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PROFESSIONAL SERVICES BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT AND MARKETING INSIGHTS

| 26 minute read

CMO Series EP65 - Jen Dolan of Katten on establishing a successful work culture within legal marketing

The way firms operate day-to-day has changed. Many firms are adapting to professionals not returning to the office. With the culture of the marketing and BD department, and the wider firm, shifting - how can leaders establish an environment that engages employees, promotes productivity and keeps morale high?

Today, we are lucky enough to speak with someone well-versed in cultivating a cohesive culture within their firm, James Barclay welcomes Jen Dolan, Chief Marketing and Business Development Officer at Katten to the CMO Series. 

Jen shares how their feedback programs enable them to listen, engage and unite teams, building a healthy and successful work culture within the firm.

Jen and James discuss:

  • Jen’s career journey to her role now at Katten
  • Why Jen recently completed an MBA, and her experiences during that time
  • How those experiences have influenced Jen’s leadership style at Katten, particularly when it comes to managing culture
  • The perception of the firm’s culture eroding with teams not returning to the office, and whether that’s a misconception
  • How to go about rectifying any culture challenges, such as introducing feedback programs and listening circles 
  • How management processes and feedback initiatives work in practice
  • Notable successes of running feedback programs
  • Advice for marketing and BD leaders looking to implement similar programs


Transcription: 

Intro: Welcome to the Passle Podcast CMO series.

James: Hello. Welcome to the Passle CMO podcast series. My name is James Barclay, and I'm CEO of Passle here in The United States. Today we're going to be talking about how you can establish successful work culture within your legal marketing team. Obviously, over the last two to three years, the whole world has changed. The way firms are operating on a day-to-day basis has changed fundamentally for all of us. Many firms thought everyone would come back to the office, lots of people haven't come back to the office. We're really navigating how we do this hybrid working environment and how is leadership, particularly in legal marketing and law firms, how leadership can make the best of that change, drive productivity, ensure that their people are happy, ensure that the lawyers are happy, and make sure that generally, the team is growing fast and happy altogether. Today we're lucky enough to speak with someone adept at cultivating a cohesive culture within their firm. We welcome Jen Dolan, Chief Marketing and Business Development Officer at Katten. Hi Jen.

Jen: Hey James. Good morning. Thanks for having me.

James: Not at all. It's wonderful to have you. Typically, we're going to talk about how you're implementing programs to enable you and your leadership to unite your teams, to engage your teams, and building that successful work culture you built at Katten. But first, I just want to kick off the first question, which is tell us a little bit about you and how you got to your position at Katten.

Jen: Sure. So, a little bit about me, I guess starting first on the professional side. I have been in the wild and exciting world of legal marketing for about 15 years now. I spent the first half of my career on the corporate side of things in different professional sales, marketing and PR roles. And I relocated from Manhattan down to D. C. About 15 years ago and found myself in legal marketing, thinking that the skills and experience that I had developed in other professional services contexts might be relevant here. But really, knowing absolutely nothing about legal marketing, I sort of fell backwards by accident into this industry that I have made my home and have come to love so much. I started at WilmerHale in a business development capacity and was there for quite some time and then moved from Wilmer ultimately over to a sadly small but now defunct firm called Dickstein Shapiro in DC. Small really, at the time, kind of heavy hitting in investigatory and litigation spaces, and I moved over there as the CMO. That was my first foray into the C-suite and it was an interesting experience. I learned a lot being at that firm kind of across the breadth of my experiences, learned a lot about culture there since that's relevant to what we're talking about here today. And not terribly long after joining Dickstein, I was there for really only about 15 months. And then Katten came calling. And I remember when the recruiter who placed me here first got in touch about the opportunity and was talking to me about Katten and kind of what made it interesting and special, culture was what he kind of hung his hat on. Right. He was talking about the partners here, how they speak to each other, how they think about even something as silly as like meetings and setting, meeting schedules and that sort of stuff. And it really intrigued me. And when I came in for my interviews, I found that everything that he had described, you could see it from the moment you got here. Right. And part of that is the firm. Part of it is the DC office in which I'm resident. But culture is a very kind of unique, distinct thing here at Katten even relative to other law firms that I've been at and was the biggest driver to be ultimately deciding that this is where I wanted to be. So I've been with the firm since 2007. Now, as the Chief Marketing and Business Development Officer, and yes, still loving it. We've got so many exciting things on the horizon here.

James: Good. And as well as doing that, and I wanted to bring this up because we often, me and you talk about this quite a lot in being a CMO in a law firm. You've always got these plans and you've always got your strategies and you've got your team to look after. And you've also continually being hit with new challenges every single day. And I know that you're about to go off and run a retreat next week. You'll be deep into all sorts of tasks. And on top of doing all that, you also just completed your MBA. I'd love just to hear a little bit about that because I know that we're going to bring that into our chat about culture as well. But tell me a little bit about your MBA that you just completed, how you managed to actually do that whilst being a CMO.

Jen: I didn't sleep for two years is the short easy answer.

James: And we haven't even brought in the fact you've also got a young daughter as well.

Jen: I do, which actually probably prepared me better than anything else for getting my MBA. I was accustomed to not sleeping since my daughter was a year old when I started the program. I just finished my in May of this year, I finished my executive MBA at Georgetown, which is a two year full-time program. So you go year round. It is what is it? Every two weeks, you're in class all day Friday and Saturday, and then you've got a couple of kind of virtual classes in the mix of those two weeks and multiple kind of residencies and travelling opportunities and kind of global experiences relevant to your coursework. The reason that I was interested in doing it, quite frankly, was to broaden my skills, particularly in the areas of finance and strategy. And what I ended up kind of getting from the experience. In addition to the sort of knowledge and network of great colleagues. Many of whom are now friends. Was a sense of how to kind of broaden out what I do at Katten and think about what I do at Katten in a different way. Having more formal exposure to the development of strategy. The implementation of strategy. And particularly kind of how strategy and culture bump into each other and how they can either be supportive of each other or more often challenges to one another. We actually spent a decent bit of time in my strategy coursework at Georgetown talking about that and it turned out, again, just through kind of dumb blind block to be an incredibly timely set of conversations to be having and things to be learning about, because I also happen to go to school in the middle of the COVID pandemic. So we spent our entire first year of classes entirely virtual. We started back in school and then ended up going remote and whatnot. All of which is just to say that as the world of work and business was changing massively and we were all dealing with this upheaval of how to keep strategies in place and keep them running effectively when you need to pivot on your strategy in light of changing circumstances and how all of that was bumping into culture as I and others were experiencing that kind of firsthand in the workplace. I was learning about it at Georgetown, right, and I had this great sounding board of faculty and classmates to kind of bounce things off of and so it ended up being this really kind of interesting echo chamber that we were able to sort of stay in among my cohort and I and kind of sort through some of that stuff, which I was incredibly grateful for.

James: Yeah, absolutely. As you say, the timing was very interesting because it must have been very useful coming out of that MBA, going into the leadership role, obviously the leadership role you've got. But talking to the other leaders, particularly on the lawyer side, I'm guessing, about how you then planned what you did over the last six months, maybe tell us a little bit more, if you can just kind of go into the detail. Were you able to take what you learned on your MBA back to the leaders, particularly on the law side of the law firm, and say, hey, this is maybe what we should be doing?

Jen: Yeah. I think it was in two main areas. Right. What I did in my MBA coursework was most relevant and I was able to bring it back into the workplace. One on the strategy side. And that was as every business and certainly, every law firm is looking at the strategies that you had in place and have begun implementing and thought were wonderful and we're going to carry our firm to ultimate prosperity. Now we're all looking at them going, oh damn, the whole world is different, right? We're facing a recession, we're facing a tight labour market. We've got all of these kinds of macro factors. The strategies that we thought were going to work two years ago just aren't relevant anymore, right? Or may not be relevant. And certainly in the legal industry with the compression that you're seeing here, the increasing costs, a lot of what I did in looking at different business models and looking at kind of the adjustment of strategies, not necessarily scrapping an existing strategy, but evolving a strategy, if you will. A lot of that coursework was really, really relevant to conversations that I've had with Katten's leadership team, with our practice group leaders, you know, with members of our executive committee and then on the culture piece, right? Because again, what's the expression? Culture eats strategy for breakfast. Strategy eats culture for breakfast. I'm the world's worst with metaphors. Everyone who knows me will tell you I constantly confuse them and get them backwards and they make absolutely no sense. That's the charm of me. But the point is you can have an amazing strategy, right, that's perfectly timed and wonderful for your organisation. And at least in my experience, if you don't have a culture that is supportive and understanding and ready to embrace the strategy, it's simply not going to work. And everyone that I know at every level, business professionals and attorneys and law firm administrators, or law firm leaders, I should say, who are on the legal side, culture is what we're all talking about right now, right? Because you've got people working remotely, you've got generational differences, you've got the effects of COVID. There's just so many things pulling at the hems of the hemlines of culture, if you will. And I think, I think most people are feeling perhaps more so in the past, and I can say at Katten certainly more so in the past. Like if we don't get culture right, we're going to have a tablet problem. And in professional services, if you have to have a problem, you have business problem.

James: Yes, absolutely. There's a perception. I suppose. And this might be entirely wrong. So tell me if I am. But there's a perception that I've seen. Which is that the more senior lawyers are very interested in getting everyone back to the office because they perceive. I guess. Law firms have traditionally been built on the kind of apprenticeship model where everyone comes in the office and you learn your craft and you have to do that really by sitting next to someone. And of course that's shifted. Now you're already in a super regional, global business already. So I mean, I'm sure that's already but that's been a challenge forever. But from a business service perspective, from the people in legal marketing shown that productivity is outrageously effective from home. Has there been friction at all that catered between those parts of the business. The lawyer is saying, hey, you all need to come in and the business of doing a great job at home and you're in the middle of that trying to work out the best way forward. How are you navigating that?

Jen: You're absolutely right when you say that the business professional side, and certainly this is true of our marketing and business development team working from home and being able to offer our team a ton of flexibility in that regard has been a godsend. Right? And it's been a godsend in the sense of productivity. Right. People have more time available to devote to their work. It's in a comfortable environment, all of the things, but it also it kind of comes back to culture and to people's experience in the workplace. And for a lot of people, I would say certainly the majority of people in my team they're able to be kind of happier, more balanced and thus more productive members of the team. At Katten, we took an incredibly, I think, flexible approach. Kattenflex is what we call our kind of work-from-home hybrid work policy. And it really leaves the decision-making for how frequently roles in a particular department or practice area need to be in the office to the leaders of those areas. Right? So in the professional groups, it's the Chief Officer who decides how often a team or members on a team need to be in the office without there being kind of a firm mandated number of days. And I think what we're seeing now, and not unique to our firm, but certainly across the industry is on the legal side. Certainly, there's got to be more flexibility than there ever was before COVID I don't think anybody is arguing that, right? But I think seeing a lot of lawyers more concerned than they were perhaps as we were just starting to creep out of the pandemic with the impact on culture and on productivity by not having butts and seats, if you will, and in our team and in other administrative teams at the firm, we're actually seeing quite the opposite culture. Culture is improving. People on the team I think, are feeling better, more engaged, morale is higher and productivity hasn't taken a hit. So it's sort of interesting to me that you have these two groups of professionals who operate in the same environment, albeit in a different there are certainly some power dynamics that are different. But it's interesting to me that business professionals generally have found a way to really make this work and kind of capture the benefits that we had all been espousing about more flexibility in working from home. And it seems like we're struggling a bit to figure out how to make those true and make people feel comfortable that they're true for the legal side of our business.

James: Interesting. Okay. And what's obvious is that you made a distinct plan a while ago. When did you come up with Kattenflex? And is that evolving? Is there a team who's in charge of it or are you kind of evolving that separately as separate teams?

Jen: Kattenflex, the conceptualization of it began this is COVID times, James. So...

James: A couple of years ago, everything was a couple of years ago.

Jen: It could have been 2015, it could have been last week. It began well before we had all come back into the office and reopened our offices. So we opened our offices in April of this year. Kattenflex was conceptualized well before that as we were thinking about how we wanted people to return to work. What we found after talking to our partners, talking to our associates, talking to our business professionals, was that certainly people felt that it would be beneficial to them from a productivity and from an engagement and morale standpoint if they had more flexibility, had the option of as much flexibility as the firm was comfortable giving them. And I think the firm took the approach which makes sense again, because this is very consistent with the firm culture of letting the leaders of the respective groups within our firm so practices, departments, business, professional groups, right? Those who are sort of closest to the needs of a particular group, letting them make the ultimate decision on what was going to be best for in the case of our lawyers, their teams and their clients, and in the case of our business professional groups right. The individuals on the teams and our ability to support the lawyers in our respective areas. And so the conceptualization of it started a long time ago. As you can imagine, there were many, many, many rounds of internal discussions as to whether because we kind of knew that we were likely to be at the forefront of flexibility. I know a lot of other AMLAW firms have said come in two days a week, come in three days a week. But the fact that there is a firm, if not mandate a firm suggestion for a number of days was different than how we decided to approach Kattenflex. Now, that being said, we've also been very clear that this is going to be iterative, right? I mean, the whole world is sort of flying the plane, but again, metaphor that I'll mess up learning to fly the plane as we're actually in the plane. And so we were very clear that we were going to take this approach, but that we were to learn from it, right? We were going to see how this works. We wanted to make sure that our clients were getting the level of service, the responsiveness that they needed, and make sure that our practice group leaders felt comfortable leading the groups in a more hybrid setting. And so we continue to review it. We continue to think about kind of the various sets of constituents that are affected by it, partners, associates, clients, et cetera. And we'll see where it goes from there. But I can say with certainty on the business professional side, I don't see us going back to certainly in my department. I don't see us going back to any kind of set mandate for very consistent time in the office, right? Like we have folks in my department come in once a month so that for our monthly staff meeting, we're all together in our respective offices. We can grab lunch, we can have a cocktail. It's nice to see each other in person and catch up, but that's it. And I think asking people to come in once a month is pretty reasonable and seems to be working for our folks.

James:  Great and drilling into that because actually that's the bit you've had control, very much control over it. And the challenges for you with your teams now, have you ensured that your culture is protected, what you already had? How are you developing kind of a new culture, I suppose, as you onboard new people? And how do you make sure that you're not just sitting on zooms and doing tasks? What is it that you've built into process into systems so that you're building that team dynamic and you're evolving that culture in a positive fashion?

Jen: A thing that we have done over the last year that we've really invested a lot of time and energy and that has a number of different kinds of initiatives that fall under it, but that I would describe at the highest level as kind of our solid attempts to create or maybe to reinforce a feedback culture within the department. I think that has been hugely helpful, if I'm being candid. We really started thinking about this because we came to appreciate that there were pockets within the department where engagement and morale were perhaps not as high as we would have liked. And that not only troubled us on a personal level, right? Wanting your colleagues to feel good about where they work and the teams that they work with and how their contribution to a team is valued and recognised, but also when people aren't engaged in their morale dips, and productivity follows. And all of that is that much harder to manage in a hybrid or in a remote environment. So we thought it was really important, the leadership team in my department, and I thought it was really important that we shut up and start listening and try to implement a culture. And culture is how you implement a culture, right? You got to have some sort of tangible things that you do that become kind of pillars of the culture. And we really wanted it to be clear that these weren't just things that we were telling people we wanted them to do that sounded nice, but things that where they would see kind of demonstrable action and results coming from. So we did things like 360, We brought in consultants to do 360 reviews for starting with our leadership and senior team. And then on an annual basis, we'll be offering the opportunity to everyone on our team kind of broken out by level of seniority. We'll be doing rounds of 360 feedback reviews, right, so that we can help people on our team as individuals, become more aware of how they show up in the team, where their greatest strengths are, how their colleagues perceive working with them. We did a lot of listening circles working with the same consultant. We had them come in and absent the participation of leadership so that everybody in the team felt like they could be really candid, we asked people what was working, what wasn't, where were some of their greatest joys at work, where were some of the greatest challenges. And from that we generated kind of an action plan, right, of projects, initiatives, and opportunities for communication that we thought after brainstorming as a team and prioritising the order of them as a team that we thought would kind of most immediately impact the areas that people thought would be made better. So, for example, we now do cross-functional team meetings where we have groups within the department that most regularly work together and once a quarter, twice a year, whatever it is, we'll get the groups together to just kind of talk about our processes, talk about our output, talk about what's working, what's not and all of that’s fine. Anybody can do that. The really hard work that has gone into it has been making those conversations feel comfortable and safe for people in the department and on those two teams to really put on the table a spot of friction, right? Because the worst is you get people in a room and you go, OK, how's it working? And you know that there are things that aren't working quite as well as they could. And everybody says, no, it's great, it's wonderful, everything is perfect, it all works exactly. It's like guys come on. We know that's not true. And I give my team so, so much credit. I mean, we have such an amazing group of professionals in the marketing and BD team here and they have certainly with these cross-functional meetings that I'm referring to, but just the efforts that we've undertaken generally under this umbrella of kind of feedback culture, they have come to all of these with honesty and candour and bravery and they have pushed themselves outside of their comfort zone. They are kind and generous with each other. I mean, it's in the midst of the dumpster fire world that we're all living in. If you need something really heartwarming, seeing the way my team has shown up and has shown up for each other over this last year has been, has been absolutely beautiful.

James: That's fantastic. And I think what you just said there is really important, which is bravery, because that's not easy. If you do it properly, that's not easy at all, is it?

Jen: It's really not. I mean, there's a particular conversation that I'm thinking of where as the conversation is happening, I'm getting IMs from colleagues that are in it going, wow, this is super awkward. Okay, this one doesn't feel good. And you know, the truth is, as I was thinking about it in the middle of that conversation, it's absolutely right. Your visceral reaction is, yeah, okay, this is a tense conversation, right? People are being honest about what doesn't work. And sometimes what doesn't work is a process or ambiguity around responsibility. Sometimes it's people, right? Sometimes it's the personalities and kind of the way the personalities intersect. And so these conversations can certainly be, even if not heated, just sort of charged. Right? But the fact that they were charged told me that they were working. Right? And I think that the team would say the same thing. Right?  Those conversations that were the most charged, for lack of a better word, right? Are the ones from which we've started to see the best results. Right? Because people were willing to be brave and say, look, this really does not work. Let's just put it on the table and talk about it. And we push through the tough conversations in a respectful way that got us to the place on the other side where it's like, okay, I understand how this person thinks about something and I might not like it, but I understand it now. And so I can operate this way and they'll operate this way. You know, we have shared kind of ground rules with respect to how we'll deal with something. And so it's painful as hell. I mean, I will tell you, putting in place, if you do it the right way, I think pushing a feedback culture, it's hard and it is time-consuming. And at points, it might feel like this isn't like the real work that we're supposed to be doing, but in my view, it is. Right? It underpins everything and we're really seeing the results of it. And I can tell you from sort of how the team feels, how it feels to be a part of the team. It's pretty awesome when you get it right.

James: Yeah, I think that's spot on. If you essentially embrace the awkward and if you muck it up, if you say you're going to do feedback and then you do it in a superficial way where none of the real truth got discussed, that's even worse. I mean, then you're absolutely stuffed, aren't you? So, as you say, the bravery and the embracing the awkward and making sure you're having those challenging conversations is good. Is the key to it I guess?

Jen: It is. And look, it's also it's super humbling, right? That's the reason that we incorporated an individual 360 review component into what we decided to do because I can tell you I've gotten this wrong. Just me personally, as the leader of the group, I've gotten this wrong many more times than I've gotten it right in my type of patent. And one of the things that eluded me for a while and I feel pretty comfortable saying, although I'm sure my team will hear this and tell me if I'm giving myself more credit than I deserve. But I used to ask people to gift me feedback, right? Like, what do you guys think about this? What are we doing? And there wouldn't really be much of a response, or the response would be, it's fine, right? You sort of have a sense like, okay, well, I mean, it must be okay. Nobody really had much of anything to say. What I came to realise from going through a 360 evaluation process, right, and giving my team that kind of forum to give me their really, really candid because it was anonymised feedback, was people weren't necessarily comfortable giving me feedback, right? So here I am. I think I'm doing a great job constantly asking for it, but because nobody feels comfortable giving it, I'm kind of checking the box, mentally going, Well, I asked and they didn't want to offer. So there it is. Not realising that the burden is on me to make sure that people - introverts, extroverts, people who are more comfortable speaking in a group setting, people who want to talk more privately, right? Like, as their leader, it's my job to make sure that I am creating an environment where all the different kinds of people who show up to work and all different kinds of ways can offer feedback if I really care about getting it right. It's not just a platitude, which it never was. I just genuinely didn't understand that the way I was soliciting it was part of the problem. And so 360 reviews gave me that insight and I've changed it now. And now I have got tons of feedback coming in, lots of feedback.

James: And it's building that foundation for the future and it's building that foundation for what might be more difficult times ahead. We'll wrap soon, for other leaders in your position, what's one practical piece of advice that you would give them?

Jen: We benefited I hate to even suggest this, right, because I know how under scrutiny all of our budgets are. But what we benefited hugely from was working with a particular consultancy which if it doesn't offend anybody's sensibilities. I will shout out is Fringe PD, owned and run by Rachael Bosch, who was an absolute rock star and just a genius in this area, because I didn't really know where to start. I knew I had a sense of what I wanted to do and what we needed to do, but I wasn't quite sure how to do it. I think I had the good sense and maybe the humility to call in somebody in the form of Rachael. And kind of say, what do I do about this? Right? Like, I know that engagement isn't as high as I'd like it to be, but I genuinely don't really know how to tackle it. And she was the one who helped us think through whether 360 reviews were the right step, whether listening circles were the right step. When we got all of the feedback right, she sat down. She and I had a series of conversations to brainstorm on sort of proposed action steps that we could go back to the team with as a starting point. And then that evolved into something that was very much ours, the Katten marketing and BD team. So I guess the practical step that I would recommend for anybody in a leadership position who is perhaps as well-intentioned but ignorant as I was, is get the ear of somebody who's good in this space. And even if it's a little bit of financial investment, as it was for us, it's so worth it. Right. We work with lawyers, right? We all know that for people who are experts in areas, there's a reason for their expertise, right?

James: Expertise helps us all.

Jen: Absolutely. It is. It is. So embrace the expertise. Find somebody who's really good at this. Befriend them and heed their advice. Once you feel like you've got somebody that kind of understands you and your leadership style and the culture of the department that you're leading and the culture of the firm that the department is in, because for us, that was really the starting point that kind of helped us get started on the path that we're on now.

James: Fantastic. No, thank you very much. And thank you for going into so much detail about it.

Jen: Yeah, hopefully it wasn't too much. It's so very easy to make a generic statement of it. We listened. Oh, great. Now what kind of thing so now that's extremely helpful. Now I've got just we always do this on our podcasts. A couple of quick fire rounds for you. Some quick questions and answers.

Jen: Is this like the Proust questionnaire? What words I want to hear at the pearly gates?

James: We're all judging you here. So what's your favorite business and non business book?

Jen: So the business book that I am super into right now is Atomic Habits. I'm, like, halfway through it, and I'm like a selfhelp guru, and so anything that is kind of selfhelp at the intersection of business, which Atomic Habits for me is, I can see so many applications to my personal life and my professional life. I'm obsessed with it. My favourite non-business book is probably This Side of Paradise by Scott Fitzgerald.

James: Excellent. Next is what was your first job?

Jen: I had a newspaper route. I delivered the Courier News using my mom and dad's sitting lawn mower in the suburbs of New Jersey.

James: You got a sitting lawn mower? Okay. I was paid one pence a paper.

Jen:  It was a terrible job!

James: What makes you happy at work?

Jen: You know, my team makes me really happy. We've got great people here, and none of this would be fun if we didn't have them.

James: Great. Of course. And what are you listening to right now? What's your favorite podcast or music or audio book? I listen to anything that Adam Grant does. My husband keeps trying to get me into some ridiculous podcast about British soccer, which, James, you would probably I think it's like guys in jackets, guys in blazers, something like that. Luckily, my husband won't hear this, otherwise, he would know that I've been listening. I've been listening to it on, like, four speed and telling him that I'm listening, but not really retaining any of it. But stuff that I actually like is really Adam Grant stuff. I like Brene Brown, and I've kind of fallen down a Glennon Doyle rabbit hole recently.

James: Perfect. Excellent. Well, listen, thank you ever so much. We're going to put links up to the various people you've recommended and those books as well. Thank you so much for joining us on this podcast. I'll see you soon. Thank you ever so much. I think it's been extremely helpful.

Jen: Thanks, James. I appreciate you guys having me.

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