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You know that feeling when you leave a conversation with someone and suddenly your brain is firing on all cylinders again? That's Max Lacon. This October in Atlanta, you'll be surrounded by law firm owners who are building smarter businesses, dialing in their systems, growing their teams using AI, improving intake, marketing and finances. All of it. The conversations, ideas and people in this room will push you to think bigger about what's possible for your firm. And honestly don't. There's just something different about being around people who are actually doing the thing. Go to max lockon.com and grab your ticket today.
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Welcome back to Maximum l Live. I am Tyson Mutrix. I've got a fun show for us today. It's been a really, just incredible week. I gotta say, aside from the United States losing in the World Cup, I, I couldn't have been prouder of that team. They've just really, I mean they, they have improved so much. And this has come from someone that honestly was never really a soccer fan, didn't grow up with soccer. But I've got kids that play soccer. I've got a son that's in club soccer. So I've kind of gotten the fever over the last couple years. It's especially like club soccer with, with our oldest son. He is, it's just so cool because like they play in these places that are like I would have dreamed of playing if I were a kid. So just really cool. It was a cool experience getting to see Messi play in, in the World cup in person. That was a couple weeks ago, but that's not, not about what today's show is about, but just incredible week. I started a new book so that's good. Started reading a new book and then just. We had some great developments when it comes to AI this week when it comes to our firm and so just lots of cool things going on. So. Well, I couldn't, couldn't be more excited. But I, I'm gonna, I picked a couple more stories from the book that I want to talk about today. For those of you that did not hear last week's episode, I, I picked a, basically a throwaway story from the book because I've got several. Just to give you some context. Those of you that were listening last week or watched last week, you know the context. But I want to give you, if you've not, if you missed that, I'm gonna give you the context. The editor, the feedback that I got from the editor was I have a lot of, I had a lot of non legal stories in the Book for founder optional, which is going to be coming out very soon. My deadline is. I've got it right here. July 19th for my final edits. We did give out a manuscript to the people in the association. So that was, uh, that initial manuscript has gone out, I guess not really an initial manual. It's the, A print. We got a printed copy of one of the final versions. It's, it's. We've got some other big edits that are going to come in the final version. But so, but there are a lot of. The editor, the, the, the editor suggested that we use law firm owner stories as opposed to non legal stories. And so I don't want to just waste those stories because I think they're really cool. I'm going to use a combination of stories in this one in today's episode because they're related to the same topic and that's why I want to talk about. So the first one, the first story, I'll tell you the two stories and then we'll get into the topic. So the first one's about a, an experiment that was in the spring of 1974, and it was one that unfolded inside of a small grocery store in Sioux City, Iowa. Okay, so shout out to Sioux City, Iowa. It involved a psychologist named Kurt Lewin, who's actually a pretty famous psychologist now. And he'd been studying why certain managers thrived while others did not. Okay. Which is a very, it's one of those, It's a very interesting story because this will apply to a lot of you, applies a lot of law firm owners and to your, your people that you have managing people. And, and what he discovered was actually to him very counterintuitive. The most effective leaders actually were not the ones who did the most. Okay, I, the, the thinking at least back then was, you know, the ones that the, the, they're going to be the most effective. The leaders that are going to be the most effective. The managers that are going to be the most effective, they're doing the most. Right, they're, they're out and about doing things. They're making sure that the shelves are stocked, yada, yada, yada. They were actually the ones who decided who got to decide. All right, so they are the ones that really dispersed authority to other people. Okay, which leads me to the next story. So these are really. That's what I told you I was going to do. I was going to tell you the two stories and then I'll kind of get into what we're going to talk about. Today. So this other one is also from the 70s. Okay. This was interesting because this was in the early 70s. That one was in 1974. This must have been a really big topic at the time. But researchers were studying the U.S. army, okay. And they, they discovered something that really bothered a lot of the top brass. It really, really kind of, it made them feel very uncomfortable. And what they found was that units with the most decorated commanders did not always perform the best in sustained operations. What mattered more, and this was really important was whether decision making authority was distributed downward. So whether the junior officers could act decisively without waiting for permission. And this was, it's as interesting because if you look at a lot of big missions throughout the world, throughout history, rather, there were. And battles, missions, battles, whatever. The one, a lot of the ones that failed is they failed because they were waiting on permission to act. And that's what's really interesting. So in high performing units, captains or whoever was in charge of the unit didn't have to check in on every consequential move. What they were able to do is they were able to act with intent and they, they took on a lot of responsibility. So they carried the weight and what the army, the, the army termed this mission command. And the insights are pretty, it's pretty simple, but it's uncomfortable. For people that are uncomfortable with letting go of authority, it's you. What you need is you need a system that depends on multiple leaders. Okay? So in, in instead, if you have one brilliant commander, okay, you have a very fragile system is really what we're talking about. So with these two in mind. So these are the two stories that we're going to talk about. And the, the point of these two stories was about really just taking authority and dispersing it to your people. And, and we're not talking about delegation. And this is something. I've had this conversation with Jeremy Danielson before. He's in the Association. Delegation is one thing. Delegation is like, okay, I'm going to give you this task, okay? And you do this task. And a lot of lawyers are very good at delegation, okay? You do these 10, 10 things. And I'm gonna draw a blank on this Secretary of Defense's name, Rumsfeld. Okay? Rumsfeld was very good at delegation. Okay. They had this thing. I've told the story on the show before, but I'm gonna say it again. He would, he was notorious for standing at a lectern, which is wild to think about, but you stand at a lectern and there would be A line of people basically at his office coming up, and he would write specific things for them to do on a post it note and then they would leave and you'd see these, these, this parade of people leaving his office with just sticky notes and they called them snowflakes. And so that's delegation. That is not authority. You've just given a bunch of tasks to people to go do. You've not given them the authority to go take action on these things and really just take ownership over it. So let me, let me give an example. So when it comes to, like, more real life, let's say you've got, you brought your marketing in house. A lot of times what the owners will do is they'll, they'll have a bunch of tasks that they delegate when it comes to marketing. And then they have to report back. Those people have to report back to the owner and then the owner then gives more instructions on what to do next. Boom, boom, boom. Instead of just saying, listen, Tommy, I, I'm just making up a name here. Listen, Tommy, you're now in charge of marketing, okay? You're in charge of everything when it comes to marketing. So when it comes to SEO, when it comes to ads, all this kind of stuff, you, you're going to make the final decision on these things. You're going to come up with a plan with these things. You're, you're going to do all these things when it comes to marketing, okay? This is no longer on my plate. This is on your plate, Tommy. All things marketing are now you, okay? That's giving them authority. That means they get, if they do it right, they get rewarded. If they do it wrong, then I wouldn't say they get punished, but they take the blame, okay? They take, they're taking on that authority. They're taking, that's the whole theme of the book. They're taking the gravity off of the owner and putting it onto the other person, your other people in your firm. That is redistributing authority. That's not redistributing delegate. That's not delegating. And that's the key distinction. Delegation is okay in some aspects, but what you need to do is you need to take that additional step and push authority down to other people. And the way I broke it down in the book is if you really kind of look at three different bands and so imagine like you were in the middle, okay? So all the gravity is on you because all the work, right? That's generally how it works. And we want to push that out as far as possible. So you got these, these three different bands. And then. So the outside band is. And almost you can think of these as sort of layers of protection around you. So you're in the middle. You got a layer. So one layer around you, another layer around you, another layer. So three layers that around you. So you're in the middle. You're the dot IN the middle. You want to push everything as far out as possible. So that if you look at that outside band, the outside circle, that is where everything's fully delegated. Okay. There is zero escalation to you or anyone else between you and the lower people in your firm. That's a really bad way of putting that. The, the. If you. I kind of think of like chain of command in the military. That's kind of stuck in my brain where the lower ranks. That's not how we generally view things in our, in our firm. But I'm going to use this for this example. So we'll use the army. So let's say that you have the outer ring and you have your, your, your specialists, your privates, your PFCs, things like that. Your, your lower level NCOs. You've got those people making decisions on the front lines, making very like, okay, someone has engaged you, you're engaging them back, that kind of a thing. So you're, you're, there's no, it's fully delegated, delegated to them, right? They can take action on that. And then you've got a more, the, the ring in the second ring, right? You've got, you've got sort of a delegation with guard rails. Okay? So you've delegated authority, but you've got some guard rails with it. And this is one where you only escalated if a, if there's some sort of predefined threshold that's crossed. So here you stay with the same scenario here. So you've got engagement enemies have broken the front lines. Okay? So now we've, they've, they've crossed that literal threshold. Okay, They've crossed the threshold. Now you escalated up to. Okay, let's send this back to command. What do they, what do they want to do? Okay, not, and this is not, this is more not like your, your, not the full command, not the U.S. army command. You're talking about more of your, your company level command. So you talk your, your own local leaders. That's the easiest way to put it, I think. So you've now escalated to them. Now let's say that they've, they've broken through and now they're. It's. It's gotten really bad. Like, you've. You've got. The full line is now just dissipated. This is where now you get down to. Get down to. Get. Gets down to you, right? You. You have. Where they are. This is now a strategic, directional, irreversible decision that must be made. And now it gets to you. Okay? This is the. You have to create these bands around you. So let's make this more realistic for a law firm owner. So we have pods, we have these teams that we have set up for our firm. So we have really. When it comes to. So we look at the outer band, okay? So I've got these. I have these rings set around me, right? And people ask me all the time like, well, how do you get so much work done? It's because I have amazing people. That's what happens. We have a much. We have a bunch of great people that surround me. That's why it's hard to get me on a phone call. It's hard to get me on an email. It's. It's because we have these great bands circling me. Okay? And so let's say. Let's talk about, like, negotiations, okay? The. The teams have full authority to make. To negotiate on files, right? They are. They are negotiating the files whether, you know, okay, whether to accept an offer, what the counter should be. We have all these rules set up for. We have a whole process when it comes to negotiations. All of that's outlined. Okay? They have full authority to make those decisions. Okay. So let's say that you've got. We have a case resolution coordinator is as. Essentially she helps with getting cases finalized and when they're in the middle of negotiations. She's not an attorney. She. She actually has. With. With supervision of the attorney. She. She has some authority to do some negotiations. So let's say that something comes through where we think it's bad faith. Okay? We think that the other side has committed bad faith. That is something where. Okay, let's escalate this up now. The attorney needs to make a decision on this where. Because otherwise if this is just simple like negotiating back and forth on numbers. Our. Our CRCs have authority to do that. They can do without. They can't finalize the case. They cannot. They can't settle a case without the attorney authority. There's. There's certain things where they've got to escalate. It's. But let's say it's just a simple of, you know, throwing numbers back and forth they. They have some authority to do that within limits set by the attorney. Okay, but let's say we. We believe that they've committed bad faith. All right? That is now an escalation to the attorney herself where the attorney's got to look at that. Now let's say that it gets to the point where. Because. And we do give a. We. We have now pushed a lot of authority down, by the way. So we, We. This is it. To get to the next step would. Something would have to be pretty serious, let's say that on this one, for it to get to me, right? So we. We've already gotten past the outside ring. We're now getting to the second ring because we've got bad faith. For that to have gotten to me, I think we'd probably have to have had to have screwed something up, to be honest with you. For in that scenario, we, we, we. We would have had to have screwed something up for them to actually come, the attorney to come to me like, hey, I need your input on this. I think we. I think we may have done this wrong. Or it could be an. It could be an actual strategy move where maybe we didn't do something wrong, but maybe we've not locked in bad faith yet. And they want to come to me to get some guidance on, hey, listen, because this is a strategy move, right? This is a strategy decision. I think that. Or it could be, hey, I think we have set them up on bad faith. But I want to get your authority on this to settle the case because I don't think it's in the client's best, best interest. And the client really doesn't want to go through litigation. That could be an escalation too. So not necessarily that they. Something screwed up, but that because of a strategy call, we're going outside of our normal rules or operating procedures on negotiations. So I want to. I want to. Because that has come. I have. Have had people come to me before when it comes to the attorney saying, hey, I know what our process is, but I don't really. I don't think that this makes sense for this client. And here's why. So that. That's something where. So I've got these rings set up where. And you should do that with every part of your firm. You set up these bands around you where it doesn't get to you until you've gone through those bands. You don't really need more than three. Threes should be just fine where you set up more than that. It's. I Mean, it kind of gets absurd and, and you really shouldn't have that many layers in your firm anyways. Unless you're like at 50 plus people. If you have 50 plus people, maybe you have more rings than that, but you really shouldn't have. If you're, if you're below 50 people, you shouldn't really have that many rings. Not at all. But. So that's the idea of it. And I, I really just wanted to talk about the bands today. I want to talk about, talk about those two stories, but then talk about the commands and there's. I get into more detail when it comes to this and how to redistribute and all that. We can talk about that in another episode, but it's also in, in the book itself. But it's really want to talk about. You want to take authority and push it down as far as possible as. Because it's the authority that matters. It's not the delegation of a task. It's. It's the authority. It's giving them the authority to act. Allowing them, way that we put it sometimes is allowing them the authority to make a mistake. Okay? That is really what it comes down to. You have to be okay with people making a mistake. That's what you have to be able to do. If you want to be able to scale and grow and get better and take things off your plate, you've gotta, you've got to get comfortable with your allowing your people to make mistakes. Not the big mistakes, right? Not missing those statute limitations, things like that. There are certain things that you must protect, right? And you will set up procedures for to predict those things. But you've got to be able to allow them to make the small to medium mistakes. Gotta be able to make the. Gotta be able to allow them to do that. Otherwise you won't be able to get that gravity off your shoulders. But all right, that's all we have today. Hopefully you got something from this. Please check us out. Becca's List. Becca's List co allow you to find the best vendors for your firm. Also, remember to get your tickets to maxlawcon.com in Octo October. That's going to be amazing in Atlanta. So make sure you check us out there. And if you're interested in the association, go to maximlawyer.com have a great week, everybody. We will see you next time.
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