THE DREAM OF BEING MARADONA AND OUR EGO TRAPS

“Diego nunca te vas a morir, ya lo sabe el mundo entero; Diego sólo te quiero decir que en el corazón te llevo”. Amando a Maradona, Alex Batista.

Last week Diego Armando Maradona passed away. His death triggered a wide set of responses and emotions as he was a myth in the soccer world and also a controversial public figure. Many things can be said about Maradona and it’s not the purpose of this article to make an analysis of him, but I just want to highlight a specific aspect of his career as a soccer star that is conducive to my analysis today.

One of the most common topics of discussion is who has been the best soccer player in history: Messi or Maradona, Pelé or Maradona, and soccer preferences or national prides impact those opinions. But there is one thing in which Maradona outperformed all the others: his capacity to achieve results on his own individual merits and against all odds. Messi led one of the best (maybe “the” best) club teams ever which was Barcelona at it’s peak; but Messi’s stardom could hardly had been as spectacular without such an outstanding team of players. Similarly, Pelé’s hour of maximum glory came with the World Cup of 1970 in Mexico where he led the Brazilian national team, a group of outstanding players, probably the best national team ever. Would Pelé and Messi have achieved their great success without these star teams?

Maradona had this unique capacity of playing with mediocre or average teams and turning them into champions. That was the case of Napoli and the Argentine national team of 1986 which played in Mexico. Napoli was a poor team until Maradona arrived in Napoli, and nobody believed in Argentina before the World Cup of 1986. He turned both teams around, pretty much on his own, and took them to the highest glory. That is why people in Napoli and Argentina worship him so much. He could make impossible dreams come true. This feature of being so much better than the rest (every game, all the time) made him a kind of god for the soccer world and specially for his fans. This turned into a drug (the worst of all) that progressively destroyed the man.

Vanity and the need of praise and recognition is a widespread feature of human beings, at least in small doses. Since early age we like to be praised and recognized when we do something good or make an achievement. Up to some level, this is a healthy reaction since it enhances our self-esteem and motivates us to pursue other goals. But vanity also has a hidden component. Many times it is not just about winning or doing something really well; it is also about being better than the rest. For many, this “being better than” actually becomes more important towards their own team. It is critical that my team achieves great results, but even more important that I can outperform my teammates. And the more I outperform them, the better it feels. This is the Maradona dream.

During 10 years of practicing as a consultant and being a close observer of Latam law firms I have noticed how important it is for many partners to compete with their own partners. In some cases, probably the fewer, this competition is explicit and brutal. Both their culture and incentive systems drag partners to openly compete against each other for money and success. This creates a dysfunctional system of mistrust and poorer service to the clients. These firms have been paying the price of their egotistical leaders and losing progressively their competitiveness and market reputation.

In other firms, a much larger group, partners do not compete formally with each other. Compensation systems vary from pure to modified lockstep (or “performance lockstep”, which I personally like better) and there is a declared wish for partners to collaborate and seek results in a collective manner. However, in many of these firms partners do compete with each other for clients and revenues. They prefer to register cases under their own name rather than pass them over to other partners better suited or available to attend them, or even for purposes of giving younger partners the opportunity to grow in their practice. This situation is widely common although many are not willing to acknowledge it. Same thing happens with client relationships and generally in terms of trying to look smarter, more prepared and relevant than their partners in a variety of situations in the day-to-day life of law firms.

As I said, this situation occurs in many law firms that use different versions of lockstep and which actually turned to those systems to avoid or mitigate the individualistic tendency of some partners. Comp systems cannot be blamed in this case, at least on their surface. So why do partners need to compete against each other, sometimes even more than with real competition outside the firm?

Law practice requires a set of personal skills to be successful: strong an attractive personality, ability to seduce and convince others, a sense of self-assurance and safety. These characteristics and other similar ones tend to distinguish individuals and not groups. It is the individual who needs to excel to be a high performer. The group comes later. Clients, counterparties, judges, governmental bodies, etc. respect individuals, not groups. The stronger we are in those capabilities, the better lawyers we become. As a consequence of that, we build our professional strengths and careers looking at ourselves. The group always comes later.

In addition, some partners in law firms are what Laura Empson called “insecure overachievers” (“Leading Professionals. Power, Politics and Prima Donnas”, Oxford University Press, 2017). These individuals which are sometimes among the leading lawyers in law firms present a complex combination: they have a very high level of performance based on their tremendous effort and capacity, but because they feel insecure they mistrust others and are never satisfied with themselves. Since they are so important in their firms (sometimes the top leaders), an unstable culture of mistrust and individualism is created around them. Other lawyers may try to resemble them without success, and others may not like the environment and leave. In all cases, the importance of the individual is paramount. The highest you can go above the rest, the better. It is the Maradona dream.

That is why many modified locksteps have become a sort of civilized eat-what-you-kill. We wish to become institutional and collaborative, but then we praise the individuals for their goals, because that is the way we measure the business for evaluation purposes. I am not saying that partners should not have individual goals for which they become accountable, but we also need to understand that we are still far away from becoming truly collaborative firms, because for many competing with our partners for glory, money and recognition comes first as an intuitive reaction.

Ambition is very important. You need important doses of ambition to succeed in any endeavor of life. But when the key to ambition is to outperform your partners, then you have fallen into an ego trap, which works like a drug that needs to be consumed in larger doses every time. It is a mistake to think that such an approach would enhance an entrepreneurial culture and drive the firm to success. True entrepreneurs are always team players; they enjoy group achievements even if they have strong personalities. The ego traps just serve individuals and destroy firms in the long run as it destroyed Maradona. Let’s be honest, being a leader of a successful firm always has the thrill of an ego trip. But turning that into an ego trap and a drug for our needs is to condemn our firm’s future. Maradona may have been the best for many but he paid a high price for that dream. Let´s be wary not to do that with our firms.