I had an interesting coaching call last week with a
partner who had earlier experience in a business that wasn’t in professional
service. He managed a couple of hundred people in a business sector for a large
corporation. His comment was how different his current firm is managed from
where he came. He was used to the senior management team who determined the
company’s strategy, identified strategic initiatives that each sector was to
incorporate in its annual business plan and held everyone accountable to achieve
results.

Sounds like it should be, right? But professionals aren’t
like that. Instead, you enjoy, or aspire to have, the autonomy that comes with
being a partner. “I can do what I want” seems to be the way it goes. Like
having a license. No, you say?

How many times do you exercise partner license by:

>delaying a commitment to someone, internally or
externally, because you got busy or forgot?

>ignoring your internal reporting (time entry,
billing, collections, etc.) because you didn’t get around to it?

>changing the priorities of your staff without
consulting them because you had a new deadline or project “pop up?”

You make life difficult for others when you exercise your
partner license. And here’s the clincher: no one will call you on it or impose
consequences because of a false “collegial respect,” or, “I won’t mention your
sins if you won’t mention mine.”

Your managing partner, firm administrator, or whoever on
whom you exercise your autonomy, are frustrated and eventually give up trying
to manage your firm to better results, all because you and your colleagues
insist on partner license.

There is a reason your firm isn’t growing faster and it
has to do with your unwillingness to be managed by those authorized to do so.
If you and your partners would only comply with what you know is right, you would
be more successful. Maybe it’s time to quit whining about how hard you work
and work on managing yourself.

This week, notice the times you or a colleague takes
partner license and the ramifications they have. Then do the right thing. But
don’t worry—if you don’t, no one will say a word.