Getting Your Team to Buy into a Big Change

When five elite London law firms attempted to introduce a new senior role — “counsel” — they thought that associates would jump at the chance to become a senior-level lawyer without the punishing hours and absolute devotion required of partners. Yet associates and partners alike distrusted the new role, in part because it didn’t fit into the norms of professional service firms. For 11 years, researchers studied how advocates for change mitigated the objections people raised about the new role. Ultimately, at four of the five firms the role of counsel became now well entrenched and accepted.