Breaking Barriers: Mastering Change in Resistant Industries w/ Tim Lupinacci

In this episode of Relationships at Work, Russel chats with the chairman and chief executive officer of Baker Donelson, Tim Lupinacci on managing change in a traditionally change-resistant industry.

Tim shares his insights and experience in...

• Leadership through relationships
• Challenging traditional structures
• Opportunistic change management
• Balancing tradition and innovation
• Cultural shift through continuous communication
• Importance of accountability and execution
• Navigating resistance to change

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Transcript

Russel Lolacher: And on the show today, we have Tim Lupinacci and here is why he is awesome. He’s the chairman and chief executive officer of Baker Donelson, one of the largest law firms in the U.S. He serves on the firm’s diversity committee and previously served as co-chair of Baker Donelson’s Women’s Initiative Pathways to Leadership committee.

And he’s here today to talk about how we have an influence over more traditional work cultures. Hello, Tim.

Tim Lupinacci: Hey, Russel, it’s great to be here with you.

Russel Lolacher: Thanks for being here. I’m, we were talking right before we pushed the record button about how you have a very different perspective on maybe influencing culture, because we talk about culture all the time. And, and as a listener of the show I’m a big fan of definitions, but we keep throwing out culture all the time, but culture is so many different things to so many people and you come from the law industry, which is…

I don’t know if you know this, Tim, but pretty inflexible in its reputation or pretty rigid or not, or very traditional. So super interested to get into all that. However, Tim, you’re not off the hook. I have to ask the question I ask all of my guests, which is, what is your best or worst employee experience?

Tim Lupinacci: Russel, I really look forward to talking about my profession because it is a really interesting dynamic and interesting things I’ve learned, but so it’s you talked about the legal profession. I literally stumbled into the law practice because I was like you, I don’t know about your undergrad, but what you were doing previously, I was a mass comm major in college.

I wanted to do radio and television and I was interning for a TV station. My junior year of college. It wasn’t as glamorous as I thought. So I, I had a media law course that I was taking for my major. And I thought this is pretty interesting. And I took the entrance exam and went to law school. So the background is, I have no lawyers in the family, didn’t know anything about law firms or law school.

I literally just thought this is something I’ll try. So I’m now out practicing at a pretty big law firm and a couple of years in, and it was very transactional to me. I would get a project, I’d do it, I’d turn it in, go to the next project. And I had a pretty rough boss and I had a big project I was working for him. There was another lawyer, about five years, my senior working on it. I did my part, turned it into the senior, the mid level lawyer who turned it in. I’m going on my day. And then we get paged to our boss’s office. And our boss was one of those really tough love, rough kind of boss. Yeller, screamer. And so you really don’t like getting called to his office.

And so I got called into his office with my colleague. He’s on a phone call with about a dozen other people. And then he just starts yelling at us. And we pick up the fact that we had messed up on our project. It was a lot of financial stuff. I did bankruptcy law, insolvency law. So it was a restructure. The, the, the numbers mattered. And we had double counted. We had actually, we had messed it up. But he starts yelling at us and says, ‘These idiots are going to stay here all night. Until they get it right.’ So this is sort of the, the bad part of a horrible work experience. I’m thinking I’m going to get fired. I don’t know what I can do, but we do get it done. We send it out and I had drawn the short stall, straw. We had a court hearing the next morning and I had to pick up my boss to drive him to court. And it was about an hour and a half drive. It was a lot of silence to start with. And I’m like, okay, I’m going to get through the hearing and I’m going to be giving my walking papers.

But he paused after a little bit and apologized. He said, I shouldn’t have yelled at you in front of other people, but the reason I was so aggravated, particularly as it related to you, not necessarily the other guy was I really see leadership in you. I see you have a real, you can have a real impact in this profession and influence, but you got to step up and own your project.

You got to own everything, not just rely on others, rely on me. And so it was, actually something that launched me into figuring out like I needed to do this. I need to be a leader. I need to know what does that mean? How do I step up and how to influence others? So it was actually a positive work life work experience that really grew out of a really significant failure.

It’s a little bit of my journey early on.

Russel Lolacher: I won’t lie. I mean, as much as I love that story, I’m, I saw that little red flag. You’re like, I’m sorry I yelled at you in front of others. I’m like, wait, wait, wait, wait.

Tim Lupinacci: Yeah, that’s right. That’s not even a great leadership tip that I’m passing on today about how we did it. Although, we ultimately really built a really close relationship and I was fortunate his family asked me to speak at his funeral when he passed away. I mean, it was a real, but, but he had rough edges and hopefully maybe I impacted him some as we built our relationship.

But you’re exactly right, Russel. A lot of red flags.

Russel Lolacher: You had witnesses?! That’s the problem?

Tim Lupinacci: Right.

Russel Lolacher: So it’s so funny because I mean, from my own experience, I’ve been in organizations where I’ve had leaders yell, go into the common area and yell for somebody or be in another office two doors down and yell to get somebody’s attention. They’re not doing it maliciously, even though obviously your example, probably not the word idiots might be the best way to frame things, but they don’t know any better.

Like it’s, it’s literally they’re in it. They’re feeling their emotions and they don’t know how to either regulate or they don’t know how to understand what situational awareness or self awareness are. So I often comes up on the show is I don’t, I feel bad for leaders because they don’t know better.

Like they’ve never been shown better or modeled better. As, as you say, transactional isn’t a way to model relationship. It’s a way to get a product done or a service provided, not healthy organizations. So this, this leads me into a very into our conversation because I don’t know how well the law industry is good at this stuff from the outside, looking in. Never worked in a law office. Surprise, surprise.

So before we get into any of that, I need you to define a few things for me. Cause I really want to do it from your perspective, especially from the inside. How do you define leadership?

If you’re, because you come into a traditional environment and you’re here to change it. So what do you, what are you looking to achieve?

Tim Lupinacci: Yeah. It’s a really great question. Generally, and then just a little bit about particularly what people in the US call big law like big law firms. We’re almost 700 lawyers and another 600 employees. So in a lot of offices It’s a very flat organization and our owners are we call them shareholders some law firms call them partners depending on the structure. Any one of them can walk out the door with their clients, any day to get a better offer.

So it’s very much not command and control and top down. It’s got to be, really by building buy in and that’s what culture becomes so critical as a differentiator, but to answer your question, I mean, so then me, my coming and stepping into this role about five and a half years ago, it is all about building relationship… leadership to me in this setting is building relationships, building influence and being able to help impact others. But it’s all I only do that if they have, if I’m authentic, if they trust me that I’m out looking out for their best interest. And of course, the best interest of the firm. And then I listen and then I take advice. Maybe not all of it. And then when I make mistakes, admit it. I mean, all of that is bundled up as a lot of words about leadership, but in the setting, I’m in, it absolutely has to be building that trust and not just among that group of the folks who have the client relationships, but then I have to make sure that all of our colleagues see that they have a pathway here to have a success, have to accomplish their goals, even if they don’t have a law degree that we’re all on this team together. I mean, there’s a lot of buzzwords I’m probably saying, but it’s really part of who I am and why I think we’ve been able to be pretty successful the last few years, because everybody is a leader, meaning everybody has influence, whether they’re dealing with external clients or internal clients.

So it’s a lot of words, but that’s kind of how I think about it. Philosophically.

Russel Lolacher: So you’re saying this, the, so the law experience you have is more of a flat organization. It’s not as hierarchical. So it’s the, it’s the partners, owners, however, and everybody else is basically how it’s looked at. So it’s not, it’s hierarchical, but only kind of two levels, but then it, which on the outside, looking in sounds, oh, great. Everybody’s equal. Everybody’s. But then you use words like transactional leadership. So it’s, it’s so funny that it sounds progressive in one way and sounds so archaic in another.

Tim Lupinacci: And, and then, and then I try to break that down too, because I think you’re right, law firms, there tends to be, historically I’ll say, and I can only talk about what I know, and I, I, this is not us, but historically, in the law firm, there is the, the lawyers and the non lawyers, and I kind of think of non lawyer phrase as a four letter word, because everyone is valuable, and particularly people who are professionals in business and finance in professional development in pricing… They don’t teach you that in law school. So we need to make sure that those business professionals have a seat at the table. So even in that hierarchy of the individuals who have law degrees, who are generating revenue by serving clients we got to bridge that gap to make sure it’s not ‘Hey, you work for me. You do what I say.’ It’s got to be, "we’ve got to listen to our professionals. It’s just, it’s a, it’s a it’s challenging. Maybe it’s progressive but if we, what I really try to show is how can we, if we’re doing this with a purpose… we can help show the connect the purpose of what we’re trying to accomplish, helping our clients in some instances change the world and we can help train you up in your skill, whatever area you are. Receptionist, legal secretary, whatever. You’re invaluable. We try to break down those barriers, but it’s not you can go too far on the spectrum, right? And then everyone has a voice, and then decisions are never made, and all of that stuff. So it’s just, it’s a balance, I think.

Russel Lolacher: So what is leadership’s role? Because in most organizations, there is a bit of a hierarchy. So you’re like, okay, I look on the organizational chart. You’re there. You must be in a leadership role. But if you’re telling me there’s kind of two levels really to this, how is leadership defined within that sort of flat organization, beyond obviously the upper tier, and what is their role in shaping culture?

Tim Lupinacci: Yeah. There’s definitely, I report to our board which, the board does have to be comprised of individuals who have law degrees, and it’s a 13 person board. They selected me, and I report to them. So there is that accountability. And then I have some direct reports at sort of the executive level, a chief operating officer who runs sort of the practice management function, chief finance officer, things like that.

But I think in our firm, for sure, and probably most law firms, but I know our firm, one of my key, if I said three priorities I have every day is driving the firm culture starts with me. And so that has to be, walking the halls when I go visit offices, and sitting in offices, and listening to people, and finding out what’s obstacles they’re having to do in their job, meeting in town halls when I’m in an office with the business services and support staff and listening, doing video conferences just so they can get to know me and that kind of thing.

It is interesting because it’s hard to find. Every business, everyone you talk to says culture is, we’re the best culture, right? Workplace culture. And, and different cultures are going to be, or different companies can have different types of culture and, and the indicia, indicia of culture are kind of what I think are important, like people having a voice, professionals having a voice and a seat at the table and respect and dignity and being open to listening to ideas and trying to get better every day.

And that’s something I have to lead. Humility. Talking about my mistakes, talking about that. I go, I have every about 4 to 6 weeks, I talked to a counselor, a therapist, just because I want to make sure I’m keeping myself healthy for the firm. And so that, all of those little things, indicia, I think help drive culture, importance of diversity, inclusion, equity, all of that. So, I think it’s just something we work at and and we do it with relationships and with who we, are I think.

Russel Lolacher: All the things that are a healthy culture, a healthy organization, but you’re also trying to bring it into an organization that is not known to welcoming new ideas and new ways of working. How did that shift happen? Or how are you still on that journey of that shift?

Tim Lupinacci: Still on the journey. Yeah our CFO has a saying he says, never never lose an opportunity lose a crisis use a crisis to have an opportunity to make change. Whatever. I can’t remember exactly what he’s saying, but that idea that when you are in a challenging situation, people are more open to maybe change.

But so we, when I came into the role, we’ve been plateaued financially for a while, for 4 or 5 years, and I think the industry had too. But, but we had and and there was a real urgency about, and we had had when I was in transition, we had our worst fiscal year end in a long time. So it’s a real urgency that we have to do something.

So that enabled us to, I talk about this idea of best run business principles, like law firms traditionally hadn’t been run as a business, it was more of this partnership type thing. I’m saying generally somewhere, obviously. And so we have to think of where that shows up as things like having expectations. What does it mean to be a shareholder? What does it mean to be an associate? What are expectations? How are we going to hold ourselves accountable? How are we going to elevate expectations over time? And then a lot of business hygiene getting in our world, getting time entered, getting bills out, following up with clients, all the basic stuff that companies do all the time.

So some of that helped us build some momentum. And so one of the answers about how we’ve been able to do it, is that then when things are going better, they see these folks they’re trying some things that are working. So that helps, but it’s, it’s Herculean change management. And then you get in that whole line of cotter and all that stuff about how they do that.

And it’s hard. I mean, we were talking with the leaders of another firm recently, just to kind of compare notes and see what we could learn from each other. And we were talking about that. Our change tends to at Baker Donelson tends to be more incremental because people, lawyers are skeptical as we talked about before we came on the line more than the general population.

And even with now, 3 or 4 years of really record success, it’s still the skepticism and we can make change, but has to understand the why and we have to talk through it and we have to go through some rocky parts of it. So then then it becomes oh, why haven’t we been doing that forever? So it’s it’s a journey for us for sure.

Russel Lolacher: I remember hearing a saying of what was the most instrumental thing and catalyst for change for your health to become a more healthy organization? Your executive? Nope. Your HR department? Nope. The pandemic. Yep.

Tim Lupinacci: And that that was part of it too because then after we were able to get some stuff turning around from the financial plateau. Then pandemic hit, right? And again another crisis and way to rethink how we do things and it helped us get healthy So you’re exactly right, Russel. And now you’re post that and then we’re like, you know we’ve got, we probably have a list of six or eight initiatives, things that we know we can do to get better. Utilization management’s one that’s kind of we’re thinking about but then wholesale, that’s gonna be a big change to help people think about managing their practice. And we can’t just switch that overnight. So it’s gonna have to be very staged.

Russel Lolacher: What is, utilization management? What is that as … to, Yeah.

Tim Lupinacci: Yeah, it’s, it’s more, it’s really getting in the weeds of how, we have like I said, almost 700 lawyers.

And if you have let’s say you have a hundred younger lawyers, associates is what we call them. And some of those associates have full plates of work plus more. They’re killing themselves. And then maybe you have others for a variety of reasons, they had a case settle or whatever, aren’t as busy.

And this is you would do this in general big business. Is there a way that you central, more centralize, probably more on a team or a smaller team basis, the workflow. Using some software to see who’s slow, who has some capacity, who doesn’t, so that the work doesn’t always just flow to Joe or Sally, who is your go to person. Maybe, John has some ability to take on some of that. So people, you balance out the workflow. And then of course, by, by doing that, it helps you become more profitable because you don’t have people who aren’t hitting their performance metrics and things like that. Our C. O. O. and our C. F. O. have been really testing it, but that’s sort of that concept. But that’s a big different than just shareholder saying, to your point earlier, ‘hey, get in my office. Here’s another project.’ To the person who’s right next door.

Russel Lolacher: And that, that sounds great. I also have, there’s the back of me, the leadership communications person in the back of me going, ‘that also sounds very big brother. That also sounds like a way of really micromanaging people.’

Tim Lupinacci: Right. No, and that was exactly my comment. I said the exact same thing as it sounds. How do we… Because it does make you more effective you’re better serving clients that you can get work done. I mean, there’s all kinds of positives and i’m not sitting here selling. I don’t have any stock in software management companies but but it is. I mean it is it’s a it’s a culture shift.

It’s a change I guess it follows on, nowadays in the legal industry. I know we’ve talked a lot about legal industry is, people don’t graduate, and maybe this is true across the board, but I just know my industry, people don’t graduate high school or college and say, I want to be a legal secretary, right?

That’s just not and it’s so we have a, a workforce that’s more folks are on the retiring end than coming into the pipeline. A lot of smart people have built out software type ways to help manage workflow among legal support coordinators is what we call them, but legal secretaries. So that maybe five secretaries can manage work of 25, 30 lawyers if it’s through a workflow type thing and they have to understand… so typically you do that with a practice like a corporate practice.

So those five professionals really get to know the type of work. But then it evens out the flow, so it helps us. And we’ve implemented that. It makes it much more efficient. We have a group in our national office that calls themselves the fab five because it just works really well. It is a little. That’s still a little big brother, but it’s making us serve clients better.

So it’s the world we live in, I guess, right?

Russel Lolacher: No, and it’s a fair point. And I’ve been to a few conferences lately that talk about AI to some degree, where it’s you’ve got some people touting AI, like it’s the second coming and it’s the best thing that’s ever happened. And the other end going we’re losing our humanity in this. If we don’t, technology is great and technology should be absolutely used, but if we only rely on technology, because technology is biased, because it’s created by human beings.

Tim Lupinacci: Right.

Russel Lolacher: So as long as it’s tempered within an environment of compassion, empathy, true leadership,

Tim Lupinacci: Right.

Russel Lolacher: Any technology can be great, but also technology can be horrible based on the leadership that’s implementing it and how it works.

Tim Lupinacci: Right. And then there’s a whole nother level when you talk about AI and the legal because because as you said, I mean there’s bias in the data that AI spits out. It also spits out stuff that’s not accurate just because it’s finding the best possible thing. And there’s already been headlines of lawyers who have cited things in briefs on cases that don’t exist and getting called on it because they relied on it. So it’s… I agree. We have to harness it for the good while remaining, and I totally agree by maintaining the empathy and the, and the compassion. And then we can better serve clients, but it’s yeah, it’s a new new world out there.

Russel Lolacher: So something that’s not a new world is the perception of work life balance and burnout when it comes to lawyers. So I was looking at a survey, CLEO’s put a survey out in 2018. So this was pre pandemic. It’s their legal trends report. 75 percent of lawyers frequently, or always, work outside of business hours.

So that’s pretty much all business. If 75 people are doing it, that is business hours. With 39 percent of lawyers saying that those extended hours negatively impact their personal lives. Now this tended to lead to more pressure on attorneys for long hours. Burnout is the norm. Very little work life balance.

Prestige is the goal. That’s it. That is the goal is the prestige. Now that’s, from the outside looking in, that’s always the assumption of what being a lawyer is. So my question to you is if you’re coming in here and trying to make change, trying to make change in an environment where this is, this is the life.

This is what the TV shows and the movies tell us this is, right? But at the same time, you also have probably the old guard going, this is how it always is. It should be. Cause everybody’s got to pay their dues. And don’t want to change because they had to go through it as the Boomers or the Gen Xers.

Tim Lupinacci: Right.

Russel Lolacher: How do you approach that from a, from a perception and a generational issue?

Tim Lupinacci: Yeah. Great question. And that’s but we’re, and we’re working through it. You, you, you’re correct. And one part, the, the pressure and the stress of the profession is also dictated by the clients. And that’s who we’re serving. And so they’re not turning off their phones at five o’clock or six o’clock.

I mean a lot of the working over those hours. So, we have to serve clients and when our, our vision, our Baker vision is to become better trusted advisors to our clients, nothing new in that, but there’s things you can do to do that. You have to be responsive, right? So yeah, you’ve got, you’ve got that pressure from the client that does, that does pay the bills. You’ve got, I talked earlier about rising expectations of what we require of each other to try to continue to grow the firm and to get better, and then you’ve got the compassion and empathy of our colleagues who are really struggling and the statistics have only gotten worse as far as lawyers struggling with mental health, wellness issues, burnout, substance abuse, alcoholism, divorce. I mean, it’s those are all over the national averages of other professions. So it’s a, it’s a balance and it’s a lot of the disciplines and we talk a lot about that. And so what we’ve implemented some things to try to help folks manage that, including we, we’ve launched what we call Baker… because we’re Baker Donelson, everything is Baker something. Baker vision, Baker… but it’s access to counseling. I mean, in addition, we have the EAP, it’s an employee assistance program that I think most organizations do, but then we’ve tried to elevate it with very specific, almost concierge type consulting work. Access to consultants who can help, and therapists who can help. Even if it’s something with your child. That’s another big stressor. Our young lawyers or associates we have, they’ve got direct counseling with a couple therapists that have actually come and spoken to our firm if they want. And we’ve worked it out, rolled it out across all business services and professionals. And we talk about it. I’ve talked about it. I talk about that I need that check in every four to six weeks. And so a lot of it is just trying to have raised the consciousness that we’ve got to take care of ourselves first to be able to then show up best for our clients and for our colleagues.

So we continue to get better at that and we try to learn from that. But the other piece you’ve mentioned is the old guard and, and saying you have to do this. The, the generational shift is an interesting dynamic because, we have to balance it and, and we have to try to help work through that because, the young lawyers don’t want to, won’t stay here if we’re going to, they don’t want old school.

Many of them don’t even want to be shareholders or partners anymore. So we’re working on, are there alternate pathways that somebody may want to take less work, less stress. The stress, again, it’s somewhat dictated by the industry and the clients so that maybe you can’t take less steps, but maybe less hours to give you more time away.

And then we try to be intentional. Some people, it just isn’t the right profession to them, particularly in a big law firm where there are these heightened expectations and try to help them, with placement in other places. So it’s a multi faceted approach but I’m not saying we’ve got it all together because it’s just something we’re learning from every day. I’m trying to get better at it

Russel Lolacher: You make an interesting point too, and this could be, and maybe I don’t think it’s every industry might be like this, but certainly I understand the law industry being like this is you said, You’ve said it a few times, it’s dictated by the client. So there’s one thing to say employees first, but when you say it’s the client who’s dictating everything, it’s not employee first. Because if you give the therapy and the support and the counseling, that’s a reactive measure, not a proactive measure.

Proactive measure is I turn my phone off at eight. I don’t take phone calls. Like it is setting boundaries. It is… But again, I can say all that all I want. I don’t work in the law industry. That is…

Tim Lupinacci: Right.

Russel Lolacher: My world. But I can imagine there are some new associates or new people coming up going, that’s how I want to work. Why is the client determining whether I work or don’t work on the weekends? Where are my boundaries?

Tim Lupinacci: Yeah.

Russel Lolacher: How are you handling that?

Tim Lupinacci: Yeah. No, no, you’re exactly right. And I would say, I mean if we had a toxic client, I mean we have, we have fired clients I mean, so I don’t want to think like we just you know that we would do that. But, but particularly the pandemic showed it. I mean, clients had all hours of the day and night trying to deal with what do we do with all this stuff going on?

I’ll say I try to again lead by example. I talk a lot about I take a digital Sabbath. I call it. I just learning from some of my colleagues that do it more on their sort of the Jewish faith. But like Saturday at 5 to Sunday at 5, I try to shut off my phone and digital stuff and and not interact on, on work. And my colleagues know that. I’ve said that. And so now again, somebody could somebody could text me and, our CEO and others know how to get me if I need to, and I do try to shut off the phone at 8 o’clock. So I try to lead by example, but I’m also not directly serving clients right now. I think communication is a big part of it. We talk about build that communication with your client. I think, I think a lot of clients are companies, big companies are struggling with the same thing and they’re trying to work on boundaries. So I think having that healthy discussion with them, is important and, and, and may, and that does work.

I mean, if you can get to that position. I guess the point more about that is that at some level, even if you could shut it off at eight and you had 24 hours over the weekend, it’s still big law companies, big corporations that we’re serving. Their, their issues don’t stop, right? So it’s just it’s again all this a lot of this is a balance but…

Russel Lolacher: And also you’re dealing with global. I mean, as a global organization, you’re dealing with different time zones. And that is a huge factor because it doesn’t stop anymore. How do you manage that?

Tim Lupinacci: Well we don’t we don’t do as much globally, but I think we do have a global practice and they’re dealing with that for sure all the time.

Russel Lolacher: I think I might know the answer to this, but I’m super curious because you’re a comms guy as well, which does my heart very, very proud.

Tim Lupinacci: Yeah.

Russel Lolacher: What do you feel has been the most effective from someone who’s trying to be shift shifting culture and, and move into a new area of understanding around leadership and what cultures could be, what do you feel has been some of the most effective, I don’t like to get tactics into this, but really what has sort of been a superpower or a secret weapon for you in, that’s been most effective because you’re dealing with diversity, generational, cultural… Diversity in the fact that this is a different industry than maybe others are used to. So what has been some secret weapons for you?

Tim Lupinacci: Yeah, and I always talk about like most of my good, all my good ideas come from somewhere else. And I just try to modify it for what we did, but somewhere early on when I was in my transition to be CEO, I’d read about it some CEO that it did like a weekly five minute video to the, to their organization, just to let them know these are some things that are coming and changes.

And so again, under this umbrella of, I called it BakerNet when I was first getting in the role, because my predecessor had been the role 20 years. And now we’re really thinking about what’s next. And he had done a great job. And I did a weekly video, and that was a lot of talking about, so that would help the folks get to know me, know what we were driving, but then where it got accelerated was in the pandemic.

We didn’t set out that we were going to start doing daily videos, but it ended up, particularly in that March 2020, every day there was something else we needed to let our people know. So I was doing these daily videos, and we ended up doing about 450 daily videos, not on the weekends. And ultimately others joined in, so it wasn’t just me writing and doing it every day.

But that became a pretty big linchpin of culture, because people got our COO did a Five on Friday with questions people had submitted during the week. And then the fifth one was always something personal about her so that it got like it was it really helped build that that who we are and what we’re trying to accomplish. And so that that really did help and we now it’s interesting because then over time realized people aren’t really watching them as much and so then we backed it off to weekly and now we do it every other week and I still wonder whether we should do it a little bit more often.

But anyway, but that’s that’s one example. The other thing I will say is maybe it was a tactic, but it was just. Because I think this, this builds out culture and authenticity and trying to live out what you talk about when you talk about culture. A big part of who we are is the leaders going around to different offices, cause we’re in 23 offices across like 12 states. And so being in an office is important. And so I’m on the road a lot, or COO is on the road a lot, but during COVID we couldn’t do it. So when we finally started lifting all that stuff, we put together a Tim and Jennifer’s Grateful For You Tour. And we went together to all the offices back to back to back, almost like a concert tour, and we got tie dye t shirts and put the tour dates on the back and it was all Grateful Dead type stuff. Which I’m not necessarily a deadhead, but I mean, it was fun. But that was just another example of people getting to know who we were and we’re letting our hair down, so to speak. While we’re still driving forward, those are a couple things we’ve done to try to live it out.

Russel Lolacher: How do you know it’s landing? Because I know… I mean, it’s a traditional organization. You come in with tie-dyed and you know there’s some people just rolling their eyes.

Tim Lupinacci: Oh of course.

Russel Lolacher: And other people are like, finally! I’ve seen you on videos, I’ve never seen you in person before and they’re rolling out some red carpet.

How do you know, how do you know it’s working?

Tim Lupinacci: Yeah. I mean, that’s a great question, Russel, because that is, I mean, it’s, it’s to some extent, everyone’s going to say it’s, it’s working or hitting if they’re talking to me, right? Because, oh, I love how you do this. And they could be like, snickering behind your back. Oh, that’s not generally our culture, but, but they do roll their eyes.

I’m sure about some of the stuff that I talk about. And, I think, first of all, it’s the, the financial and engagement, we track engagement and firm brand and things like that towards our vision. Those are all increasing and doing well, so people see that it’s working and then I think they give you a little bit more…

So I think it is working because the vision is built on some of this stuff that maybe they say, oh, it’s consultant speak or whatever, but it’s just practical building trust advisor. So I think people, that helps get more buy in. And then maybe the eyes don’t roll quite as much because they say this is working and that’s just Tim. But I think it all comes back to that’s authenticity, too. Some of it is who I am and who our COO is and we may not be the best person to lead this firm, you know, in a couple years, but for this five years that we’ve been doing it right now, we’ve been the person that that authenticity has come through and get people to believe and have confidence.

I mean, some of you can test the tactics, I mean, is the viewership of the videos going way down? Are people not coming to our town halls that we do? Is our engagement surveys have gone up the last 3 years in all categories? And and so you would look for some trends there.

Now we get feedback in addition to they can check the one through five rating, but then they give feedback and we have, we act on that and talk about it. But I think you would see some red flags. But also I know what happens. I get eye rolls,

Russel Lolacher: You touched on something that I find to be one of the strongest secret weapons that not enough organizations do. Which is tying things to vision. Vision is probably the most, one of the most effective communication tools executive and leadership can use. And yet nobody does it. It’s amazing how we’re like, Oh, the leadership, the vision.

Oh, it’s on the wall. Oh no, it’s on the website.

Tim Lupinacci: Right.

Russel Lolacher: But nobody could recite it. Nobody knows what it actually is.

Tim Lupinacci: Yeah. And then when you’re not living it out,

Russel Lolacher: Yeah, exactly. How is, how have you used vision as a way of change and cultivating culture?

Tim Lupinacci: Yeah so we did. So first it was really this Baker Next and we had to be thinking like a best run business and some of that. So it was really just communicating it and then trying to keep the drum beat going and connecting the why to it. But in 2022, in April, we launched Baker Vision 2028. It’s a longer term strategy of who we wanted to become. And so it was, it’s the cadence of communication. I mean, you’ve heard that I’ve been talked about if you say something over and over again until you’re sick to death of it, of saying it, you’re probably only about 40 percent of the way there. Just so we try to make sure it infuses everything.

And what I do, cause I know you do this, you’d love this too, about telling stories, we tell the story of Baker Vision, like telling the story of whether it’s a lawyer or someone without a law degree, who’s embracing this idea of being trusted advisor, because it is inclusive of the entire firm because you can build trusted, you need to build trusted relationships in the office, whether you ever see an external client.

So we, we do the drumbeat of like, why this is important. We come behind it with skill building. We’ve done, I called it, people made fun of me like a trusted advisor, mini MBA. Because, I mean, MBAs are pretty big deals, and I don’t mean to suggest that that’s the kind of depth of training, but we’re trying to help people get better at it.

And then we have a charter, and we try to test if we’re going to make a decision about something, does, is it something that follows what we’re trying to accomplish with a vision, yes or no, that’s making our decisions. And then, I’d I mentioned, have some measures there’s some financial measures, engagement, what does the industry think about us, because I think our national brand will go up if we’re becoming better trusted advisors. It’s not a guaranteed thing, but that is an indicia that we are building our brand if CEOs and general counsel recognize us more. And it’s all on a 2 page charter that we talk about. And every meeting we have starts with a one slide, that’s kind of a summary of the vision.

And I talk about, I try to bring examples of who are building trusted advisors in industries and things like that. It’s a whole plan, though. You’re right, Russel. You can’t just put it in the dress drawer. And we had, we had somebody help us build out that charter, who was an expert in it, because it is, it’s a talent that not many people have.

Russel Lolacher: You have to operationalize it. You have to, I mean, you made, you made the cliche of the charter that’s on the, the folder just above the garbage icon on your desktop.

Tim Lupinacci: Yes.

Russel Lolacher: You never look at it.

Tim Lupinacci: Right.

Russel Lolacher: We have one. I think we looked at it three years ago and that is so common and yet they spent, we spend so much money and so much effort for a couple of months to create something that we then ignore.

Tim Lupinacci: Right.

Russel Lolacher: Yeah, until we want to redo it again.

Tim Lupinacci: Because now you got, yeah, we’re going to go, we’re going to go do something new and everyone gets excited and then it goes in the desk drawer again. I totally agree and that’s one piece I didn’t mention, like our Chief Operating Officer, she has each of the business units, we call them departments, but business units, they’ve got, they’ve built out their own plans of how they’re executing on Baker Vision 2028 and what they’re doing and then they’re held accountable to that.

That book Playing to Win by Lafley, I think, he talks about how you have to cascade it down and it doesn’t just, it’s not just the firm, it’s to the business units, and then the individuals have to understand their part of it, and then it’s like a circle.

Russel Lolacher: If an employee doesn’t see themselves in the vision and mission, why are they there?

Tim Lupinacci: Right.

Russel Lolacher: They’re there, they’re there to punch a clock and not really contribute to the level of what’s needed for business outcomes and, and the vision of the organization.

Tim Lupinacci: Right, And then there’s a whole nother discussion, which we’ll get into about because, I mean, I’m not suggesting that, it’s the right length. There’s reasons why we did a five and a half year deal.

Russel Lolacher: Right.

Tim Lupinacci: But now we’re in year three. What, how, and like we, we came into this year saying this, we’re going to double down on these core principles because they’re working, but we want to double down to have greater impact.

And so this year has been talking about the greater impact you individual can have in living out these Baker Vision principles, right? So it’s, you have to keep it fresh when you’re kind of in the, in the wilderness between the start, the launch and the end, I think.

Russel Lolacher: And, and I think it’s, and I understand… so in my brain, I’m thinking a vision never changes, right? A vision shouldn’t be three or five years. It should be the always North Star and a mission is the three to five years, but whatever works for you, man, it’s just, it’s name things what you want.

Tim Lupinacci: No, I totally agree. You’re right. I mean, you got to have the North Star that guides, that guides anything, that trumps what we call vision. Others may be missions. I totally agree. Mm

Russel Lolacher: I have an interesting question because I, again, this is outside looking in. Transparency is not something the law institutions have been known for when it, and the reason I say that is not… It’s a risk aversion thing.

Tim Lupinacci: hmm.

Russel Lolacher: It’s not anything to do with…

Tim Lupinacci: Totally agree.

Russel Lolacher: ‘We don’t want to be transparent. We just have 17 books of legal precedent that we have to… can’t say nothing because we might get in trouble one day.’

Like we get it in other industries, but the law industry is so about that. So how has that restrictiveness, or maybe not restrictiveness, impacted a lot of this around transparency? How have you tackled that?

Tim Lupinacci: Yeah, no, it’s interesting. I think there’s two aspects of that because you’re exactly right. I mean, as a profession, there are precedents that cases from 200 years ago that still guide some of the law. Maybe even more than that, right? I, now, now I’m getting kind of a flashback to those horrible days in law school of these principles I did, no idea and understand, but I don’t even know what they mean today, but I had to study them. So there is that, and it is, I mean, that’s, it’s a profession and, and there are some barriers to entry and all of that, and we could unpack, whether that’s good or bad or not. But then within law firms, there’s a wide disparity of even transparency within a particular culture.

So we’re overly transparent. Every shareholder can see everyone else’s compensation and how they’re performing on their metrics and everything. There is a like I don’t, a young lawyer or a business services professional wouldn’t see all that, but we’re wild, wildly, but they can look at all their financial performance of their own and all that stuff.

Some firms are what people call black box. They set compensation and everything with a smaller committee, and you don’t know what everyone else makes. Where we’re, we have a lot of people involved in like our compensation setting. So we try to, our culture has been that we’re very transparent. We’re very open. We don’t try to hide the ball. It showed up again during COVID when we’re doing these videos just to say, okay, this is where we are financially. I mean, we, we do report how we’re doing financially to all the firm in, in town halls that I do and go through our financials. But I think that’s what different firms choose what works for them.

So it’s two different aspects.

Russel Lolacher: So if you’re trying to shift a culture that has been traditional for so long, not only traditional in itself, but also people come in with a lot of baggage and assumptions as to what working for a law firm will be…

Tim Lupinacci: Yeah.

Russel Lolacher: How do you hire for culture fit? If somebody is coming to an organization and they’re just out of law school going, I’m going to work 97 hours this week, like they know that’s that’s what they’re assuming.

Meanwhile, you’re talking about all this transparency and different ways of working and how do you, how do you align those?

Tim Lupinacci: Yeah, it’s a whole lot of different things. And again we try to live it out and I, I always tell people if, if what we say is not what you’re experiencing, call me on it because we need to figure that out and we get better at it. But there’s a lot of, so if it’s somebody who is a more senior attorney who’s at another firm, who’s got that book of business that they want to walk across the street, some of it is just getting to know them and, and, and really we’ve got some stuff on paper, but then also in these meetings that maybe I meet with them or our chief growth officer does really unpacking what our culture is. And it’s not going to be the culture that everyone wants to live in. I mean, for sure.

It’s, that’s, it’s, you got to figure out so many law firms are doing incredible work for incredible clients, but there’s different cultures. So we try to show that in that setting. In, in new lawyers coming out of law school the legal industry has this very robust summer associate program where folks after their first and second year of law firm come for six to ten weeks and work.

Now it’s not like the stress and the pressure of when you start as a full time employee because there’s parties, you’re trying to get to know people in the social setting, but they do, they do have work and they can have a lens into what’s going on around the firm. And then I think same on the business professional side at the sort of more senior level, you’re going to have interactions with a lot of other executives or leaders in the firm to try to see whether you fit with the culture.

So there’s, it’s very, I mean, obviously, you know this, I mean, the, the, it’s a waste of money to hire somebody that’s a bad fit. So you try to do that in a lot of different ways. We’ve not gone to that. I know some firms, law firms, I know other organizations use like testing to see if people fit within the certain parameters, like psychological testing or personality tests.

We’ve not done that yet. We’ve looked at it. We’ve wondered about whether that would help us. But so we test, we try to test it a lot and be open about who we are, and it’s not going to be the right fit for everyone. And it isn’t always when they come, right? I mean, then you have to make the hard decision, but…

Russel Lolacher: Fair. And I’m always nervous about this personality test because it’s so you want just one type of person working here?

Tim Lupinacci: Right now, that’s what yeah.

Russel Lolacher: Do you want some diversity in different ways of thinking? Cause you can’t use the word innovation in one sentence and then say, we want this type of person only working here in the other sentence.

Tim Lupinacci: Yeah, no, totally. That’s why we’ve steered away from it. I mean, the Baker of Baker Donelson is Senator Howard Baker, who was well known. He was, people still write about him about how he always viewed like he was a politician, Chief of Staff to, I guess, Ronald Reagan. He was very involved in the Watergate.

I think he asked the question about who knew what, when, or whatever that is, kind of famous big politician, but his whole focus on light was like the other person may be right. I want to sit down across aisles in that political world, but in anything and understand and get better because we have different views.

And yeah, that I totally agree that that’s why I think I personally have steered away and from trying to do those tests because you do want diversity of opinion.

Russel Lolacher: It’s funny we say that and then we know the world we live in. So I’m like, it almost sounds quaint.

Tim Lupinacci: It does. That’s why he still gets cited. I mean, it’s interesting. People say, oh, we long for the days of Senator Baker or I can’t really Senator Daschle or Senator Dole, things like that, that people could really come together and talk and…

Russel Lolacher: Yeah, that’s, that’s not an America thing. That’s not a Canadian thing. That’s a global thing. So yeah, no, I totally hear that. So I want to flip it from the new hires to people that have been around for a while. And I know we sort of touched on the generational thing. Some people don’t want to change. Some people have been through so much change in the last five years they’re like, I don’t want to change one more thing. And you’re coming in here, Tim, and telling me that this is going to be a new way of working for a traditional organization that works for me. Why would I want to change anything? When you look at leadership that might be resistant, and when I say resistant, I mean a roadblock, they are not interested in changing at all.

How do you address, and I don’t want to say bad leadership, because that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re a bad leader.

Tim Lupinacci: All right.

Russel Lolacher: They are too rigid for any kind of change management. How do you approach that?

Tim Lupinacci: Yeah, I guess the one way I’ve done it is again It may be very practical, but and it hasn’t always worked, but I loved you know Churchill did what they called dinner table diplomacy There’s actually a book that talked about how he would use the dinner table with opposing leaders and opposing politicians and view people to try to said once you got around and you were eating a good meal, and in this case, drinking a lot of whiskey and smoking cigars, which I don’t, not smoking cigars, but that you would get to know the person and could really unpack the why and understand, and then also you could share why you think this is a good thing, and it doesn’t always come out like you, come out with a big accord to end the war or anything like that. But I like dinner table diplomacy because you get to know people and and really understand what’s driving them, what makes them tick, what’s their journey. I mean, I think we talked about that earlier about that’s really vital about where you’ve come in your career.

Oh, my boss that you said to me, I don’t, when I learned like, The boss I talked about who had yelled at me, I don’t know. He didn’t may not have had those role models, right? He may have had. I, I try to use that and then build that trust and, and then try to take a small step. And it doesn’t always work.

And we’ve got a few people who kind of refuse to change, but but then they, when they see what we’re accomplishing and they want to try to get a part of it, then they have to kind of moderate a little bit to take advantage of some of the resources. And then in some cases we’ve had instances of people that.

We couldn’t really change and they were really toxic and we had to ask them, you know in a compassionate way, work through, you know professionally, exiting the firm. Which it was hard when they’ve got a big book of business but you just have to do that to be true to what you’re trying to drive. So those are some things i’ve tried to do on that.

But it’s just a constant daily step and and you have to work at it.

Russel Lolacher: I love that you ended our conversation by talking about the importance of relationships, Tim. Weird, weird.

Tim Lupinacci: I know. That’s why I love your program because this is so beneficial because that’s the key of everything. It really is. I mean it what it’s what gets me up in the morning. It’s not, I mean, it’s not the fact that we’re driving increased financial performance and stuff. It’s our people and it’s those relationships and people said you should get exhausted. You’re on the road all the time and I have to have downtime. I have to refuel. I got to find my own kind of, but I love being around our people. I mean, it really just gets me energized. And so it is, it’s all about relationships at work.

Russel Lolacher: I love that. If I didn’t have one more question to ask you, Tim, I’d be like, let’s end it there. It’s perfect.

Tim Lupinacci: Mic drop, right?

Russel Lolacher: So Tim, to wrap it up, what is one simple action people can do right now to, right now to improve their relationships at work?

Tim Lupinacci: It’s something I was actually doing this morning. I thought about it. I really love writing really notes of thank you to people around our firm. It’s so simple, but that just short note of appreciation, I mean it can be a word passing in the hall, but just just a handwritten note seems to have, I mean, it seems quaint going back to, but, I, I know when I get, I have a desk drawer of notes that people have written me over the years.

And when things are hard, I’m having a really bad, terrible, no good day, whatever that book is, I pull out that list and just start the packet and start reading it. So I would encourage everyone write a note of gratitude to somebody, just thanking them for what they’re doing or how they impacted you.

It would be really powerful, I think.

Russel Lolacher: That is Tim Lupinacci. He is the chairman and chief executive officer of Baker Donelson, one of the largest law firms in the U.S. Thank you so much for being here, Tim.

Tim Lupinacci: It’s been great, Russel. I could keep talking.