues in a great way. And with that in mind, and I'm glad you brought up people that you're recruiting and people who are joining your team because they will surely be listening to this.

James: So what we'll do now is a quick fire round. So they can find out a little bit more about you. So let's kick into the first question. What's your favourite business book and your favourite non-business book?

Susan: All right, let's see. I have a recommendation from a colleague over the holiday, which I have yet to read, but I'm hoping to get to it sooner than later. And it's called Never Split The Difference by Chris Voss. And a colleague of mine said, you know, this is one of those books where a lot of it seems very much common sense, Susan, but you just need to pick up one or two things that might be a way that you change your style or you educate yourself and seeing how you might do something different and you know, what if I'm gonna pick up a book or read something or listen to something. All I need is a few takeaways and I'm a constant learner. So I'm very much interested in seeing what that book is all about.

James: Excellent, are you reading a non-business book?

Susan: Yeah. It’s more of a sort of inspiration for myself. You know, there's never enough time in a, in a day and I'm listening to a podcast called The Miracle Morning and it really talks about, you know, you wear a lot of different hats in your life. And the real takeaway here is to, you know, take a little bit of time in the morning, whether it's waking up a little bit earlier or what not to sort of really get yourself. You know, getting to know yourself and having that sense of peace and, and quiet to kind of think through the rest of the day because that's just like they say about making your bed in the morning. You start your day in the morning and it's the way you're gonna start it to see what the lookout for the rest of your day is going to be. So I've been enjoying little tidbits in the Miracle Morning podcast.

James: Oh, that's good. And then what was your first job? 

Susan: My first job was as a dental assistant. I was gonna be a dentist. So that's a story for another day. But yeah, I was very focused on becoming a dentist from a very young age in high school and putting aside sort of your miscellaneous, you know, babysitting jobs or whatnot. My first, you know, real paying job, if you will, was as a dental assistant. It was a high school program.

James: That's definitely over a glass of wine. Excellent. And then, okay, this is a big one but demands a short answer, I'm afraid. But what makes you happy at work?

Susan: What makes me happy at work is watching the team take an idea across the finish line, you know, having sort of more of an observer, watching the team being their motivator and their coach and taking their idea and watching them get it to the finish line, it makes it all right.

James: Yeah. Good. And then finally, where is your favourite place to visit and why?

Susan: My favourite place to visit is really right across the street from my home. It's the lake. I live in Illinois and right outside of Chicago and it's the Great Lakes. It's Lake Michigan. I spent a lot of time just sort of dazing off into the great waters and wonder how many people work there and all the things that have happened that stays constant and that's the lake.

James: Yeah, brilliant. And then workwise, I suppose coming back to the growth is if you could give one piece of advice for others trying to lead growth in their firms like you and yours, what would that one piece of advice be?

Susan: Continue to take risks. Disruption is not a bad thing, but find that person that's gonna support you and be there for you when that risk either becomes a success and claps for you and is there to cheer you on, or when that risk sometimes becomes a failure, is there to help you learn and move on to the next one.

James: Fantastic. Absolutely. Well, that's great advice. And thank you very much indeed for joining our podcast. Really, really appreciate it and look forward to seeing you soon.

Susan: Thanks for your time.