Three Hats of the Managing Partner

Technician, Manager, Entrepreneur

In his bestselling classic, The EMyth Revisited, Michael E. Gerber writes how an entrepreneur, such as an attorney, feels right before she starts a business. Gerber suggests that the employee experiences a seizure from working for someone else that triggers her desire to run her business. He calls this the Entrepreneurial Seizure. He writes,

In the throes of your Entrepreneurial Seizure, you fell victim to the most disastrous assumption anyone can make about going into business. It is an assumption made by all technicians who go into business for themselves, one that charts the course of a business—from Grand Opening to Liquidation—the moment is made. That Fatal Assumption is: if you understand the technical work of a business, you understand a business that does that technical work.”
(emphasis in original).

The EMyth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It, Michael E. Gerber

This EMyth, this entrepreneurial myth, that if you know how to do the technical work of the business, then you also know how to run a business that does that technical work, is widespread among small businesses. You are susceptible to it too. If you have ever sat in a bar or eaten in a restaurant and thought that you could run your place better, this is the same symptom in a different context. If you think you should start your own firm and this workbook has new concepts, this is a strong symptom.

Gerber writes that every entrepreneur has three personalities inside them: the technician, the manager, and the entrepreneur. The technician, in our setting, is the associate attorney. This technician wants nothing more than to do the technical work of the practice of law. The technician wants to meet clients, write wills, litigate cases, and advise clients. The manager, on the other hand, is the one who handles details, pays bills, sends out invoices, and buys insurance. In Gerber’s terms, the entrepreneur is the dreamer, the one with the big idea, the one who wants to innovate. The entrepreneur is frustrated by inaction, envisions new strategies and services, and shapes new missions and priorities.

In applying Gerber’s labels to the law practice, you are behaving like a technician when you are in billable productivity. You should also compare Gerber’s categories with the three roles in a law firm. You behave like the manager when you are doing much of the administrative and operational work that supports revenue but does not earn it. The manager focuses on the present to achieve results. What is missing is entrepreneurial dreaming and innovating. The entrepreneur is the visionary. If you neglect the manager and entrepreneurial roles, you will not be working on your business.