It's Sauce, Not Gravy: Why the Accountability Chart Changes a Law Firm Fastest

I was in Chicago with a law firm leadership team for their second Vision Building day. I said the Accountability Chart is the secret sauce of an organization.

One of the partners immediately pushed back. "It's gravy."

The room erupted.

I settled it the only way I knew how. Go to the grocery store and pick up a can. It says tomato sauce. Not tomato gravy.

Sauce wins.

The real point

Whatever you call it, the Accountability Chart is the tool I have seen change how a business operates faster than almost anything else. And in law firms, the effect is often dramatic.

It does three things:

• It defines the major functions the firm needs to run
• It makes clear who owns each one
• It creates one line of accountability, so nothing falls through the cracks

Why it is not just an org chart

A traditional org chart shows who reports to whom. The Accountability Chart starts somewhere else entirely: with the structure the firm needs, before anyone's name goes on it.

Each seat lists the five or so major responsibilities that come with it. Then, and only then, the team decides who is the right person for that seat. One name per seat. If two people share a seat, nobody truly owns it.

What usually surfaces in a law firm

When a firm builds its first real Accountability Chart, a few things come up again and again:

• The managing partner is sitting in four seats. Visionary, head of operations, chief rainmaker, and the final word on every hire. No wonder everything waits on them.
• Partners share responsibility, so nobody owns it. "The partners handle marketing" usually means nobody does.
• Nobody owns intake. The single biggest driver of revenue has no clear owner and no weekly number.
• The Integrator seat is empty. Someone needs to run the firm day to day so the Visionary can lead. In many firms that seat has never been defined.

How to start

1. Design the structure for where the firm is going, not around the people you have today.

2. Write the five major roles for each seat. Specific enough that anyone could tell whether they are being done.

3. Put one name in each seat. Then ask honestly whether each person gets it, wants it, and has the capacity to do it well.

That last step is where the hard conversations live. It is also where the firm starts to change.

So call it sauce. Call it gravy. Just make sure your firm has one. Is your Accountability Chart actually driving clarity, or is it a box diagram nobody looks at?

If you want to see what this looks like inside a firm, here is more on how I work with law firms.

This article grew out of a post on LinkedIn. Follow me there for new ones each week.