GA 422 | Getting Lean Buy-In with Adam Marsland

And the catalyst for change really impressed me. So instead of looking at Lean as a vehicle for headcount reduction or cost cutting, the senior partners at the firm really understood that Lean can truly advance the client's experience just from that point of view, from really the initial outlay that really impressed me today.

I'm excited to welcome Adam Marsland back to the show. Now, Adam is from the UK and he actually works for a law firm called Pencent Masons. Adam is in charge of their Lean Six Sigma program. And as you'll hear, they're doing some really interesting work in applying Lean and applying Six Sigma to the legal industry. And so we just sort of walk through. Adam's been on before. He was on an episode 326, so you can also go back and listen to that one where he goes into a little bit more detail on the actual law firm itself. But yeah, today we just sort of walk through how they're applying Lean and then in their journey, kind of how they got. And I was especially interested thinking about, you know, how hard it can be to just get other folks to adopt Lean, let alone a high powered lawyer or something like that. You know, that might not be the easiest thing. And so he talks a lot about how they went about it and how their senior leadership was bought in from day one, which is obviously a big, big part of their success. So really good stuff. And Adam has got that awesome English accent which I always enjoy. So I think you're going to like this one. So GembaPodcast.com look for episode and yeah, you can just scroll down also on your app, if you're listening on the Apple podcast app, I'd ask you to scroll down just as you're listening to this and while you're listening, go to that little review section. Hit the five star if you think it's five star and leave a review. It's something that I do. Go back and read those from time to time and. And I really do appreciate the feedback and the positive reviews if you would indeed find value in the podcast. So, yeah, appreciate that. Okay, enough from me. Let's get to the show. Adam, welcome back to the show. How are you?

Hi. Good, thanks. Ron, how are you?

I'm doing well, thank you. So thanks for coming back on. We had you back and gosh, when Was that episode? 326. So nearly 100 episodes ago. Not quite there, but quite a few episodes ago. So a few things have happened since then, so. Well, thanks for coming on. And just reminds me, remind everybody, where are you calling in from?

So I live near Stoke on Trent. It's between the north and midlands of the uk. So the nearest big city is Manchester.

Yeah, got it, got it. All right. Well, Adam, you know the drill. You've been on and you've also listened to the show, so we do like to get things rolling with a quote. So do you have one?

I do. I was just saying to you off air, Ron, it's quite difficult because obviously the amount of episodes that you've had to come up with something that's novel. Hopefully I've achieved that with this quote. So this is a quote from a guy called Clive Woodward who used to be the manager of the England rugby team. And his quote is, Hannibal won his wars by doing exactly the opposite to what his enemies thought and tradition had always dictated.

What's that mean to you?

So it's a good question. So Clive Woodward was synonymous with transforming England rugby from amateur underachievers to world champions in a fairly short space of time. And what I've taken from that quote is he did so by challenging every facet of the status quo. And I appreciate it's rugby centric. And again, I appreciate for North American listeners, it may not necessarily ring as true as it would to a UK or European audience, but I would really encourage listeners to read his latest book, it's called how to Win. And it's really all around transformation and change and how you look for marginal gains and how you identify things that your competitors perhaps haven't to improve performance. So, no, definitely a thoroughly enjoyable.

I like it. Very good. I want to check it out. I want to check it out. Yeah, my. My son, he plays American football, but he was actually looking at a school, didn't end up going, but at a school and they actually played rugby. And so we went to. To a couple matches and. And boy, what a. What a fun game. You know, I mean, I don't completely understand what's going on, but, you know, it's. It's brutal too, man. My goodness. You know, it is.

Yeah. I mean, it's funny. It's exactly the same, certainly with me and American football. I really don't understand the nuances and complexity of the game. But it is fun to watch, isn't it? And I quite like the culture. I think the culture is probably quite similar where it's quite relaxed and, you know, and people turn up, even if they don't watch a second of the game, they'll still have a good time. So.

Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. The tailgating here Sometimes is more fun than the game, you know.

To be honest.

But yeah, awesome. All right, well, hey, Adam, tell us a little bit about your background and then tell us about Pencent Masons, which is the organization that you work with. And you have a really interesting job there that you're the head of Lean Six Sigma. And when people hear what you do, they may be like, whoa, that's interesting. So tell. Give us a little insight on who you are and what you're up to.

Yeah, I hope so, Ron. I hope I don't send people to sleep, but no. So, as you said, I currently work as the head of Lean Six Sigma for Pins and Masons. And Pins Masons consistently rank in the top 100 law firms by revenue in the world. So I appreciate certainly some of your North American listeners may not be familiar with the brand, but they are a multinational law firm with offices across the the uk, Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia. So basically everywhere apart from North America. And I'm sure as we go we'll dip into different strands of my current role. But prior to this current position, I've worked for another large law firm with a global presence. I perhaps won't mention them by name, but it was in a very similar role. So managing change through the lens of and use of Lean Six Sigma. I think before that, when I was in my twenties, I spent nearly a decade working in investment banking and I started my career in the shadow of the 2008 financial crisis. And that was incredibly challenging, especially when you're just starting out. But on reflection, the pace of change occurred at such a breakneck speed that actually it was a fantastic environment to learn and adapt and learn how operations and transformation actually occur in a certain professional service environment. And coupled with that, certainly at the time, in the latter stages of my time in investment bank, my manager and mentor, who's a gentleman, called Andrew Wright, he's a Lean Six Sigma black belt and he really set me off on the Lean Six Sigma journey and really set me off with a certification process. So, yes, that's how the spark was lit and how everything flowed from there.

Very cool. Very cool. So I'm curious if you can maybe talk a little bit about, because I'm not an expert in the legal service industry and I'm guessing most of our listeners aren't as well. But talk about the delivery of legal services and maybe like, how are they working? Are they changing? Are they staying the same? What's going on there?

Yeah, of course. So I think in a really quick summary, really the nature of a lawyer's job. And by the way, as you probably gathered from the background, I'm not a lawyer, but for the lawyer's job it's dramatically changed in the last few years and gone are the days of drafting, arguing in court and negotiating work, the core and critical skills needed to succeed. So instead lawyers, if they are situated as part of an in house team or in wider private practice, are required to deal with a broader set of challenges. So replace the systematic document review, for example, with strategic client partnerships and this opens a new really different set of skills and particularly in legal technology and process management. I'm obviously not here to talk about legal technology, but this change in landscape has led forward thinking firms to rethink their approach when designing effective delivery processes or how they can serve their client base in the most effective manner. And it's also coupled with challenging and changing client expectations regarding price and user experience. And obviously mentioned last time I was on the podcast a little bit more about this. But gone are the days where lawyers could charge the client through inefficiency, through time on the clock. The market now expects a lot more and we've certainly seen in the UK especially a movement from, from craft production or lawyers applying legal knowledge to mass service centers. And obviously if we, if we cast a mind back to, to machine that changed the world, it is almost following that in parallel. So we've moved from highly skilled single item flexible tools, high quality, high cost almost to this mass production of batch and queue single purpose functions, high productivity, but again perhaps certainly slightly more lower quality.

Talk about some of the, just at a really high level. What are some of the services? What kind of work are your lawyers doing?

Yep. So Pince Masons is split between five practice groups, so we don't cover the, the whole spectrum of law. But our five groups are property, transactional services, so corporate employment, for example finance, so banking, construction, etc. We also have the litigation arm, so risk advisory services and latterly Vario where we're based, which is almost the consultancy and change arm of the firm.

What kind of problems are you guys trying to solve? I mean I want to get into your lean six Sigma journey in particular, but I'm curious, even before we get to the countermeasure, which is, you know, obviously the things that we're doing, like what kind of issues are you, are you guys facing? I mean obviously whatever you can share on a public podcast, of course, of.

Course, yeah, I'll obviously keep it fairly agnostic in terms of clients, but so it can Be anything really, from facing off into client matters, which could be anything from the partner, which I'm sure we'll get into as we go on, but from the client saying we want the client to have a gold standard user experience right the way through to perhaps internal problems, which can literally be as blunt as we're not getting through this work quick enough or the document review is not taking place to the desired accuracy or standard that we'd expect and the client would expect. So I think in terms of the problems it always opportunities, again, it always comes from probably quite a synonymous lean place, which is, you know, again, it always starts with an issue or problem where the answer is not necessarily known. And we would just use that Lean Six Sigma toolkit really. And we obviously have a couple of the change disciplines in there as well, but we would predominantly use that Lean Six. Lean Six Sigma skill set to actually work through all of these issues and problems. I mean, probably compared to some other industries, I don't think necessarily the data side of things is as particularly evolved or mature as perhaps manufacturing, for argument's sake. But no, again, it is still the application of the core LSS toolkit to solve those genomic issues.

Well, talk about the journey then with Lean and Six Sigma and how did it get started and where do you think you guys are on the. On the journey at this point? Obviously none of us are ever done, but where do you think you are on more of a maturity scale?

Yeah, it's really interesting. So we've obviously just covered that. We've seen several different trends in the market that are attempting to tackle this changing client palette. And for instance, if we just take a step out of Lean Six Sigma for the minute, we see managed legal service, which is where companies outsource some or all of their legal operation to an external provider. And this obviously combines people process technology alongside legal expertise to deliver an efficient and seamless solution. And we've seen this type of entity really take shape in the market. So flexible lawyering options, such as Pince Mason's Vario, which I've just touched on, which combines that rounded and balanced professional service offering to clients, but the shift away from lawyers being seen solely as cost transfers the application of law from pure knowledge management to something different. And in the face of this rapidly changing legal landscape and wider appreciation of process excellence, we've really started to see those green shoots of Lean Six Sigma really take place. And as we've just touched on at Pincer Masons, where obviously I'm based, the firm's really taken to Lean Six Sigma and adopted it at the heart of its transformation agenda. We've already seen some hugely encouraging signs of progress and development.

So. So we'll go in a little bit more then. Like, what are you doing? Like, are you mapping things? Are you, you know, on a Six Sigma side, are you analyzing data and doing hypothesis testing and like, just talk a little, pull the curtain back a little bit, like from a Lean Six Sigma methodology perspective, like I'm just. Or share a story, if you will, you know, of something that you, where you've applied the tools and what was the problem and what was the result.

Sort of thing, of course. So I'll tell you about how we've got this far and then maybe delve into one or two case studies. So I've been at the firm for the last two and a half years or so and we've basically, from a standing start, adopted LSS as one of its core strategic pillars. And that transformation has been genuinely incredible. And we've seen that shift in lawyers asking the link between Lean Six Sigma and martial arts to active work on client matters and more. So lawyers embracing and using these principles in their own practice and the catalyst for change really impressed me. So instead of looking at Lean as a vehicle for headcount reduction or cost cutting, the senior partners at the firm really understood that Lean can truly advance the client experience. And just from that point of view, from really the initial outlay, that really impressed me. And from this position, we've seen immediate buy in from a number of partners that acted as early adopters. And there's a few in particular that really stand out. So David Heffron, who leads one of the finance practice groups, one of the firm's five groups, and Anne Marie Friel, who's one of the top construction lawyers certainly in the uk, really took a chance on the methodology and have applied Lean Six Sigma directly to their key clients. And that was right at the start. And that's obviously, for me, hugely humbling here. Some of the best lawyers in their fields that understand that even though they've got the legal advice, the world class legal advice already covered, they can complement this through, through the adoption of our skills. And there's obviously several others that owed a huge gratitude of thanks and that really built the foundations of future development. So from this position, spark was lit and the sense of urgency spread through the firm and these initial wins really created impetus. So more partners wanted to use the methodology to improve their client delivery. And so just again, just to directly answer your question, There, Ron. So over the last year or so, the team has worked on 54 projects across the firm. And they range from really simple yellow belt initiatives right the way through to broader transformational brushstrokes solving some of the firm's biggest problems. So again, I possibly won't touch on the exact problem or clients, but, but in terms of some of the skills used, it can range from anything which is a data driven approach looking for inefficiency. So, you know, right the way through to you sort of two way ANOVAs and regression analyses looking for, you know, the statistical points of inefficiency or you know, certainly where we can potentially move work to a lower or junior cohort of people or we can encourage standardization between operators right the way through to your classic Lean tools of, you know, spaghetti diagram value stream mapping, again, just to look for bottlenecks and unnecessary waste in the process. So it really depends on the problem we're trying to solve. And I think what I found certainly at Pincer Masons is that actually all of the different problems are probably quite unique in their own way. I don't think we've ever had it where we've had to almost, you know, groundhog Day, go back over with the old playbook and work through, you know, different problems using the, using exactly the same tools. And I think therein lies lies the problem and opportunity as well really, which is it really does test, you know, all of, all of the team skills and the broad, you know, I suppose really the broad attributes really of what makes a really good Lean Six Sigma practitioner. So I mean, I think at the time being, hopefully all the different project sponsors will have seen very different, you know, approaches and application of skills and tools.

Now do you, I mean, obviously you know, your full time job, Lean Six Sigma, teaching people, driving the program, I guess. But do you have, how was it positioned as far as within the firm? Like, are there black belts within the different business units or maybe they're not called business units but different groups and, or are you training up these high powered, you know, brilliant lawyers to, you know, you know, do with these tools? And how does that look?

Yeah, so I mentioned before, so Lean has been identified as one of the core strategic pillars of the firm. And really the reason behind that is that Pincer Masons wants to transform itself into not just a law firm, but a professional service business with law at its core. And there are other work streams as part of this transformation program. So we have creating digital solutions, developing diverse range of professional capabilities and it's Amazing, really, to consider that a top law firm ranks Lean in our skill set, really in that same bracket at the heart of its operations. So in practice it really takes three forms. So firstly, we have a central team of lean Six Sigma practitioners and we work alongside the firm's lawyers and other non legal professionals to directly improve the client experience through legal delivery, which we've obviously just touched on. So that could be creation of process architecture from scratch, using, again as we mentioned, the traditional Lean Six Sigma toolkit to solve problems. Secondly, we're embarking on a journey of internal Lean transformation, which hopefully may prick the attention of your listeners. So put another way, we're training and certifying the firm's lawyers to apply the basic principles of LSS and their daily practice.

Nice.

And we've seen, and we've seen a real fantastic return so far through communities of practice, localised Lean champions, and these areas are working through JDI autonomously. And finally, we offer an external consultancy on behalf of pincer masons, which I mentioned is called Vario, and it provides that range of professional services to clients. And if your listeners aren't already aware, I'd really encourage them to visit the Vario website as it really shows that evolution of service delivery outside of those traditional legal boundaries. And again, it's really interesting, really, because certainly with all three different areas, it's really been achieved through the creation of our own syllabuses. And as you touched on before, we've had to obviously tailor that to the firm's lawyers and their legal disciplines. A finance lawyer is completely different than a property lawyer. For example, you take into account different jurisdictions and geographical locations and therein lies the challenge. And we're obviously not lawyers and it rings true that, you know, the rest of the team aren't either. So we can only obviously apply our skill set so far. But really the key challenges to our application of skills through the lawyer's eyes, so when they're drafting or when they're doing legal work, they can actually spot these things for themselves.

So I'm guessing because there's human beings that work at, at the, at the firm, that it's not always easy that there might be, you know, some change management challenges, for lack of a better word, from time to time. So, you know, I find it especially interesting that you guys are trying to positively influence, if you will, or invoke change with, again, some very, you know, powerful, brilliant people who may have lots of other things going on. And so they're like, wait, what is this Lean Six Sigma like, how did you get that buy in early? Like, you know, we always say start with why? You know, like, how did you do that? You make. It's very. Sounds daunting to me.

Maybe, maybe, maybe it's false confidence, perhaps in our skill set. But now you're right. And it really helped that obviously we had that senior buy in from David and Anne Marie and some of the other partners as well. And I think without that, it's, as we all know, you know, it's a real uphill battle. But obviously the way that partnerships work, it's, you know, you have, you have many partners that theoretically are equal to each other and therefore they almost work autonomously so they don't necessarily have to follow each other. But I think, you know, again, when those early success stories come out of. Well, actually, you know, we can completely change the way that legal work is delivered and we can obviously, you know, through the use of our tools and skills, probably provide that point of difference which perhaps they haven't seen before. You know, I think that's hugely attractive. Certainly I spent a lot of time early on really going round again, just trying to introduce what we do, how it aligns with other change functions, for example. And then again, once we've had those early wins, it really snowballed from there in terms of actual, especially with the Lean transformation point. So actually getting people to do this stuff in their own practice, it was quite interesting because obviously two and a half years ago, it was just before COVID struck. And normally the way that I would do it is certainly for the introductory sessions, try and make them as fun, as engaging as possible. Perhaps not necessarily if people learn a huge amount, but if nothing else, they build that positive brand association with Lean Six Sigma that obviously goes out of the window. And one of the ladies in the team, who's a fantastically talented practitioner, called Heather, she designed a, we called it a white belt syllabus, an hour long, you know, fairly, fairly soft and fluffy, you know, meander, round, really. Lean Six Sigma. What Lean is what Six Sigma is. Some really basic examples of why variation and waste are the enemy and everyone goes away with a nice certificate and medal. And you know, people go, I think, oh, that's fun. And you know, we built that up as well with, with, certainly through, through the internal social boards, hopeful, some thought provoking articles around, you know, how to embrace change and actually just, just interesting stories. Actually linked a couple of the Game Academy podcasts on there as well. And I think really through this, it was obvious that. And again, Obviously, lean in law is probably one of the last industries really, to adopt. Adopt these principles. And I think from there it was so different than I think that the lawyers had seen before, that it was. For certainly some of them, it was quite easy for them, really, just to give us a chance. And that's certainly what we found, which is, you know, they were quite the partners, quite happy to open the door. Then it was down to us, really, if we took that opportunity or not.

Yeah, yeah, well, yeah. And obviously, as you said, your leadership's on board, and so I second that. You know, it's really challenging to, you know, it's almost pushing on a rope if you don't have that leadership pull. So that's fantastic. Well, I do have a sort of a tangent question you mentioned. You know, with your early training, trying to make it fun and engaging and all. Can you share? And maybe, like, we got a lot of people who do a lot of training listening, like, what do you do that's fun?

So I'm sure for all of us, you know, we've attended training courses, haven't we? And it's either a lot of PowerPoint slides or, you know, somebody dryly walking through all of the material. And we wanted to scrap that. And obviously, one of the challenges that we had, especially in the pandemic, was work from home and especially the way that our firm is split. You know, we don't necessarily have a central office location. We have several different regional offices, especially around the uk, and exactly the same rings true. So we certainly just try to bring that training to life, make it completely, you know, two way, bring people on board, ask people to bring their own and identify things through their own eyes and own practice. You know, so a really simple example, when we talk about variation, we have a couple of points in there. One's really simple. You know, we basically have animated a plane landing on a Runway and say, what would you prefer? You know, the pilots hit the same spot every time, or they may end up on the perfect spot, but they may end up on the grass or at the end of the Runway. And it's obviously, you know, that the first. The first answer is right. And therefore, then people can start to see why variation is the enemy. And then we have another example as well, of an Amazon delivery, you know, or anything Internet provider, which is, you know, when the delivery time may be. It could be Wednesday, midday. And if it's that time, you know, every single purchase, then that's fantastic because you can work around it. But if it may end up being delivered at any point in the week, then obviously that's suboptimal. And so we tried to bring these examples to life. And again, exactly the same with Lean, we use an example. So Heather, create an example of basically queuing at the bar, which, you know, for a drink, which obviously, you know, almost has the, the royal flush, doesn't it, of lean waists. But we can start to bring out especially, you know, things like waiting and overproduction. If you order a fancy cocktail and things like that, you know, we can really bring those to life. So again, it's quite light hearted. But yeah, hopefully people can take these on board and with them, well, you're.

Building in real world examples and that's so important, that's so powerful so people can really wrap their mind around it. So good stuff. Hey, so what, what about what's the future hold for.

For.

For Penn State Masons and Lean Six Sigma and maybe just the legal industry in general? I'd be curious to get your perspective on that.

Yeah, no, so it's, I think we're in a really incredibly exciting time. So we see further adoption of Lean Six Sigma, you know, really across the industry. And I've certainly noticed even just in the past year or two, you know, other law firms really paying attention to our methodology. But for Pincer Masons, we, we definitely want to build on the foundations created so far and really change the way that legal work is delivered. And of course we can only benefit the firm's employees, clients and different stakeholders. But I suppose more thematically I can also see that cross pollination of Lean with other change disciplines. And there's so many approaches out there that are hitting law concurrently. I think we'll only see that creative overlap. And I suppose, Ron, it's similar to the earlier podcast that you had with Andy. Apologies Andy, if I get your name or surname incorrectly, but Andy Sweatkeith, possibly yes, he was on earlier this year, Andy made. Yeah, he made the synergies between Lean and design thinking. And again we've definitely seen potential for that as well. But certainly just I suppose if we go even further, certainly for our team at Pince Mason. So we already hopefully started to explore that and Andy's podcast was incredibly interesting. We already want to combine the process improvement and change methodologies in our approach. So we're already exploring and deploying the overlap between Lean and Systems Thinking, for example, and just because it can really enhance the voice of the customer and voice the business approach. But I suppose again if we just step out to the detail for a second and return to the question. So the legal market definitely in the UK is changing rapidly and I suppose as you and your listeners know, to truly achieve process excellence, we definitely need to see that further at the evolution into the lean environment, especially from the sort of mass production environment that certainly is the approach some firms are taking. And that in itself's a really incredibly attractive landscape. And we obviously can't say if the methodology will stick, evolve in a slightly different being compared to manufacturing per se, but in itself that's the joy of the position and the challenge ahead. And I alluded to it before, but in my opinion anyway, it certainly law was one of the last main industries that have yet to adopt Lean Six Sigma and coupled with that, it's really exciting to consider how the universal application of the methodology is transferable. So we literally comparing the same toolkit used to enhance manufacturing production with complex case litigation. And it's almost fantastic really because it's almost like a startup mentality really of how to apply this and there's no real blueprint for it or that to progress forward so very much it's sort of learning on the job and what works and what perhaps doesn't work from a lean point of view as well. And almost molding that as we go. And again certainly for the next year or so especially, I can see that only growing. So further development, further entrenchment in the methodology and again possibly that cross pollination with all the disciplines that certainly are hitting the legal landscape at the same time.

Yeah, very good. Awesome. Well, Adam, thanks again for coming back on. I know it's a different time change there for you and, and I appreciate you carving out some, some time for us. And so maybe to wrap things up, why don't you tell folks how they can connect with you and then maybe you know, the, the various Pennsylvan masons and any other kind of contact that you want to put out there.

Yeah, sure. Thanks. Thanks Ron. And thanks. Thanks again for having me me on. So you can, you can search for me on LinkedIn. My username on LinkedIn is AP Marsland. I'm sure if you just search for Adam Marsland and then Lean, I'll probably pop up again for pins and Masons and for Vario. I'm sure if you, if you do a simple Google search it will, it will appear at the top.

How do you spell vario?

It's V A R I O.

Okay, so like vario.com or that's the website or.uk or something like that.

Good question.

I'll tell you what, don't worry, don't worry about it. We'll put it in a show notes so you can send it over an email and then we'll put it. So this is episode 422. So just go to gembapodcast.com that's for episode 422 and we're going to link everything up. So yeah, thanks. Yeah, very good. All right, well, thanks again, Adam, and keep up the great, great work and maybe we'll chat on down the road sometime.

Thanks, Ron.

All right, take care. Thanks for listening. Whether you've been on the continuous improvement journey for many years or perhaps you're just getting started, Gemba Academy is here to support you. And while we're best known for our more than 1500 lean and 6 Sigma teaching and virtual tour videos, we also have a team of experienced leaders, Lean and Six Sigma practitioners available for one on one coaching as well as a variety of Lean and Six Sigma certification options. To learn more and to schedule a demo, head on over to gembaacademy. Com.