Years ago, as I was taking baby steps in my in-house career, I was invited to a dinner hosted by my then employer. If I recall correctly, the occasion was to celebrate the award of a major deal for the company. Legal had played a key role in landing the deal for the company. Half way through the dinner, the gentleman seated next to me remarked, “It appears you have finally earned your seat at the table”. At first, I didn’t quite understand what he meant. Noticing my frown, he clarified that up until then, legal was conspicuous by their absence at thesecompany affairs. Perhaps the prospect of socializing with legal was inconceivable for the biz. It was also likely that legal might have made itself scarce at these soirees to avoid seeing ‘supping with the devil’. Be that as it may, legal team’spresence onparticular day probably meant that leadership was beginning to appreciate the value generated by legal.
Since then, I have had the opportunity to work alongside several biz teams across companies. During these collaborations, I have come to realize that irrespective of the nature of your industry and your level in your team’s pecking order, there are certain attributes that are guaranteed to help you demonstrate value to business and land you a ‘seat at the table’. The idea is to share some of these attributes and help you create wealth for and add value to your business.
Organizations embrace people who are not just competent in their respective disciplines but who are primarily interested in and relate to business. Commercial awareness can therefore mean understanding your customer’s business, the broader environment it operates in and contextualizing your advice accordingly.
Being commercially aware can be instrumental in creating a ‘good deal’ and enables:
Lack of commercial awareness leads to erosion of wealth and poor delivery triggering greater risk exposure.
“People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care” – Theodore Roosevelt
Developing trust represents perhaps the biggest challenge to building an effective cross-functional relationship. Relationships help you stay connected and offer assistance at critical stages. Experience tells me that professional and personal are seldom separate. To get to the facts, one must first pierce the feelings. Even an unpalatable piece of news would be received well if you can couch it with a little empathy. Giving and sharing credit whenever due is a simple but sure-fire way to make friends and influence people. Cultivating constructive friendships at the work place will go a long way in helping you make things happen. Making things happen, after all, is what in-house counsels are expected to do.
A sure-shotway to maximize legal’s good will is to demonstrate ‘strategic’thinking. Strategic thinkingor vision is essentially about seeing the big picture and addressingthe needs of all stakeholders in a flexible and adaptivemanner. It helps legal develop a competitive advantage by creating a culture that is sensitive to market dynamics and its possible impact on your organization. Empowering your business by providing them access to standard templates and forms and ‘how to use’ manuals is a great way to demonstrate your strategic vision. Such an arrangement not only provides certainty on your service levels but reduces time-to-market which is great for business.
The more senior you are, strategic vision also involves an understanding of the organization’s overall strategy. This not only helps you to anticipate and assess the regulatory implications of business plans, but also facilitates alignment of legal objectives with business objectives, which is critical if the legal team is not going to be perceived as just another cost center.
A common refrain in our circle is that creativity is best left to our ‘techie’ colleagues. But legal creativity isn’t this big barrier as it is cracked up to be. Creativity for in-house counsels simply means adopting or being receptive to new ideasand assisting the business in taking these ideas to fruition. For example, you demonstrate creativity by simplifying your contract templates which will likely make thenegotiation process less complex.
Managing and setting the right expectationswith your constituents add tremendous value to our role as inhouse counsel. No one wants a counsel who promises the moon but fails to even touch the tree top. Good expectation management entails:
It is axiomatic that companies shall comply with applicable laws and regulations. However, embracing this principle alone will not guarantee its success.Formulating a strong code of ethics (“Code”) is imperative and must be followed diligently. The Code must be sufficiently comprehensive, easy to follow, current and conveyed regularly. Design a risk assessment program that addresses potential anti-bribery, anticorruption exposure and develop mitigation plans. Ensure that your compliance polices have a “tone at the top and in the middle”. It is critical to drive home the message that promoting an ethical culture can be a competitive advantage
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