Business Growth Accelerator
Business Growth Accelerator
189 | Navigating to Success, a Leadership Journey with Tim Lupinacci CEO of 130 years old law firm
🎙️ What is the secret behind Baker Donaldson's remarkable success in the legal industry? Could it have something to do with a revolutionary approach to leadership development?
In this episode, Tim Lupinacci, Chairman and CEO of Baker Donaldson, peels back the curtain to reveal the leadership development strategies that have propelled his firm to the forefront of the industry. We dive into the idea of strategic transformation, discussing how it's not only possible, but absolutely necessary for success in today's evolving business landscape.
Topics we discussed:
🎯 The impact of leadership development on law firms
🏋️ The mini-MBA program: Its conception and results
💡 How Baker Donaldson approaches training at different levels
💼 Building trust and empowering employees for sustainable growth
🔄 Embracing change and refining strategies for continuous improvement
Our guest, Tim Lupinacci, is not only an exceptional leader but also a visionary thinker in the field of leadership development. Tim’s focus on strategic transformation and people-centric leadership has been instrumental in shaping the culture at Baker Donaldson, one of the largest law firms in the U.S.
Don't miss out on more insights from Tim Lupinacci! Make sure to connect with him on LinkedIn.
Join us in this episode as we uncover the power of investing in leadership development and its ripple effects on the success of an organization. This conversation is loaded with tangible takeaways that any leader, regardless of industry, can implement to drive their company towards strategic success. You can't afford to miss this one!
Hi, It's Isar the host of the Business Growth Accelerator Podcast
I am passionate about growing businesses and helping CEOs, business leaders, and entrepreneurs become more successful. I am also passionate about relationship building, community creation for businesses, and value creation through content.
I would love it if you connect with me on LinkedIn. Drop me a DM, and LMK you listened to the podcast, what you think and what topics you would like me to cover 🙏
It makes them more attuned to the purpose and certainly as a legal professional firm. We're trying to help our clients achieve their goals and objectives. but to help to connect the work that's done by every individual regardless of where title or what their position, or whether they have a law degree or not into what they're, what the client's achieving, which could be in some instances to help change the world.
Isar Meitis:Before we jump into today's episode, there's something I want to share with you. I've launched another podcast. The podcast is called Leveraging AI And if you like this podcast, you're gonna love leveraging AI because it's a very similar approach. I interview really smart people from the AI world practitioners and experts who share how to leverage AI in order to grow your business and advance your career. So pull up your phone right now, whatever platform you are using in order to listen to this podcast. Search for leveraging ai, check it out. I think you'll find it fascinating. There's a really fascinating interview with ChatGPT as the guest. It's unique and different and fun and interesting, and we talk about the impact of AI technology on businesses and society as a whole. So look for leveraging ai. And if you enjoy it, subscribe to it and also write me a note on LinkedIn and let me know what you think. And now to the episode Hello and welcome to the Business Growth Accelerator. This is Isar Meitis, your host, and I've got a special topic for you today. As I'm very passionate about company culture, and I really think it's one of the most critical aspects for long-term success of any company. You can see short-term success with little tricks and gimmicks and stuff and promotions, but in the long run, it's the people in your business that will make it or break it, and having a strong, positive company culture. Provides that operating system, that, bed that you can grow stuff on in the long run. Our guest today, Tim Lupinacci is the chairman and CEO of Baker Donaldson, which is 130 years old law firm and one of the largest in the nation. And you would assume that somebody like that, his biggest passion is law, and you'll be wrong. At least I'm guessing. His real passion is helping other people develop leadership skills in developing a healthy work environment and a culture that will drive people to thrive and grow. And that is the secret sauce on how to keep on growing such a long running company. And in today's episode, we're going to dive into, first of all, the why is it so important and why should think about it as a leader, but also the how. What are the actual things that team and his team are doing in order to nurture? Growing other people and growing leadership skills within their organization. I think this is immensely critical to any company and he, I'm really humbled and excited to have Tim as a guest of the show. Tim, welcome to the Business Growth
Timothy M. Lupinacci:Accelerator. Yes. Sorry. This is my honor to be here. You have, I've already told you, you've added a lot of value to me through all of your work, in so many different areas. And, this is just an honor and I absolutely, I actually don't tell my colleagues I could care less about the law. I am more passionate about people and culture, and helping people achieve their potential. yeah, I'm excited to talk about this.
Isar Meitis:Awesome. I really appreciate this and I appreciate the kind words. Let's start with why. Yeah. Why is it critical? And if you want, let's go back In your personal career, when did you figure out that this was so important? Like in what time in your career did you say, oh my God, the people around me, if they would have these skills, that's what's gonna make them and the company and me more
Timothy M. Lupinacci:successful? Yeah, that's a great question and it really does go back. I did not have this concept of being a leader and what that meant until I was a young lawyer. I didn't grow up around lawyers, the profession, my, we moved around a lot and didn't know anything about it. But I literally almost stumbled into law school. I, I was a Mass com major. I thought I wanted to do radio and television. and, but I took a medial law course and ah, this is interesting. and then I took the entrance exam for law school and did, okay, so I'll just go to law school. And so now I've got my first job and it's with a big firm, a different firm. And, I've probably been out about a year or so and I've viewed it very much as a transactional type deal. Yeah. Like I got a project to get done, I turned it in. And then I went on to bill time for the next project. and so I had, and I had a very tough boss. He was a yeller. and, and, but and I was excited to be working with him cuz he was an expert. I did bankruptcy work, he did ex, he was an expert in that field. anyway, we had a large project that we were working on. I had a small part of it that I then got finished and handed it to a lawyer who'd been at the firm five or six years. a middle level guy. and then he'd finished it, turned it into the boss, and I'm onto the next project. And next thing I know, I'm getting paged into our boss's office, the other guy and myself. And he's, we walk in, he is on a conference call with a dozen lawyers. It turned out other lawyers from other firms. and He starts yelling at us that we had gotten the project completely wrong. And then he said, these idiots are gonna stay here all night to get this fixed. Now I don't, that's not good leadership. and he ultimately, he changed. But, and I thought, I'm gonna lose my job, whatever. And so we spent, we got it all fixed and it turned out I had drawn the short straw. I was picking up my boss at his house the next morning to drive to court for what all this stuff the project was about. And I thought, I literally, I was, am I gonna have a job by the time we get back from this hearing? And it was very quiet, awkward silence. And then he did. Start out and said he apologized that he shouldn't have yelled in front of other lawyers. He wasn't so much worried about the terminology he used, but he said I should have kept it in the house. but but then he said, the reason I'm so disappointed and was so aggravated, Tim is cuz I view you as a leader. I think you've got a long, successful career ahead of you. I don't necessarily think that about the mid-level lawyer that was on that project. I just expect you to own what you have and what your part of the project is and make sure. Sure it's right, because you're a leader. And that really was the first time that ever clicked that I'm a leader. I'm just a young low person on the totem pole. I had skills, but I didn't think of myself as a leader. So that lit literally led me on a lifelong journey. I've gotta get better at this. If I'm a leader, I gotta know what does that mean? And I, it really just led me on my journey about why now I'm so passionate about it. So that's the start of it.
Isar Meitis:That's a great story. so really, okay, let's turn into the why. Yeah. Why should people in leadership positions care about developing other leaders around them?
Timothy M. Lupinacci:Yeah. and that's really what my passion is because first of all, it's helping folks understand the mindset that everybody is a leader. So first of it, the why is to have belief in themselves and have confidence in themselves that it's, you don't need a title, you don't need to run a big organization that you can lead right where you are. And that it's gonna really help, fuel your passion and your purpose and what you're doing. I talk a lot about, and we've actually implemented some stuff here at the firm about, your pathway. People are gonna have different pathways to what they view as success. And some do look at a job as it's a paycheck to get to do other things. But while you're here, if you can, if we can really get our colleagues saying I want to have some career ambition to maybe, lead a bigger team or move up this or get this skill, I think it just makes, our colleagues more engaged. It makes them more attuned to the purpose and certainly as a legal professional firm. We're trying to help our clients achieve their goals and objectives. but to help to connect the work that's done by every individual regardless of where title or what their position, or whether they have a law degree or not into what they're, what the client's achieving, which could be in some instances to help change the world. I think it just helps'em become more engaged, more passionate, and to deliver better client service to our clients and it can be a real differentiator. So those are some of the why's that drive me and like I said earlier, I really am passionate about people and helping them really. Have confidence and see and speak into them like they can accomplish some things. not in a, hey, everything's utopia. It's a sh, bright, shiny world. Everything, cuz we have challenges and all that. But just to, just have confidence that we can do more in what we're trying to accomplish. So that's just some things about why it drives me and why I've seen it work with our firm.
Isar Meitis:Yeah. I think what you're saying make a lot of sense. I think you touched on two very big points. One is confidence, right? It's yeah, I trust you. to do this because I know you can own the thing that, that I expect you to do. And the other is really tying it to a bigger goal, right? So part of leadership is if I'm just a note taker, okay, I, this is what I do, right? This is my world ends in my little task, whatever that task is. Big or small. Yeah. But if you're part of a leadership, okay, why are we doing this? We are doing this too. So like you said, I could be a note taker, but if me taking notes helps that other company achieve their thing, which like you say, could be saving, solving world hang hunger, right? Then I play a role in that bigger thing, which makes the thing that I do a lot more important, and I love those points.
Timothy M. Lupinacci:Oh yeah. a great example is, I talk, I thought one of our, we have a woman who's in our Baltimore office who, her title's receptionist, but Nicole owns that, not only the reception area, but if she sees issues, she hears that something has to get done, something else. That's not her job. She just step, nobody asks her to do it. She steps up and gets it done. She owns it, like you were saying, Essar and. That may help, a big strategy meeting that she doesn't even know about that could impact something. And she's one of the best leaders I've ever seen best leaders at our firm. and by doing that in ownership, she actually has now elevated her title. She's moved on to do a little bit bigger task because, and she wasn't seeking that. She doesn't think about it. She just does it. So yeah, I totally agree with you. Interesting.
Isar Meitis:So let's move to the how, right? Yeah. So I think most people will understand even. Without diving into the details, they understand there's a benefit in that the how makes it difficult, and that's why not enough companies do that because there's, what do you actually do to make FIFA people feel that they're leaders? What do you help them do that will drive them personally to be
Timothy M. Lupinacci:passionate about it? Yeah, so we've done several things. I've been in this role four years, four and a half years, and I had a, about a six month transition before I took over. And one of the first things I did when we had a virtual town hall to introduce me to the firm, I knew a lot of people, but not certainly everyone. I started out the same, my view that everyone of them was a leader and we needed everyone, stepping up and working together that every person was valued and valuable. So one of it was just speaking that into'em. But then one of the first things I did is I want to hear from you to know how we can get better. We had really struggled and plateaued for a while as a firm, so we needed to get better. And I encouraged them to give me feedback. and I did, I went around and visited all our 20 offices and we had town halls and people give me feedback. And then important thing was that I listened to it. And then on some of'em, I executed on it. I can't do everything and everything wasn't a great idea, but there was some low hanging fruit from our folks who were in the trenches. so that was just trying to instill, that, again, I like that word trust. That's really important, that trust in them that I trusted them. I wanted to learn how to get better. So that was some of the first part. But then I really did need to build out. I could talk about pathways to success, and pathways in your career and driving purpose, but that's just words on a page. And the first couple years we've built out some, training, some skill building we were doing internally, and really called it like pathways. Like how, what are your desires, what are your career ambitions? And what are some skills that maybe you don't have those skills, we can help you get better. And really try to get managers to really get to know. their colleagues, their strengths, the areas they wanted to improve, and then facilitate that to some regular training. And we, we do it virtually. we do some in person. so that was the first couple years we just really trying to get some meat around it and then, We did launch a vision.
Isar Meitis:I wanna pause you. I wanna pause you just for one second. Yeah, sorry. So basically what you're saying, you're taking a strategic approach that we usually apply for the business looking outside to the inside of the business, meaning, For each individual offer, let's say types of individuals and saying, okay, you're here on point A, you want to get to point B again, very similar to the way you would do with a company in five years. You want to be there. What needs to happen for you to be there? So in year one, you gotta accomplish this and that what resources in a company or skills you're missing in an individual. Here's the training that can get you there. And I love that. It's really a very strategic approach to how to elevate people through the path that they chose, which I think is. More important than anything. Because okay. I don't, some people don't wanna manage the department. That's right. What they seek, they really, if I use your company, they really going to court and fighting justice, right? They don't care about running 20 other people. And so you gotta understand for each person and then giving them the tools to progress in their own path. And I absolutely love that.
Timothy M. Lupinacci:Yeah. and I appreciate that and I also, it's not easy either, right? there's some. Job titles. Some roles that it like in, in the legal profession for individuals who have law degrees, you come in and most firms start, you have an associate and then some firms, you become a senior associate after six or eight years. And then you could become a partner or shareholder. And then it's the equity partner, equity shareholder. it's a path that's pretty well there. Expectations, different companies you're gonna, but it was harder on our business services staff side. And even initially, our HR director was like, Yeah, but it is a pretty flat organization on a lot of our things. How can we do it? I don't want to come off and say, oh, this is easy, just go do it. It was really just understanding and then sitting down with some folks in the, in that cohort, the business services staff, what are some things that would be helpful? What would you think about? and but I think it's just the intentionality to spend the time and listen. And try to build it out just cuz it's, it may be harder than some areas like the law, the lawyers, it's pretty clear. we have to skill build for them and we have to help them and equip them. but, so anyway, that's. No,
Isar Meitis:it's good stuff. What was that? Sorry I stopped you before that in the middle to go into
Timothy M. Lupinacci:the next point. no. it's because, it's interesting cause that was some of the foundation and then, last year I launched a strategic vision for the firm and, with our firm. We're pretty much situated in the southeast Mid-Atlantic. And when I was looking, talking to colleagues about longer term strategic planning, invariably. It would get into this discussion about geography, should we be national? Should we do this? And then we have some individuals who do have more of a national practice and some are more local practice. And of course they're saying, oh, we should be more national or we should be more regional. And it was just divisive. And so I really, I got all this feedback, and I went away for a couple days. I just know there's invaluable to just get away from everything because I had all the knowledge I needed. there's nothing new under the sun, but it's really what's best for us. And I landed on this idea. And again, this is not new. It's been written about for decades, about being trusted advisors and I thought if we could become better trusted advisors to our clients, and you have to unpack what that means, that we would do better in client service. We could grow stickier client relationships. We would be more strategic in our advice instead of just reactive. and then the one thing that connected back to particularly the business services and staff, it's something that it would applaud it. The whole firm, it would be very inclusive because our staff have to be trusted advisors to the lawyers, to the professionals, and they can build that relationship every day. So that kind of became the foundation of the strategy. And again, this idea that it can't just be words on the page. I had to build some ways to help folks really make this meaningful. And people joke with me about this term, terminology and I know people who have earned an actual M B A. It is very serious stuff. You're very, that's amazing. But I just came up with a trusted advisor, mini MBA program for our firm. And not just for the lawyers, but also for the staff. And we have different tracks where you can earn credits and get some rewards. but it's all with serious training about some of the skill building on relationships and how can we build trust and that kind of stuff. All the basic, so again, it's, I think it's just trying to be creative and take something that can engage your colleagues in something meaningful and they can make progress. They can see they're making progress.
Isar Meitis:I love that. I want to touch on something similar that we did at the company I was in, few years ago. I was part of the leadership team in a large travel organization, and we had not exactly the same issues, but it got down to the same thing. We couldn't hire fast enough for the growth, right? We could have. and we just didn't know what to do. and what we ended up doing is we built our own academy, like literally actual facility, buildings, classes, computers, conference rooms, the whole thing. That's awesome. And a curriculum that we could take people and teach them the right way of doing things. And for, in our case, was how to develop relationships and write the right contracts and grow their little niche of the business. That was one half. The other half is the stuff you're talking about. How do you own your business? You are right, your own c e o, right? Yeah. And yet you're running yourself and an assistant, but you're a business unit. You're a very small business unit. It's a billion plus dollar company, and you're running$1.7 million. But you're running 1.7 million, which is more than the vast majority of people on the planet, right? And so you better know how to run it. So I think it's so important to understand that most people, I'm now quoting, a friend of mine who is also a really smart business consultant that says, I don't know a single person that goes to work in the morning and says, I really wanna suck today. Most people go to work saying, I want to do something good today. And most of the cases when they don't do that, it's either because they don't have the right training or the right tools or both, right? Which means it's on us business leaders to make sure they have the right training and the right tools so they can do the right things at work. So I love the whole training setup of it. I just have an interesting question for people who are considering this. Who built the curriculum, the training, like what was the actual process? Because there's people have jobs in the company and they're not to develop and deliver training curriculum.
Timothy M. Lupinacci:and it's, and it is inter That's a really great question, sorry. And I did not fully, appreciate. How much that would take to build that out because, I, we had a, all of our attorneys got together for a retreat to launch the vision last year, and then we did follow on town halls with all our staff, and that was like, say April. And of course I'm like, and we're gonna help you and we're gonna have this trusted advisor mini b a and it's gonna kick off this fall. And then it's oh wait, we have to actually, put words, get, put action behind it. And we have, we have a professional development, direct director, but really it's not focused on things like this. It's been more just basic kind of things. And so literally, my chief of staff and I just started. and our chief administrative officer started building out like, what could this look like? And we just have to get it started. not the whole arc of, cuz I love your academy. I think that is brilliant. And we did not, we knew we weren't gonna have that ready and baked for the fall, but we really started saying, okay, let's break this into three tracks. One was for the. The shareholder, the partner level attorneys, and we made those in person with outside consultants. People they'd get to fly into a city for an afternoon and the next morning and then fly home. then we had training for the younger lawyers and our paralegals that next level. And that was more virtual, but it was live virtual. Yeah. and with follow on and with activities and we're doing it over the months of the fall. And then for staff and business services, we actually had in-person activities and training in each. Office around the firm by different leaders, and we built out the curriculum, really built around that macer book about trusted advisors, but just using some of the trust equation, basic stuff. But after we got it launched and we had a lot of good feedback for the fall and from the fall, and even some things we could do better, which we've learned from. But it became clear to us we have to get a professional to help us. So we actually have now hired a talent, a director of talent development, and she had a lot of expertise in this and she's now building out, we're doing some stuff in the spring, but she's really building out almost like your academy type concept. So absolutely agree. It takes a lot of work and effort and we've realized we needed a professional to help us internally to do it.
Isar Meitis:So I love everything you're saying. I want to drill one layer deeper. Yeah. What's. In the curriculum, what are the things categories, right? Obviously we're not gonna teach the course now, but what are the big bullet points that you teach people in order for them to understand or how to become a trusted advisor? How to actually build trust with somebody to the level they will give you any task that they think you can accomplish. Which is, like you're saying, you wanna do this in-house as well as towards your
Timothy M. Lupinacci:clients. Yeah. and that was really the whole, vision about being trusted advisor was because that's what the clients are asking for. there's all these resource, all these, surveys in the legal industry that, you know, Buyers of legal services, the general councils and city, they're looking for people who know their industry, who know their business and are providing strategic advice. the world's much more complex than it was yesterday, than it was last year. just as we've, talked about, for our shareholder level, we've really spent a lot of time building, training around confidence. and, and like we're, cuz we're thinking like, how do we play up into the bigger relationships, the deeper relationships, confidence and communication, business acumen, how do you translate legal principles into business strategy? Not because you've got a project you're working on, but to really help identify risks, that clients could be facing because you know their industry. So we really focused it a lot about that client communication, relationship building, understanding industries. How do you do that? for the younger lawyers, it really was more built into. Things like networking and also effective communication and relationship building. and at the very early levels, like I came into working at a law firm, I didn't know anybody in the city I'm in. I didn't know anything. So it's really like, how do, what do you do? you can't just say, go develop business. cause the. Particular profession, at least our firm, you're not going out and just doing cold call sales stuff. Although some firms do that's fine. That just hadn't been our culture. so we're just trying to help with that. And then with business services and staff, we really did take apart this trust equation. But how can you build trust? How can you own projects? how can you, give feedback? So it's very specifically tailored to what we have, we're really trying to accomplish. And now we're. Like looking at the 2.0 of that, it's really more refining it, in the different areas. So I love this. So
Isar Meitis:if we go back and break this, the logic is obvious, right? The why we covered, right? But then the how is more of a view of, I always like the FRO two. equation, and I think it's, Jim Collins came up with the FRO two, yes equation. Like you, you wanna go from where you are right now to where you want to go, and that's the first thing you gotta define. And I love the way you define it. It's not the same for everybody in the company. There's different fro twos for different people, depending on the role, depending on their level, depending on their experience and their seniority, et cetera. So if you break it out into bucket and say, okay, for this bucket, this is the FRO two, the second bucket, this is it. Once you map that, now you can actually start defining what are the steps, how many hours, what's the physical location like, all these kind of things to get the best outcome. So I love all of this. And then you said something that is. Maybe the most important thing is then get feedback and do it again. Oh. And get more feedback and do it again, because I can get, I think the biggest fear people have is I don't get it right. It'll be such a huge waste of resources, time, money, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, yeah, that you, I can guarantee you are not gonna get it right in. Or in the first time around. But if you don't do the first and second time, that's gonna be not great. And then the second one's gonna be okay, and then the third one's gonna be good. And then the fourth one's gonna be, oh my God, this was excellent. You will never get to the excellent one if you don't do the first one, it's gonna be okay.
Timothy M. Lupinacci:Yeah, no, I totally agree. And it's really challenging. I, most people like this, but certainly lawyers are on the end of the spectrum about they gotta know more than everyone in the room. Or at least they think they know more than everything in the room and they, it's gotta, they don't wanna mess up. You don't wanna make mistakes. Yeah. but that's how you learn. That's how you get better. And it's funny you say that cuz one of our in-person training sessions we did last fall, I was just on a call with, the individual. So professor at, Northwestern and with our new talent development director and we were talking about like his next program and we were very specific talking about, this is some of the feedback, this really. Hit home. This was, some things didn't really connect. How can we build this going forward? so I absolutely think that's critical. and I also agree the here to there, the from too, or, how do we get from here to there? You've gotta paint that vision of the, there, the outcome you want, and then back it up. And so we are, now that we are, really. More than just getting it launched. We're thinking about like in the context of training, like the level 1 0 1 course and 2 0 1 and 3 0 1. you, but there will be a stepping stone approach to get to the outcome we want. and so we're really trying to be intentional about that. So I totally agree. I think you're spot on with what you said. Isar, I gotta ask
Isar Meitis:you Yeah. One more follow up question that I'm very curious about. Yeah. What's the tangible outcomes you can actually measure? Yeah, because you started almost a year ago, right? do you already see stuff you're saying, oh, I can see this, and this happening in this sector of the company. And it's obviously a direct outcome of the effort that we put in. Yeah.
Timothy M. Lupinacci:Yeah. and you're, you. That's another obviously great important, very important leadership principle that, we launched a strategy, but again, it's just words on the paper. I wanna be held accountable. So I put some very specific measures. and the three big ones, as it relates to your question that we did, we were, we want to increase the number of what we call our strategic clients, which are really clients where we do business in more than one, just one business area. So we had a definition of what that means. we wanted to improve our brand awareness in the industry and we wanted to improve our employee engagement. And we had some financial metrics and we actually. Last year was a record year. And of course I'm tying connecting it back to the people doing. I think people taking some of these steps is translating, you, it's hard to always connect the dots, but to see, look, we tell you to do this, y'all are doing it, you're bought in. And now we're driving financial performance. That's great. But on those other three targets, at least in the first, nine months to 12 months of this, we just, got our latest, employee engagement surveys up and we were up in every category. and, still areas for improvement. but they were all, 75% or above were positive or, whatever the top two categories of a five point scale. So we've made improvement over year, our brand awareness. We have an external source that does brand awareness and it's not. What do you think about Baker Donaldson? It's really just talking to buyers of legal services. Who do you use and trust? So it's more of a, yeah. and we increase that by, from like the 80th best brand in the legal market to 68, something like that, year over year. and then we have. Incrementally moved. It's like from 12% to 12.5% of strategic clients, after the, but it's at least it's going the right direction. Yeah. And this year is really a big focus on what that means and how to do it. So all that to say, we absolutely put measures in that. We think it's always hard with the lead measures, lag measures. But we tried to put some things out there that we thought, if this is happening, we can tie it back to some of the stuff we're doing. so far, so good. It's been a good first year.
Isar Meitis:I love that. I, and I love your point about leading indicators versus lagging indicators. Yeah. And you've gotta be very careful with what you measure and when you measure it. For us, again, going back to the academy example, yeah. In the beginning it creates sometimes more noise than good. Cuz the people who go through the academy now has a different kind of knowledge and a different focus and suddenly people who didn't. And that creates friction within the company. But what happened was, Is that within three to four years, most of middle management, most of middle management were people who went through the academy. Got, and that was a game changer. And the crazy thing is since then, that company has been acquired and it's been through a merger and it's been, and still a lot of people in the middle management in the new unified company, these people who've been through the academy 10 years ago. that's great. and that proves the point that. In the long run. Going back to what I said in the beginning, and I swear I didn't plan this, but we went full circle in the long run. If you invest in these kind of things, yeah, it works. And like you said, sometimes you can see immediate outcome. Sometimes you, sometimes your, even your employee engagement survey will show you negative results because people are in that change process and people don't like change. And But if you trust the process and you're really figuring out a better capabilities, better skills, better mindsets, better culture, better everything for your employees, in the long run, it will pay off.
Timothy M. Lupinacci:you've, we could unpack this for hours because the whole change management piece is really important. Cause as you said, even like with a law firm, it's been done generally the same way for a hundred year, a hundred years, But to have that pivot to, I talk about thinking about our firm as a best run business, like our clients. Think about it. And that has heightened expectations, right? Of re I've gotta show you the return on investment that I'm investing in this mini M B a, but what's the return and what's the expectation and the accountability. And so it is, it does go, it does tie, hand in glove, I think to exactly what you're saying with the academy. Like you had to get folks bought in. That this is meaningful and you had to spend the money to build it out without maybe seeing the results immediately. but that's, but now you look back years later and you can have the satisfaction that it made the difference in people's lives, right? Yeah. Yeah.
Isar Meitis:Tim, fascinating conversation. Oh yeah. I really thank you. This was, oh, Very eye-opening. I think you're doing really important stuff, and again, you're seeing the results, but anybody out there who's considering this, there were a lot of great tips from Tim on, on how to think about it, how to execute on it, little steps along the way. Tim, if people wanna follow you to know more and what you're doing and how you're doing it, if they wanna work with a law firm, like what's the best way to connect with you, follow you, and so on.
Timothy M. Lupinacci:Sure. Yeah. I am on Instagram with my name and then, the firm is Baker Donaldson, b a k e r d o n e l s o n.com, which you can find me there. And then I did launch earlier this year, a nonprofit called Everybody leads.org. and that website is up and they'll have content about leadership. That whole approach of what I'm trying to do there is take some of these basic leadership skills into underserved communities, but I am putting content. And workbooks and things like that up there as we build it out. So that would be another place to check and certainly can contact me through that website as well.
Isar Meitis:Fantastic. Thank you so much. This was really great. I appreciate your time. Enjoy the long weekend.
Timothy M. Lupinacci:Yes, you too. Thank you. I really did enjoy this as well. Isar, keep doing what you're doing. You're doing good work, man. Thank you.
