Saying Goodbye: How Dispute Resolution Firms Cope With The Departure Of A Senior Practitioner
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This article originally appeared in the January 1998 issue of Consensus, a newspaper published jointly by the Consensus Building Institute and the MIT-Harvard Public Disputes Program. |
Just ask Lucy Moore. Last spring, Moore left Western Network-- the Santa Fe-based non-profit she co-founded in 1981-- to launch a solo practice.
"It was very much like a divorce of two people who really care for each other," Moore says wistfully.
In the past year the dispute resolution field has seen a number of such "divorces" --cases in which a founder or senior partner of an organization has moved on in search of new challenges:
- In August, John Ehrmann, then-executive
vice president of The Keystone Center in
Keystone, Colorado, announced that he
would leave that organization after 15
years of service to look for greener
pastures. A month later, four other
senior Keystone facilitators -- Michael
T. Lesnick, Connie Lewis, Timothy Mealey,
and Barbara Stinson -- followed Ehrmann's
lead. The five then formed the Meridian
Institute, a new nonprofit dispute
resolution organization in Dillon, Colo.
- Also in August, Western Network partner
Carl Moore (no relation to Lucy Moore)
left that organization to begin a solo
practice. Carl Moore was only with
Western Network for two years; most of
his long career was spent teaching
communications studies at Kent State
University.
- In May, Eric Green left Jams/Endispute, the organization he co-founded in 1982 and helped to build into the largest mediation firm in the U.S., with 30 offices and 350 mediators and retired judges on staff. Carmin Reiss, a Jams/Endispute mediator and Green's wife, left at the same time. Green and Reiss now provide mediation services under the name Resolutions L.L.C., in Boston, Mass., and Green continues to teach law at Boston University.
Taking the high road
Managing transitions like these is tricky. People face the challenge of preserving personal and professional relationships, which are particularly important in a field as small and insular as dispute resolution. Those who leave must also shoulder the burdens of launching a small business, while those who remain must regroup and move on -- no small task in a field in which the reputations of individual senior practitioners are often stronger than the reputation of an organization.
Take this example: The same month that Keystone Center hired Kathy Prosser to take the helm as president, John Ehrmann, a nationally known facilitator of policy dialogues and a mainstay of Keystone's work, decided to leave. Soon after, four other senior practitioners followed Ehrmann in forming Meridian Institute. With an aggregate 51 years experience at Keystone, the potential for deep rifts with those people remaining behind loomed large.
"Initially we felt a sense of disappointment, and we felt some anger," notes Kevin Curtis, a senior facilitator based out of Keystone's Washington, D.C. office. "We wondered why our colleagues didn't want to be part of the opportunity to work with us on planning the next five to 10 years."
In the face of this painful situation, senior professionals on both sides of the divide placed a strong emphasis on preserving personal and professional relationships as much as possible. "Our hallmark approach was to manage the transition in as collaborative a way as we possibly could," says John Ehrmann. "We wanted to take the high road."
What did that mean in practice? Ehrmann, who was the first to decide to leave, explains that he tried to be as transparent as he could about his intentions. The first step was letting the new president and the chairman of the board know of his decision to leave as soon as it had formed in his head, even before he knew exactly what he would do when he walked out the door.
"I wanted to be sure that the new incoming president of Keystone would have a fresh start. I knew that she was planning a major retreat for the staff, and I wanted enough lead time so that I could be out of there before that happened," he says.
Ehrmann and his four colleagues also made a point of sitting down with each member of the staff at Keystone to explain one-on-one their reasons for leaving.
Finally, when it came time to dividing up Keystone's projects, both sides worked hard to use the dispute resolution techniques they advocate in their practice. "We tried to articulate our interests, and they tried to articulate theirs," notes Ehrmann. "We all agreed: let's not get so focused on one piece of work that we employ methods to get it which will have a cascading effect through our relationships."
The focus on interests led both organizations to realize that they could both benefit by continuing to work together on a limited basis. For several projects near their end, Meridian partners continued to provide services temporarily as subcontractors to Keystone. For several newer projects, and even a few that were mere possibilities, Meridian and Keystone agreed to staff them with joint Keystone/Meridian teams.
The split in the senior staff of Western Network may also provide a good model for how to handle transitions harmoniously.
"We really, really worked at it. That's what it takes," says Lucy Moore. "After 18 years of a close working relationship, it's better not to be cavalier about it, unless you don't care about the people. You can leave the organization whole and healthy."
How did they do it? The key was "keeping communication open from an early stage," says John Folk-Williams, one of the partners who remained at Western Network. "You have to recognize that people will change their professional and financial and work situations. You need to be flexible."
Another important component was the mediated negotiations in which the details of the departure were worked out. Western Network partners held a day-long negotiation that was co-mediated by the chairman of the board and an outside mediator. A set of agreements emerged from those negotiations that ensured minimal disruption to clients and projects. Among the negotiated details:
- Lucy Moore agreed to continue mediating
two of Western Network's long-term
projects, working as a consultant.
- For a period of one year, she also agreed
to work through Western Network as a
consultant on any projects that came to
her from previous clients of the
organization. Western Network will
receive 25 percent of the fees.
- Also for one year, she agreed to give Western Network the right of first-refusal on any new work that came her way that she did not want.
As a result of these agreements, Lucy Moore says the transition process has been gradual and smooth. "I'd guess a couple [of clients] don't even know it's happened," she says. Perhaps more important, the personal and professional relationships between the former partners appear to have emerged intact.
Green and Reiss went through similar negotiations at Jams/Endispute, and they also say maintaining relationships was an important goal. When asked if they had succeeded at the latter, Eric Van Loon, senior mediator at Jams/Endispute, says, "Yes," with a laugh. His proof? "They're using my tickets to the Celtics tonight!"
After the storm subsides
In the aftermath of a major exodus, the biggest challenge for the organization that gets "left behind" is to regroup.
Prosser, who was the commissioner of the Indiana Department of Environmental Management before becoming president of Keystone, explains that what at first seems like a blow can be transformed into an opportunity.
"Anytime you have change in an organization, you have a certain amount of sadness," she says. "But when senior people leave, there is a great opportunity for an organization to take a look at itself, and to set a new course for the next five, 10, 15 years."
When Ehrmann and his colleagues announced their pending departure from Keystone, Prosser elected not to react by immediately hiring new staff. Instead, she launched an intensive strategic planning process with those who remained.
The first step was hiring an outside facilitator based in Boulder, Colorado. Chosen after a series of interviews with a core group of Keystone staff, the facilitation team of Sandra Hill and Joel Rothaizer, of Organizational Systems, brought a combination of experience, expertise in managing organizational change, and an understanding of the world of public policy dispute resolution. Perhaps more importantly, according to Prosser, they brought "a sense of humor and a flexible approach that wasn't too cookie-cutter."
The team worked with Keystone to organize and run several off-site, one-to-three day retreats, each with several weeks in between. Some were for everyone in the organization; others engaged subsets of the staff.
"The retreats allowed us to be proactive," said Prosser. "We looked at what we do at Keystone and how we do it. We helped the staff build an understanding of the organization they have been a part of." She adds, "Our goal was to identify the strengths and values that we want to keep, and also face the weaknesses and figure out how we're going to deal with those."
In addition to these internal meetings, Keystone looked outward to better understand the future market for their services. Prosser hit the road, meeting with clients to introduce herself, talk to them about their evolving needs, and ask them how they see the future of the field. Keystone staff began gathering information about trends in the dispute resolution marketplace.
All in all, Keystone staff seem to feel that the strategic planning process has been essential in preparing the organization to face the future. Todd Barker, a Keystone facilitator based in Vermont, notes, "We've spent six days in retreat, and these six days have been the most important ones we've spent together since I've been at Keystone.... It's been an incredibly important part of the transition."
What's the impetus?
Why do practitioners put themselves through these transitions? One common reason for moving on is that practitioners would rather be mediating disputes than managing an organization.
"I got tired of the administrative duties," explains Green. "I'd get 50 e-mails a day, with questions like, 'Can we do such-and-such in the Phoenix office?'" As a member of both the board of directors and the executive committee at Jams/Endispute, Green was also making at least eight trips a year from Boston to the firm's southern California headquarters, and he'd often have to take a red-eye flight home. It got old. "I wanted to focus on what I really loved -- mediating," Green says.
This is not an uncommon sentiment for someone in a service business, says Sylvia McMechan, co-chair of the environmental and public disputes sector of SPIDR and executive director of The Network: Interaction for Conflict Resolution, in Ontario, Canada.
"[Often] somebody begins a company or an organization to deliver a service that they like to deliver," McMechan explains. "Over time they become so caught up in the administration of the organization that they get further and further removed from providing that service." In a way, she says, "they become victims of their own success."
One solution to this problem, then, may be to let mediators mediate and allow business managers to run an organization.
Carl Moore advocates this approach. He says its premise is akin to the dispute resolution practitioners' mantra: "You need someone to pay attention to the process, so that others can pay attention to the content."
But it may not be that easy. Many small nonprofits cannot afford to pay an executive director to run the organization. At large firms like Jams/Endispute, there are so many management tasks to be done that it's inevitable, and probably desirable, for mediators to do some of them.
Even if senior mediators could be freed from management duties, it's not clear that they would be inclined to stay with their organizations. The fact is, mediators are an independent lot.
"I think being a mediator is a very lonely job," explains Lucy Moore. When a practitioner mediates a dispute or facilitates a meeting, no one else in the room has the same expertise or the same neutral role, Moore says. Those who succeed in such a solitary role tend to be independent thinkers, and perhaps a little introverted. "I don't want to chat about my cases on a daily basis," she says. "I don't feel like I want to be cozy with a lot of other mediators."
Folk-Williams concurs. "Despite all the talk about collaborative processes," he says, "[mediators] work better on their own."
It's no wonder, then, that so many practitioners enjoy working solo or in small organizations, and that more are choosing to do so.
Lawrence Susskind, executive director of the Consensus Building Institute in Cambridge, Mass. (and publisher of this newspaper), thinks such changes are inevitable.
"Senior-level turnover is normal in most professional-level service organizations," says Susskind, who led CBI through just such a transition when co-founder Antonia Handler Chayes left in 1995. "I also think ... people in dispute resolution ... shouldn't be judged by a special standard because of the field they have chosen to work in. What I mean is, it is not surprising to see organizations change, die, or be re-created. We shouldn't expect anything else -- even though we are in the dispute resolution field!"
Perhaps the most basic lesson offered by these
transitions is that by marshalling the same
skills they use in their day-to-day work--careful
listening, candor, and flexibility, among others
-- practitioners can minimize the potential
pitfalls and maximize their new opportunities.
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