Profile: Andrew White

Andrew White discusses the thinking behind the Solutions Lab knowledge-management project, which is flying high at international firm Bird & Bird. By Kate Clifton

When Andrew White, knowledge-development partner at international law firm Bird & Bird, set about developing an innovative know-how resource for the firm’s fee earners and support staff in 2001, he felt that a code name mirroring the huge scope and ambition of the project would be fitting. He asked the IT department that the server to house all of the firm’s valuable content should have a suitably dynamic and energetic title, such as ‘falcon’ or ‘eagle’ (all of the firm’s information-technology hardware is code-named after birds). Unfortunately, there was only one codename available. “For the first two years after launching our project we were using the ‘turkey’ server,” says White. “Every time you pulled up a document, it had the file path ‘turkey’ in it.”

Joking aside, the outcome of years of hard work by White and his team, the ‘Solutions Lab’ know-how system, has become an integral element of the firm’s KM strategy, albeit work in progress. For White, the salient point is that although much has been achieved by the project so far, there are still challenges ahead. And, if the Solutions Lab is to be truly successful, there is no time for the firm to rest on its laurels – continuous innovation is key, which will require staying power and determination.

Thankfully, White is driven by a desire to make his firm stand out from the crowd. A glance through his CV offers some insight into the origins of this attitude. Before turning his hand to KM on a full-time basis, White juggled know-how and training alongside his primary role as a specialist IT and intellectual-property lawyer. He trained at Herbert Smith, and went from there to Bird & Bird, where he remained for four years before moving on to further his experience with three other firms: Ashurst, Garretts (part of Arthur Andersen), and Allen & Overy. Throughout the six years he was away from Bird & Bird, White remained in contact and, when the opportunity arose, he leapt at the chance to become Bird & Bird’s first-ever director of KM. He became a partner 18 months after rejoining.

“The firm was very keen to have someone who understood the strengths of the organisation rather than playing catch-up, because if you’re doing this you don’t differentiate yourself,” he says. “Working to the strengths of the firm, you do.”

Although Bird & Bird is now a full-service firm, one of its main differentiators is that there is a particular focus on ‘high-tech’, something that makes aspects of White’s role a little easier. “You can tell this when you walk into the lift, speak to the CEO and he knows exactly what you’re talking about,” he says. “These strengths have always been a distinctive feature underlying the firm’s brand. My task is to exploit all this collective knowledge and to allow those insights and expertise to surface and be made visible. The knowledge exists, it’s just a question of how it’s identified and shared among our people.”

White entered the role already familiar with the firm’s culture and workings, and believes that the fact he had moved around and worked at other firms was also valuable. “It’s an antidote to being insular,” says White. “Among the best assets someone can bring to a job such as this is a bit of lateral thinking and vision, and an understanding of the issue of differentiation. All firms say that they want to differentiate themselves and innovate, but only once you’ve actually seen how other firms operate can you fully understand how to do this.”

That White has extensive experience in the practice – not just the business – of law, is another bonus. He believes this has been beneficial throughout the Solutions Lab journey, since it is a project that looks at KM from a client perspective. “You have to have been a fee-earning lawyer and, quite frankly, a good one to be able to do that properly,” he says.

It also means that he has an insight into the way that a lawyer’s mind works, so can be more emphatic and targeted in his communications about his ideas and strategies, and better understand the way in which lawyers manage their activities. “I chose, professionally, to retain certain areas of expertise even though I moved into management because I believe that as a leader of a knowledge project, you have to lead by example rather than simply managing other people’s activities,” says White. “You want to actually contribute to the knowledge base itself, train people and engage clients.”

And, despite leaving behind his fee-earning roots, the nature of the Solutions Lab project means that White has regular dealings with many of the firm’s major clients, which generates value for the firm.

White benefits from a close working relationship with Bird & Bird CEO, David Kerr. “We’re on the same wavelength about the dramatic changes under way in the marketplace, and where knowledge fits in” says White. He also believes he has gleaned much inspiration for his daily work from one of the senior partners at Bird & Bird, Trevor Cook. “I could tell you that I learnt a lot from Tom Davenport or one of the other KM gurus, but the truth is that I bought the books and just never got round to reading them,” he says. White worked with intellectual-property partner Cook for three years, who taught him how to master complex areas of law and then disseminate that knowledge to clients and colleagues. “In my mind, that remains the very essence of KM” says White. “I learnt from Trevor to take pride in legal expertise, to share that expertise in an unselfish way, to mentor colleagues and to engage in a continual process of self-criticism leading to improvement. Those things automatically generate client and efficiency gains, buy-in and enthusiasm.”

White’s work, he says, has been met with a very positive reaction around the firm, with lots of ardent champions and individuals who are eager to learn how the Solutions Lab can be beneficial to them. There are still, however, a few sceptics and a number of people across the firm’s international network who are not yet familiar with the project, where more work is needed. The emphasis remains on delivering highly tangible results, which are explained in clear business language, not KM jargon. “It’s all about quick wins,” he says. “At all costs, don’t ‘talk the talk’ – let your activities do the talking. I could have spent nine months drawing up a strategy plan, then two years trying to explain how I was going to implement that plan. If we have a strategy plan, it’s two pages of A4, and the implementation is five years of hard work.”

This simplicity is reflected in the approach White takes to the maintenance of the Solutions Lab. At the moment it encompasses legal content, much of which has been repackaged in distilled user-friendly ways. It is not yet a business-intelligence system. One thing that White learnt from his experience at other firms is not to collate material in a large repository, and then spend time sifting, reducing and deleting. “It’s much better to start off with a small amount of very high-quality content and build upwards, which is what we’ve tried to do,” says White. “It has to draw out the strengths of the organisation rather than regurgitate material that is otherwise easily obtainable from third parties.”

For that reason, White has looked to Bird & Bird’s practising lawyers – rather than hiring dedicated professional support lawyers (PSLs) – to produce and maintain content, something that is not widely practised at other firms. “I understand from other firms that there’s often an average of eight to ten PSLs in their London offices alone, compared to one at Bird & Bird.” However, White is a firm believer that in this way a strong sense of ownership is instilled, while ensuring that the know-how materials are fresh and “reflect exactly what happens at the ‘coalface’”, the cutting edge of practice. “You don’t get precedents for some of the areas we practice in, such as communications or electronic banking,” he says. “Therefore, we prefer our lawyers to be actively involved in know-how generation.”

The main messages that White communicates tolawyers are that a successful knowledge culture requires participation by everyone at the firm and that building the knowledge base is mission critical for the firm’s clients. He aims to facilitate this universal involvement, while catering for the range of talents and strengths among the firm’s people. “We need to do a lot more than we’re currently doing, but it’s all about internal communication, creating project ambassadors who can speak enthusiastically about the project without us cajoling them to do so, having a rapport with the end users and respecting everyone in the organisation,” he says.

Going forwards, White will continue to work on improvements to the Solutions Lab system, most importantly ‘internationalising’ it, so that all of the firm’s offices can participate in its development.

“You have to keep a firm vision and be very persistent,” says White. “You have top clients’ perspectives to bear in mind. In order to meet our goals, these perspectivesneed to be fed back into the firm to inspire and galvanise people.” And with his honest and self-critical approach, combined with a quest for continuous improvement, you can rest assured that the outcome of White’s work will be no turkey.

Andrew White will be facilitating ‘Beyond Buy-In: Sustaining Success in Knowledge Management’, a seminar for professional services in London on 7 December 2006. For more information e-mail events@ark-group.com