GMT Episode: Rob and Murray dive into brand, culture and cross border mergers with global branding guru Bill Schroeder, Principal, Clarity Consulting Group (Part 1 of 2)

In this episode of GMT (and the next) Rob and Murray are joined by Bill Schroeder principal and founder of Clarity Group Consulting, the premier professional services brand advisory. Bill and the Clarity team have worked with some of the most notable names in global law. In his trademark down to earth style Bill shares Clarity’s simple yet profoundly actionable definition of brand. We cover a multitude of brand and culture issues relevant to the modern law firm, especially those merging or considering a merger. Please make sure to listen to part two in which we take a deep dive into brand and cross-border mergers.

Contact Rob and Murray:
Robert C. Bata, Founder and Principal, WarwickPlace Legal
Email: rbata@warwickplace.com

Murray M. Coffey, Founder and Principal, M Coffey
Email: murray@mcoffey.net

Transcript

Unknown: 0:00

Robert, welcome to GMT, the podcast for globally minded law firm leaders with your host. Robert Bata, principal of Warwick place legal and Murray Coffey, principal of M Coffey, between them, Rob and Murray have about three quarters of a century's experience working with some of the most notable law firms on the planet. This podcast is designed to help those law firm leaders tasked with growth make great decisions about whether and how to implement cross border expansion for their firms and what it takes to succeed. And now. Rob Bata, you

Rob Bata: 0:43

Hello everybody. This is the GMT Podcast. I'm Rob Bata. I'm here with my co host, Murray Coffey, and we're delighted to have Bill Schroeder with us, who is a wonderful expert on branding, and we're going to be talking a lot about what branding and culture have to do with success and also with its role in mergers and even at cross border mergers. So Murray, take it away.

Unknown: 1:14

Sure, absolutely. Well, first of all, welcome, Bill. We are We are thrilled to have you with us, and just so we have pure transparency here. Bill and I have known each other a long time, and Bill and I have worked on a couple of different projects together professionally over the years, including a very significant brand work with with one of my former firms. So I can testify that Bill and his team are fantastic, but Bill Schroeder is co founder and principal of clarity group consulting. Bill and clarity, which everybody calls them, clarity, are truly one of the most sophisticated and influential brand consultants working in professional services today, Bill has broad based experience conducting brand work at some of the world's largest law firms, including Davis, Polk, Simpson, Thatcher, Dentons and many others. Bill and clarity have also consulted on some of the most recognizable global brands, including Associated Press, BBC, news, Morgan, Stanley, IKEA, timberland and Rainforest Alliance. Before he and his partner, Siobhan burns founded clarity. Bill worked in house in various creative capacities at such high growth firms as DLA Piper and then across multiple brand development agencies, serving in a variety of senior roles. And if that is not enough. He has also taught graduate level courses at Columbia University and at Pratt Institute, lectured at New York University and the new school. He received his master's degree in design management from Pratt Institute, a Bachelor of architecture from Virginia Tech. He holds an executive certificate, executive certificate in organizational consulting and change leadership from Georgetown and was born in Okinawa, raised in Bangkok, then Athens Frankfurt and Washington DC. So Bill has earned his Global Citizen badge from very early on in life. So Bill, welcome, wow. Thank you. You make me sound really, really good. I appreciate it, because you are really, really good. So started, I thought we would define terms. You know, bunch of lawyers on this call, and lawyers always like to define their terms. So I would like to ask Bill to define the term brand for us, what a brand is, how we think of brand, and it's, generally speaking, not what you might think. So, Bill, why don't you take it away? You've got a great, very direct way of describing this, and I think it's going to be helpful to all of our listeners to hear this and kind of think about this as we're proceeding through the discussion. Great, yeah, thank you. Thanks again for having me. I'm really excited to be here. You know, when I start teaching my course at Columbia, the first question I asked the students is, how do you define brand? And there's a million different ways to talk about brand, you know, and sometimes you hear people say, Well, it's the impression people have about your organization. You hear, it's the way people talk about you when you're not in the room. You know, you hear, it's your logo, it's your website, it's all those kinds of communication vehicles. But at clarity, we really define it this way. We say a brand is a promise of performance, and that performance must be delivered consistently to be effective. And the reason we really like this definition is because it really says that you have control over your brand and how it's seen in the marketplace. It isn't just somebody's impression. It's really something you're delivering upon. So it's not really if you think about it that way, it's not just about how clients think about you. That's more your reputation brand is really about what you do. Know and how you do it and how you do that distinctively, right, separating you from the pack. And also, when you think about brand this way, it also means that having a strong brand is not only marketing's responsibility, which is where most people think brand lives. It's really everyone's responsibility. And as we're going to, I think, talk about it, it really comes sort of at the nexus of people and marketing, so that sort of HR talent and leadership area of that world, particularly in a professional services environment where it's all about your people. Yeah, it's

Rob Bata: 5:34

a very interesting point which people don't really think about, certainly in the law firm context, that what you just said, it puts a responsibility on everyone. So it's not, you know, people sometimes think of brand or branding and marketing and so forth. You know, there are people who do that for us. You know, they'll create a logo and so forth. Instead of thinking it's my job to show that I'm going to perform according to these criteria, these requirements, these responsibilities that that I've created for myself with the help of people like you, very interesting,

Unknown: 6:12

exactly, exactly. And I think that has to be sort of driven from the top down, but you have to get everybody in the organization engaged with the idea that they're part of this and they're delivering on it, and have to know how to do that in a way that's consistent. And I think it's very important the definition that you've just talked about in terms of brand bill, it's very important in a professional services context, because, you know, we are and everybody who's listening to this is involved in professional services in one which one form or another, we are, what we're selling, if you will. And and so maybe you can talk a little bit about the particularities of brand and professional services in you know to and how that, you know how that, where that interplay is, and why that's especially important for organizations like law firms and consultancies, etc. And law firms have a hard time with brand, and we'll talk a little bit about that, but, but thoughts on perfect you know, the peculiarities of particularities of professional services? Yeah, exactly. So, you know, I've worked in consumer branding before. You know, you mentioned some of the brands I worked with, and the real difference is, in a professional services environment, there's no product, right? There's no iPhone, there's no shoe, there's no tangible product that we're trying to sell. And in that world, the quality or the performance of the product really is a major way the brand is experienced. Right? If your iPhone isn't working well, you're going to have a bad impression, and it's going to start to tarnish the brand. But in professional services where you don't have those products, essentially the people, their skills, their talents, their approaches, their style, the way they interact with each other and with their clients, that really is the brand experience, right? So how you get your people to deliver again, as we were talking about, that's really what's critical, and that's the big difference we really point to. You know, when I first started working with law firms and other professional services organizations, we would draw from other service categories. So we would look at brands like four seasons, or brands like, you know, retail brands, while they do have a product, right, the Four Seasons has a hotel room and an experience. A lot of what they do is train their people in the way of the brand. So what are our shared values? What are our core values? How do we deliver on that? What's our tone when we interact with customers? And so we would start to draw examples from other services categories to try to get our law firm clients to understand what we're talking about, and how we start to do that in a professional services environment. So while the brand does need to come through, and things like messaging, design, other types of communications, it's much more important, we think, for it to come through, and again, actions and service and the way you interact. And I think the other important link to make is that organizational culture and brand are also intrinsically linked, particularly in professional services. So I would give a working definition of organizational culture as a pattern of shared beliefs, values, behavioral norms, the way we do things around here is how I like to think about culture. So with that in mind, it's really not too big of a stretch to say that the law firm culture is your brand in action, right? If you have a really consistent, clearly defined culture, that's how you're doing things around here, and that becomes the brand in action. So at clarity, what we'd like to say is we help our law firms and other professional services clients with building a brand culture. We're really trying to get to that part that. Really get to the essence that this is about how we do things around here, for our clients, for each other, in a way that is really distinctive and relevant and authentic. Those are kind of the pillars of it. And you know, it's, it is a it is. It's when you see the when you work on these, these, these kinds of projects that Bill and I have, and you see the light bulb go off, start to go off in in the above the heads of the of management and partners and even your marketing and business development team members, it becomes, it becomes a, it becomes a sort of a joint purpose that maybe didn't exist before. And I think that also, you know, talks it also talks to us about about culture, and this kind of leads into, you know, what, what the what happens, or whether it does happen, brand with in the context of of mergers, and we're, you know, we've got domestic mergers, we've got global mergers, we've got big brands, you know, we rob we've been talking, it feels like for months and months now, about the AO Sherman merger, two really strong brands out in the market who are, who are joining up, and we're all watching that from various from our various purchases and various perspectives. I'm watching it from a comms and branding perspective. I know there's folks who are looking at it from an operations perspective, but you know your experience bill, and you know, when you think about from like a DLA, I mean, DLA, DLA formed, Dentons formed through maybe dozens of mergers during the as they were kind of doing the run up, talk to us a little bit about that, about about brand, about what, what happens in mergers, or should happen in mergers, and if, in fact, you have to have a perfect match of brand and culture in order for a merger to be successful, yeah, I don't think it's possible to have a perfect match. And I'm not even sure you want that, you know, I think it's, it's not something you're going to achieve. You know, in the case of these mega mergers, obviously, then you guys are probably more equipped to talk about this than I am. But obviously, they're looking for business synergies, if you will, right? They're looking for complimentary services, practices, geographies, and being able to leverage that right, and, you know, to grow profitability and those kinds of things, revenue. What we would argue is, in order to make it successful, you not only have to have a communications approach that reflects who we want to be, who we want to be as a new firm in the marketplace, as a combined firm, but you need to do the work to ensure that you have complementary cultures and you're not going to have again, identical cultures. And when we talk about culture, the foundation of culture are things like shared purpose, right? A purpose for the organization, shared values, personality and characteristics that are true to the way we do things around here, things like mission and vision come into this. These are all sort of the building blocks of brand. So you're looking to see where the commonalities are, and in some of these big firms, or even smaller firms, where they're bringing in a group from another, just a lateral group, perhaps they might be very, very different, and the answer might be, we don't have a lot of synergy, but this still makes sense from a business standpoint. So you least need to be aware of what the issues are going to be culturally, so you can start to address them. But I think the ideal scenario is that you're building a new culture, bringing the best of both, and trying to leave behind any aspects that weren't so great or won't serve the new firm, is a better way to think about it. So we try to think about as we build the brand, how do we future proof the new firm? How do we create the new firm and with a and Oh, Sherman? I think that is the challenge. Is to say, how do we create something new that brings the best of Aono and the best of Sherman together and lifts them both up as this new firm?

Rob Bata: 14:22

Yeah, I think, I think that that's a that's a very important point, that that merging doesn't really mean you're going to just stay with the same brand or same culture, if you will. That you know, how will that merger play out in terms of what's new, but at the same time preserves what's what's best about the old. So this, this brings me to kind of a sideways kind of question, which is, I'm very fortunate that most of the clients I've worked with who wanted to merge and who've done mergers. I usually have said, Look, culture is really, really, really important to us, and it's very important that there be some synergy, and that the cultures match, you know, even if they're not the same. And I like hearing that, and that's all, I think that's very positive, but, but the reality is that you go on every single law firms website and they say that they have, you know, some sort of unparalleled culture that's greater than anybody else's culture. And people become a little bit cynical about those kinds of declarations. And so I wonder who, who cares about culture? Because to me, there are two constituencies, lateral, hires or or or new recruits, entering, entering law students, and presumably the the non lawyers in the firm who want to be in a place where you don't throw your telephone at a secretary, or, you know, and you know that that sort of thing. So I just want to get your sense of what is this discussion of culture all about, and what's real about it, and what's just words.

Unknown: 16:21

Yeah, that's a good question. I think you have to dig further into, you know, just hearing that we have a great culture, right? We have to dig deeper and find out, what do we mean by that, right? So a partner at a Skadden, or a Kirkland, or, you know, one of these big sort of New York powerhouse firms, if you will, global powerhouse firms, they have defined cultures, but it might be very different than a regional firm, or it might be very different than, you know, frankly, DLA Piper, when it merged, which was Baltimore, San Diego and, you know, sort of non London, UK. You know, this was a different kind of firm, and different kind of values and norms again. So yeah, they both have cultures, and they could define them. But how do you start to really dig in and see what that means? Not just, oh, we're very collaborative. We're very collegial. At the surface, you hear those kinds of things, but to really do it right, you want to dig in to really find, get a sense for what does it really mean to be one of us, because we're real in branding, it's always about differentiation first. So we're really trying to dig down to figure out, how do we separate you from other big, globally merged firms or other firms in your peer group? So we do a lot of research. We do a lot of one on one interviews with partners. When we worked with you know, Dentons, we talked one on one to hundreds of partners in three legacy firms in order to get a sense for what they thought was really distinctive about their approach to their client service, among other things. And in our research clients, they don't say they care about law firms brand or culture per se, but they do talk about the qualities they appreciate in their firms and the lawyers they see as best to work with. We hear a lot about that. Not surprisingly, the things they talk about are emblematic of culture, to how the people interact with them and with each other. I will talk to lawyers and firms and they'll say, my clients don't care if we get along. That is not true. Clients care that you get along, and they talk about it. They want to know that you are going to service them well. And they want to know that you interact with your own partners and other people at the firm well. They notice those kinds of things. They want to know about how likable you are as a person, relationships that you have, and in the best cases, they say that everyone on the firm delivers on those qualities consistently, and that's how they start to talk about firms. I've heard, you know? I've heard, sorry, oh, go ahead. I've heard, you know, when I've had discussions with clients about about, you know about culture, although they don't, we're not talking about culture. What I hear that comes up is I have a great relationship with this partner at firm X. What I want with that relationship with that partner is more than just what we've got on the table that we're working on today. I want to know that when I have my next issue that may not be in that particular partners wheelhouse, that they're going to find and introduce me to the very best person at the firm who can, who can work with me on this, rather than the person who they share, you know, origination credit with, or the person that's, you know that that's, that's in their regional office and and I think that that's that, that is a that speaks to, sort of an expectation, maybe unsaid, that clients have about the impact of culture and. On their ability to get the services and the advice that they need. I've seen some pretty extreme early in my career, pretty extreme examples of partners that did not get along and had clients that had big needs and weren't getting introduced into those client relationships because the partners did not get along, which to me, seemed like, Whoa. That's, I think, how I were here. I think a couple things, right? We talked about brand as a promise or performance, which implies action and behavior, like what we do delivered consistently, right? So when we go in and we talk to partners and firms and other people in the firms and we talk to clients, you get into things like maybe 80% sort of operate in a certain way, and maybe 20% aren't quite there yet, but we need to know how we're going to get the other 20% to live up to certain standards of behaviors that, again, represent who we say we are and who we aspire to be. But you get into nuance, so you'll hear words like proactive or responsive. You know, there we need them to be incredibly responsive, and the firm is incredibly responsive. Well, what does that mean? What does responsive mean? And how do we demonstrate that? So to one partner in Milwaukee or wherever, responsive might mean I return a phone call within two hours to a partner in DC, in the same firm, it might mean within 24 hours, or it might mean Monday, because it's Thursday or it's Friday afternoon. So that's just a really simple example, but you have to dig into not only what is, what are these words that we throw around mean that are representative of how we do things around here, but also to what effect like, what is the end game of that trait that we say we live and then how do we get everybody to live it and deliver on it? And then the communications parts of brand are Curie key. You can't talk about being all these things and give specific examples if you're not doing them. And I think that's kind of the mistake firms and lots of organizations make. We're going to put out all this new messaging. We're this new merge firm, or we're this firm, and this is our brand, and this is what we stand for. But you can't just put out the messaging. You have to actually be living it so people see it in action. You can. People do it all the time, but it's not going to be as effective.

Rob Bata: 22:16

Yeah. Is it possible for a brand consultant to actually, if you will, lecture the firm or individuals within the firm to say, look, I've not spoken to 50 of your partners, and they agree on a, b, c, d and so forth. But one of the things that I keep hearing is that partner X thinks that she's the big dog and everything has to kind of go through her and whatever's her client sticks with her and so forth. And there's this one person everyone's afraid of, or whatever. Is there a point where, where the brand consultant sits down with the Management Committee, or with the senior lawyer, or with both, perhaps with that partner who exhibits bad behavior and says, Look, you have the you have the potential to have a brand that does All of these things that you hired us to do, but you kind of stand in the way of that. Can you say that? Do you say that? Does it happen? We

Unknown: 23:31

do. We do say that? I will say, you know, we comment brand, I think, from a different perspective, with clarity, we say we're helping our clients deliver brand driven change. So we're using brand research and strategy and clarifying what the brand is about in order to help the leaders in the organization transform in ways they want to see the organization move toward. So if we have clients, and all of our clients buy into that, or we don't work with them, they don't hire us. Because if you're a law firm leader or chief marketing officer, says, I just need a website. That's not clarity, right? Clarity is coming in to help you figure out, who are we, what do we stand for? How are we different? How is that relevant, and how is that going to come through in everything that we do? How is that going to be a touchstone for everything that we do? And if you buy into that, then you're buying something more robust, right? And so our work certainly talks about what differentiates the firm, but we also talk, as you know, a lot about culture and a lot about how things are done around here, and if things come up, it is our responsibility. We're being hired to report that back. Now, we're careful, and I think it's important for all consultants to do this. We're careful to try to be as objective as possible. So if I'm having 15 quotes on a topic, I'm definitely going to report that. If I have one quote, I might not report it, you know, I might put. Something in someone's ear, but it's not our opinion. I'm always really careful to say, here are the challenges we're hearing. Here are the so we're actually sort of crossing a bit in the business strategy, in a way, because we're not just talking about the experience of the brand outward in the market. I know that answers your question,

Rob Bata: 25:19

yeah, no, I think it does. I think that's very important for people to know too, that that you're you're not just out there creating, you know, you've taken a survey, you've talked to people, and you create a product that you drop in people's laps, but you're really talking it through. And when you identify a problem, if it's if it's pervasive enough, as for example, your example of you know, you hear the same problem from 15 people then then it's your responsibility to convey to the decision makers to make sure that that's known and dealt with. And I think that's important, because I think very often consultants of all sorts tend to be a little shy about what they think is ruffling feathers, whereas, in fact, the consultants job consultants get hired, and I think this is across the spectrum of consultancies. They get hired to to be a an objective observer and advisor, and also an extra pair of eyes when you need them. So that level of honesty is really important. And

Unknown: 26:26

I think it also comes through, not just in reporting the data and the research, but then when you get into strategy, that's where I think the consultant role really comes into play, where you're like, Okay, now, based on what we've learned, and based on the market conditions and based on who your competitors are, and based on where you want to go, here are the recommendations we think for how you want to position yourselves and what that might mean. And here's some ways to start to approach that change process and the the follow on, the follow on that, that in my experience, multiple times when you get to that point where you have the you have the got the definition of the brand out there, you've got some level of of consistent buy in across the across the partnership. And if you do it right, which I think you do Bill, you get great buy in. And it's not because you're putting something so generic out there that everybody can agree to it. There's like, there's, it's very specific and actionable. Then the other things that happen, that have to happen, that come out of that become, I wouldn't say, easier, but the decisions become easier. So, you know, it's, you know, well, gosh, we're, you know, we're, portraying ourselves in the marketplace in a way that our clients say is outdated. Okay, then what do we need to do to portray ourselves as a more modern, contemporary law firm? It might be a website, it might be, you know, digital communications, whatever the case might be, but that you're always going back to that, that that core, that anchor, if you will, in a good way, that that that allows you to say, well, you know, is what we're doing, furthering these things that we've talked about and these things that we've said that we have valued. And if you and this is where the this is where the CMO, this is where the managing partner, this is where the X com has to, has to come in, to not forget what we all agreed to and and to and to and to stick to it. And, you know, I that's, that's where, that's where some of the challenge comes in. And I know that that, you know, one of the things that clarity is is doing, more and more often, is is activation work to to help that go on. All right. And that closes part one of GMTs discussion with clarity groups, principal and founder, Bill Schroeder, please stay tuned for part two, which will be dropping in about two weeks. Thank you. You.