Each business has its own identity. In a previous blog (Lawpoint Values: more than words), I described the (at times) painful process we went through to enshrine Lawpoint’s identity in mission, vision and values statements, with a particular focus on the process of selecting the values.
As I said in that blog, behind each value, there is a personal driver, a story, a history and a reason for their selection. In this blog, I focus on the Lawpoint value of Empowerment.
The personal driver – helping and paying it forward
It became apparent during the value definition process that I had a huge personal driver quite simply to help. During my formative years, I was massively helped by some incredibly good people, and it seriously changed the course of my life and my life chances (another blog for another day). I realised I was motivated to pay it forward.
The feeling of being lost and unable to see a way forward applies as much to business as to personal life. Not being able to see the wood for the trees; not knowing what you don’t know. Needing help, but not sure what help you need or who to trust, but wanting someone who will really get what you need.
Whether our client was a business owner, a director or an in-house lawyer who needed our expertise in their team, I wanted them to experience the same feelings you get when you can “relax” because the right people have your back.
From helping to empowerment
So, why not just state our value as helpful? Was there more to it than that? If there is more than one way to help, was I happy to give any sort of help? Or, was there a specific brand of help I wanted to give clients? I had to dig a bit deeper to get to the bottom of these questions.
The answer came from the question What was I trying to achieve with the help we gave?
It was simple for some of our services, such as training and contract streamlining consultancy. Empowerment was the service’s apparent objective, i.e., enabling decision-making through knowledge transfer, process design, etc. (see Empowerment case study).
But, for many of our services, empowerment is not the primary objective. It doesn’t and shouldn’t detract from the service we are being asked to provide. It’s much more implicit than that. Many of our services are about providing a deliverable: a contract, a policy, a markup, a contract review. Here, empowerment is more than an integral aspect of the service experience. It’s about delivering what we’ve been asked to deliver, but with added benefit. That benefit varies from client to client, deliverable to deliverable. Ultimately, it’s about leaving clients feeling a little less “legally” helpless than before. How we do this is another blog for another day!
If you have any questions or would like to find out how we can help you, please get in touch: tracey@law-point.co.uk or call 01202 729444.
