Are You "Making" Your Times, or Are They Making You?

As regular readers know, I subscribe to the "people make the times" theory of history rather than the "times make the people" theory.

Today's lesson features Greg Jordan of Reed Smith, who recently engineered the merger of his firm with Richards Butler of London, and who, according to The Lawyer, is the "one man who can pull it off."

Start with these numbers, showing percentage change over the last five years (and this year's PEP):

All of these are top AmLaw firms, and I will also tell you that all three have made serious strides on the international front in the past five years.

Any guesses as to the identities?

• A = Jones Day
• B = Mayer Brown
• C = Reed Smith

As The Lawyer puts it (emphasis supplied), admittedly Reed Smith is growing off a smaller base:  "Its PEP has only just overtaken Jones Day and lags behind MBR&M. But Reed Smith is closing the gap - and it has momentum."

Part of Reed Smith's secret weapon is simply Greg Jordan, the managing partner.  Did you make the Wheeling, West Virginia connection before reading it here?  (I confess that while I knew it as a fact, I never connected the dots.)

"One of the things that Reed Smith has going for it is Jordan himself. If you ask senior Richards Butler partners why they think the combination is a good one, it always comes back to Jordan.

"Jordan grew up in the small town of Wheeling, West Virginia, as did Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe's charismatic chairman Ralph Baxter, and both share that evangelical zeal for their firms that has been essential as they globalise. Indeed, Jordan acknowledges: "Ralph is a great leader and role model for me.

Compare Jones Day and MBR&M: Quick—name the US heads of either firm.   Sorry, they're not in my Rolodex either.   Now, anonymity isn't the worst thing:  But making serious strides across the world stage requires rallying the troops and making every one understand what the game is and why they should feel (and behave) as if they're on a winning team. As Jordan puts it:

"You can't underestimate this. The enthusiasm and excitement of this change does cause people to be fully re-energised and we expect to see that in both firms.

"Secondly, there is already, even before the vote, an influx of new business. The new business that the combined firm attracts as a result of the combination tends to be at a higher value level.""

Michael Pollack, Reed Smith's chief strategy officer (who is relocating his family to London to oversee the integration), observes wisely—but how many others actually walk this talk?—that "neither firm is necessarily better than the other.   Sometimes we use the Reed Smith way of doing things and sometimes we use the other firm's way of doing things.  We never come at it with a dogmatic approach."

Few remarks augur better for the merger.

Finally, note they've already bitten some of the hardest financial bullets:

• all equity partners in either firm automatically join the merged firm as equity partners
• all non-equity partners in either firm automatically join the merged firm as income partners
• profit pools will be merged in full as soon as the merger is effective.

Lastly, the line that got my attention more than anything in the entire piece is buried nearly at the end, when Richards Butler Chairman Paul Johnston says:  "The executive [committee] is on the back seat.  It's a check and balance to the management team, which makes the decisions.  It just ratifies those decisions."

Imagine that model!  But with Jordan and Pollack the core from the Reed Smith side, the omens are good.  I'll give Michael the last word:

"Greg is clearly the cheerleader, but one of the great things about our management team is that ideas are flying around among us all the time."

Does this sound like your management team?  If not, why not?

As I say, people make the times.  Don't let the times make you.