Asked and Answered

By John W. Olmstead, MBA, Ph.D, CMC

Q. I am the Director of Administration with a 45 attorney firm in Des Moines, Iowa. I am new to this position and could use some pointers on what I need to be successful in my role. This is my first law firm

A. Few things are as important to an administrator’s future as that person’s ability to influence the decision-making process and effect change. Skills and competencies are important, but so are results. To transcend to the next level and enhance your value to your law firm, you must help your firm actually effect positive changes and improvements and improve performance. This requires selling ideas to partners in the firm, and having them accept and actually implement those ideas. To succeed, you must achieve three outcomes:

1. You must provide new solutions or methods.
2. The firm must achieve over time measurable improvement in its results by having adopted the solutions, and
3. The firm must sustain the improvements over time.

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John W. Olmstead, MBA, Ph.D, CMC,(www.olmsteadassoc.com) is a past chair and member of the ISBA Standing Committee on Law Office Management and Economics. For more information on law office management please direct questions to the ISBA listserver, which John and other committee members review, or view archived copies of The Bottom Line Newsletters. Contact John at jolmstead@olmsteadassoc.com.