The IKEA Effect Every Law Firm Should Be Using

Watch the YouTube version of this episode HERE

Are you looking for some advice on how to achieve fulfillment in your life? In this episode of Maximum Lawyer Live, Tyson reflects on personal and professional fulfillment, using a recent home renovation as a metaphor for job satisfaction. Drawing from psychological theories like Self-Determination Theory, the IKEA Effect, and Flow, the episode explores how competence, autonomy, and relatedness drive motivation. 

Tyson shares some insights about personal and professional fulfillment and the 3 things you need to master to become successful in both realms. Autonomy is important to fulfillment because it's about controlling how or what you do. Then there is competence and the belief that you have the ability to do something. Last is relatedness and if what you are doing resonates or relates to people and their life. If you are able to master these 3 things, you will be successful in whatever you do. The control over your work, the competence you have and the reliability is what people are drawn to.

Lifelong fulfillment is all about continuous growth and learning. If you have the desire to learn and grow every day of your life, you will never be stagnant or in one place. You will be able to move forward and evolve not only in your professional life, but in your personal life. Putting golden handcuffs on can really hold you back from achieving whatever you want. So, it is important to allow yourself to move forward each and every day!

Listen in to learn more!

3:22 Personal Fulfillment and Career Reflection
10:04 Communicating Value to Clients
14:04 Flow Theory: Achieving Fulfillment at Work 

19:20 Respect and Equality in the Workplace

24:01 Continuous Growth and Lifelong Learning 

Tune in to today’s episode and checkout the full show notes here. 

Creators and Guests

Host

Tyson Mutrux

Tyson is the founder of Mutrux Firm Injury Lawyers and the co-founder of Maximum Lawyer.

What is Maximum Lawyer?

Maximum Lawyer is the podcast for law firm owners who want to scale with intention and build a business that works for their life.

Hosted by Tyson Mutrux, each weekly episode features candid conversations with law firm owners, business experts, and industry leaders sharing real strategies and lessons learned in the trenches.

If you're ready to grow your firm with less stress and more support, this is your next must listen. Subscribe today.

Tyson 00:00:00 Good morning and welcome back to Maximum Lawyer Live. I have got an interesting set of thoughts to run by everybody today. hopefully you'll indulge me a little bit. there's a couple major threads that have that will sort of wind its way through this episode where, it's kind of two things that have led to this conversation. the first is a post that I put in circle for the Association last week. And, it was a question that I asked, what would my childhood self think of me? And so I've really kind of been going down the rabbit holes with that. And then at the same time, we are wrapping up a bathroom renovation where just putting fine details on things at this point, all the major stuff is done. And, Amy and I, last night, we were like, we just kind of stepped back and she goes like, step over here. Come on. Come over. Like, have you just stopped to look? And I was like, I don't know if I have. So like, we just kind of step back and look.

Tyson 00:01:07 It looks amazing. it looks really good. and and so, like, it's like thinking, like I was the last time. And this is more of a general question for everybody. When was the last time you you built something with your hands and you step back and just thought, man, that feels good. That looks good. and the reason why I asked that question is, is obviously we're not carpenters, right? with what we do, we don't have a lot of those opportunities because of the nature of what we do. and I also think a lot of the work that we do is not super fulfilling. Okay. I just and I think if you're a carpenter, it's probably the same thing. But like, all the crap that a carpenter has to go through to get to that finished product. Product sucks. many times we don't see the payoff. Is the difference, right? So we go through, like we had to fire somebody this week. I it sucks. I'm fortunate enough to have a team of people that can do that stuff.

Tyson 00:02:16 Now, I don't have to do that. Those are. But it doesn't mean it's. It doesn't still suck, you know? and so. And I'm sure that people that work with their hands, they do the same thing. Right. They've got, you know, whether you build furniture or you're, you know, electrician or whatever it may be. they have the same issues. What a key benefit they have, though, is at the end of the day, they can step back and look at that finished product and see it. And so it really got me thinking, okay. Do people. And I started I went down a rabbit hole with ChatGPT asking a bunch of questions, you know, do do do blue collar workers have more job satisfaction. Then white collar workers, are they happier in generally, those are no white. White collar workers are are generally happier. They have higher job satisfaction. And I and it was I couldn't let it go. I just couldn't let it go. So I kept I went down a little bit further and I wanted to know specifically people that are building things.

Tyson 00:03:22 Is that do they have greater job satisfaction? Are they happier in general? And that's where it gets a lot more nuanced. and there is some evidence, quite a bit of evidence there is. And I'll kind of go through these. I've made some notes on this because I think we can take some of this and apply it to our world to make our employees and our jobs a lot. And I use that term job for us. I meant more than the job of our people. Jobs of our people, and our role in our firms are happier. You know, we think we can have greater job satisfaction. I really do because I found it really interesting. So and again, all this is going on at the same time where like what would my childhood self think of me. Right. Because I'm thinking, okay. because there's, there have been times throughout my career because I really like working with my hands, with thinking like, would I have been better off doing something different? Even though I love what I do? Okay, so don't get me wrong, I love what I do.

Tyson 00:04:28 But it was a it was an interesting question, like, what would my child himself think of me? Because I if I were to to look back in like, okay, project forward and see myself, I, I couldn't I can tell you I would be ecstatic if I knew I'd gotten to where I am now. Like, it would be absolutely over the moon about it, over the moon about it, and I have to remind myself of that because of I mean, sometimes we all just go through these times where we're just like, that week sucked. You know, like, what, a week? You know, that just happened sometimes. But this is, it's really kind of cool when you when you change the perspective and you go, all right, let's go back to the, the Tyson that didn't really think he was going to ever be able to go to college. So let's think about that, Tyson. And now like you're looking forward and you have okay, a really highly successful personal injury career, very successful law firm, very successful other company, maximum lawyer.

Tyson 00:05:37 I, I mean, I think I would be shocked, I really do. And, I think that makes me happy. It makes me happy that I, I have achieved what I have. But then let's go over it. Now, see this? I'm telling you, we're going to be kind of going back and forth, right. so then I. Then I was like, I love working my hands, all that kind of stuff. We just we're we're, you know, wrapping up this bathroom renovation. And so the it's interesting, some of the studies that I found and some of the research that I found. And so let's kind of play around with this. There is the selfdetermination theory, by Edward Deasy and Richard Ryan. And so this is one, and we're going to kind of play with this and kind of put it together and modify it to see how does this work for law firms. So this theory identifies three universal psychological drivers of motivation and wellbeing competence. So I'm good at something.

Tyson 00:06:34 Autonomy I control how I do it and relatedness my work matters to other people okay. So if you're building a piece of furniture. So I love working with wood. So I'm going to use this as an example okay. And by the way, a lot of it has to do with the actual tools. So if you're wondering how do you go to woodworking, Leta has to do with the tools you have. Okay. So just, I'll just kind of start with that. But, so confidence, I, you know, can I build a chair? I can. Am I good at building a chair? I've never built a chair, so I can't I can't say if I am. So, But let's say that you're a woodworker and you're really good at it, okay? You're competent at it. All right. Autonomy. I control how I do it. Do I have control over how I build this chair? Maybe I add a cup holder here. Maybe I put a headrest there. Let's.

Tyson 00:07:27 You know what? This was going to be just a regular chair. We're going to make this thing a rocking chair. How much autonomy do I have? And then relatedness. My work matters to other people. Okay. So I'm building a chair that's going to be super comfortable, super functional, and people are going to love it. Okay, great. So how do we do that when it comes to, let's say, a paralegal, right. how do we do that when it comes to, comes to, like, a receptionist? so competence. I mean, I'm good at something, so, like, those are. Yeah, you're you're good at your job, but what does that mean to be good at your job? and I and those of you that don't have job scorecards, this is an area that you're missing out. How do they know they're doing a good job? is it just because you're telling them? I don't think that that's good enough. I really don't, it. You just.

Tyson 00:08:12 You telling them that they're doing a good job, what you should be doing. If they're doing a good job, that's not good enough. They've got to be able to know it based on certain criteria. So you give them the job scorecard so they know that they're doing a good job. They're not if they're just guessing because they might be doing a great job, but they're guessing about it. Or they may be doing a terrible job and think they're doing a good job because they worked at another place where the criteria was completely different. So give them some sort of criteria in their jobs. autonomy. Okay. So this is something I'll be really honest with you. I've struggled with. I, I have evolved substantially on my thoughts on this one, where I was a very concrete guy like you. These are the rules. This is the way, and we do have a way of doing things. I have been more flexible in letting people get to the end point. Here's the start point, here's the basic guidelines.

Tyson 00:09:08 And as long as you do these things, I've got certain things that you must do. But however you get from A to Z. As long as you follow our rules, stick to these guidelines. I'm fine with it. So we do give a greater level of autonomy now than what I used to. that is one I've had to come around to. And then relatedness. My work matters to other people. This is where I think a lot of firms fail. And you don't think that a lot of you realize it. A lot of you think, oh, of course I'm doing a great job for my clients. This is. This matters to other people. Yes, it matters to them. I think where you fail, where we all fail. Okay, this is not. This is not a new thing. This is not a me thing. This is an US thing. as a profession, we don't do a good enough job of telling our our clients, how good of a job we're doing.

Tyson 00:10:04 And I'm not talking about bragging. I'm just talking about communicating to them what's happening on their case, how it's affecting their case, how it's benefiting them. Okay, we've got to do a better job of of explaining to our clients how we are improving their lives and how we are, making whatever, whether it's a matter, a case, whatever it is, we've got to we've got to tell them, explain to them how this is making a difference in their lives. Just got to do that. Okay. So that's, that's one thing. So, because in this one skilled trades, they, they score higher on competence and visible relatedness. Those two. When it comes to autonomy, it's a little bit different. Autonomy. They do score a little bit lower. I thought I thought that was kind of interesting. so I think with the benefit they have is other that people can touch the thing that they built. Right. That's where the relatedness is. is really kind of a not our favor unless you're giving them a massive settlement check.

Tyson 00:11:08 Like that's a little bit different. But for the most part, it's not super tangible. A lot of things we do. the, the so the key point from this one, the happiness is less about the job category and more about whether those three needs are met. Okay. So focus on those three needs. Those three needs. Okay. So this one this is a recent study. This next one is from 2012. It's called the Ikea effect. Really it's an interesting one. All right so here's what this one showed that people value things more when they build them themselves. All right. So you, when you hear the people calling. Hey, you know, I'm thinking about handling this case on my own. I mean, people, they do value more things. I can. I mean, I can tell you just from the the bathroom renovation, which we did everything. I mean, we did heated towel racks. We did heated floors. We. I mean, we have done we did recessed cabinets.

Tyson 00:12:04 I mean, we I mean, we, you know, we did all the fancy stuff, right? We and it would have cost us a freaking fortune to do it. Paid someone to do it. And so I, I'm, I look at I'm like so happy we did it. I it's extremely I like working with my hands. like I told you, I, I was able to work with Amy on this. We were working together as a team, and it was it was a lot of fun. and so, I will tell you, I probably do value that more than. What if someone else had done it? just the reality of it. So the psychological principle behind this finding is effort, justification and ownership. Okay, so I put a lot of effort in. It makes a whole lot of sense. That's part of the reason why fraternities and sororities are so powerful. Because of that, it's the price of entry. So the price of entry, which it's that, you know, that whatever you'll call it, hell week, I can't remember what you all call it.

Tyson 00:13:01 I'll just call it Hell Week. I don't think that's what it's called, but, it I always think of it as hell week. I mean, people and you, you you put people through as a rush or whatever it's called, and you'll put them through a bunch, a bunch of, you know, rigamarole. They get into the fraternity and the or the or the sorority. It's it's the same thing. Like the effort when you put in the effort, you're going to value something a lot more. Okay. all right. So when it comes to this one, if we're talking about extending this to tradespeople, if assembling a cheap bookshelf increases perceived value, imagine framing an entire home or building a custom piece of furniture that visible. That visible output strengthens identity and meaning. Okay, so this is and this came to the reason why I pulled this one specifically is because I use the term fruits of the labor. Like, I wanted to know if because they were able to see the fruits of their labor, does it improve their satisfaction? And it seems that that that part's true.

Tyson 00:14:04 All right. So the next one is flow theory. And so a flow occurs when skill level matches challenge. All right. There is immediate feedback. The task requires full attention and there is clear progress. This is an interesting one. So flow occurs when skill levels match. Skill level matches challenge. There is immediate feedback. The task requires full attention. There is clear progress, so skilled manual labor or work often meets these three these criteria. There is physical feedback measurements. matter. Cuts must be precise. Progress is visible. Office environments, by contrast, are fragmented. Emails. Slack. Meetings. Notifications. Constant context switching. So and it says that flow state consistently correlates strongly with reported happiness. So all right. So how can we help increase flow state. all right. So skill matches challenge okay. So we have to make sure our people are trained up. So let's say you're drafting a demand I'll try to make this or I'll let's say an estate plan a state plan. All right.

Tyson 00:15:13 So you got to make sure that your people are trained up to to meet that challenge. All right? I think that I think we can probably all hit that one. immediate feedback. So how do we how do we do this? Right. So they're not building something and seeing it in real time happening there can draft things. I think many of you will use that are doing estate planning software as softwares, they'll build it. So how can we help it? Where? they get some sort of immediate feedback. As they're building this thing. and I don't know if that's some sort of a scoring system where you put. I think it'd be kind of interesting as you build this thing, you put it into a scoring system or it's, it's automatically the software automatically grades it where, you know, you're at 98 on this one. you miss this thing and this thing, but maybe I think maybe checklist could help with this, too. Were you getting immediate feedback? Boom. Knock this off, knock this off, knock this off.

Tyson 00:16:10 That was with, our office administrator, Kristen, when we, used to to hire her. We were, because they do. They tested her skills that it was kind of like, you know, taking a Colby, but different. but one of the things they told me is she likes tasks where she can check them off. She likes being able to have a task. Check it out, check it off. Habitus, check it off. So that's something where having that immediate feedback might be might be helpful. The task requires full attention. so this is one, where I know that I'd say 95% or higher of firms are terrible at this. You gotta have office hours. You have to give them the opportunity. One stressed I was having this conversation just yesterday with one of our our mastermind members and how you've got to convey to your team how important the work is and having that time set aside for them to do that work and for you to do the work so they understand how important it is.

Tyson 00:17:14 So if you have things like office hours where you have this time dedicated to doing the work, they are going to feel like, at least at a minimum, feel like it needs their full attention because you have this dedicated time to do it. So, whether that's time blocking, whatever it may be, office hours, all these different things you can use, but they need to know that the work that they're doing is important and it does require their full attention. And then there is clear progress. So I it would be great if, if what if whatever they were doing, they had some sort of like a, you know, like when you're filling out a survey you and I'm sticking with the estate planning theme where as you're going through it, the little meter at the top shows you how much progress you've made on it. I think something like that would probably be fairly easy to add to whatever system you're using, and I think it would be pretty, pretty darn helpful when it comes to showing that clear progress and giving them some, some sort of, aid and helping their satisfaction.

Tyson 00:18:09 So, so, that so that's all one comes to that one. And then here's a survey from Gallup about, happiness. What the data actually shows when it comes to, shows that blue collar workers, on average, report lower overall job satisfaction than white white collar professionals. So and here are the nuances. So, when they control for autonomy, income stability, respect and job security. That happiness gap narrows. So this is blue collar generals, a blue collar versus white collar in general. So if you can focus on autonomy, giving people that that space to kind of do their, their thing, making sure that their income is stable, I think that that's important, obviously, respect and then job security. So knowing that they're, they're safe in their job and then giving I mean giving them respect I it's we we interviewed someone yesterday. So she made it to the final interview and we we asked the question of like, what's one what's something that attorneys do that annoy you? And she said, you know, it just yeah, whenever they just don't show you like just a basic level of respect.

Tyson 00:19:20 I'm thinking like, I mean, it's just the fact that she had to say that is kind of kind of terrifies me as to what's going on at some other firms where like if that's a concern and that's like, that's the thing that annoys you about attorneys is like, you've been treated so poorly so many times, you have to say that that is that does that. That kind of that pisses me off, actually is what it is, what it does. So, and my firm, we're all treated equally. It's just how we are. It's just, I don't care what what your job is who you are. We're all. We're all treated. We're all treated the same. So no one, no one is treated differently. We're all treated the same. we're all in the same level. yeah. And I think by doing that, you actually you earn a lot more respect from people than if you had that authoritarian approach. I just my opinion, but, do your thing, you know, if you want to, if you want to drive fear into your people, go ahead.

Tyson 00:20:17 But it's just not the way I'm going to do things. So. All right. So, so I think that's all all the studies I really want to cover with this. I guess the whole point is, is that, You know, just take some of the takeaways that I like. Pick just one of those to focus on. I think one of the things I'm going to focus on is the whole competence, autonomy, relatedness part of it. And I think you can do that. But that's the selfdetermination theory. Or if you want to do like the flow theory, flow theory, that's where the skill matches, the challenge and immediate feedback and all that kind of stuff. I would say pick one of these and focus on that and see how it how it might improve some of the satisfaction from your people. I think it's kind of interesting thing whenever you're thinking about how, how to compare, like seeing the completed job compared to what we do. Like my first thought whenever I was looking to this.

Tyson 00:21:13 Okay, maybe we could do, like, more scoreboards and all that because we, we have our we we have our, you know, quote unquote scoreboard for our, our KPI for the, for the quarter or our rock for the quarter. But I mean there. I'm sure there are other ways of. Like, you can create spreadsheets with scoreboards. You can do a lot of different things. But just making it real for people, it's really, really important. but back to the other question. So the what would my childhood self think of me? I, I am interested to see what people have to say about that, because I do understand that depending on where you are in your career at this point, some of you may look back and think, man, I'm on, I'm on the wrong track. I did the wrong thing. I chose the wrong career. I, I maybe I, you know, I'm in personal injury right now or criminal defense right now and that's not really who I wanted to be.

Tyson 00:22:08 I wanted to, you know, I wanted to, you know, be in business law or, you know, I wanted to deal with contracts or something like that. And if that's it, that. Okay, then then maybe this is time for you to pivot. so I do understand that there's going to be those of you that are going to hear this or watch this and have those thoughts that, maybe, maybe you're not super proud of yourself. and I'm hoping I'm hoping that's not the case. I'm hoping that you are. It's nothing like that. I'm hoping at worst, that it's. You just need to make a pivot, and you can do that. It's never too late for that. You can. You can still do that. I was talking to a chiropractor yesterday, and I think he would be a fabulous orthopedist. Fabulous orthopedist, because he actually cares. He understands. He understands the medical more better than I'd say most authors. He really does. And he's got kids that are the same age as mine.

Tyson 00:23:07 And I was like, you know, like, I know the kids aren't, you know, close to being out of school. But once they are, maybe you should consider doing that. I don't know if he will, but I mean, it really is never too late. It's it's never too late to go back and do something different. and but those of you that are super proud of what you've done, congratulations! That's great, but keep pushing. Keep pushing. what I don't want you to do is get lazy and think, oh, I've accomplished all my goals at this point now. because Tyson said so. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying be proud of where you are. Be proud of the things you've done. But keep going. Don't stop. Don't let up. I mean, I think growth and growth doesn't mean making more money. Growth doesn't mean, you know, hiring more people. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm saying. I'm saying personal growth. Okay.

Tyson 00:24:01 Keep growing as a human, as a person. Keep learning new things. I think you'll be better off for it. And, I mean, there's lots of studies on Alzheimer's if you need some actual data. Some of you are data people. If you there's there's many studies on Alzheimer's and dementia, like if you continue to keep learning, especially if you learn new languages, that that helps with things like that. So continue to grow as a person. don't don't put the golden handcuffs on. Don't do that. Just keep moving on. So. All right everybody, that's all I have this week. Have a wonderful week. Hopefully you enjoyed this one. Let me know in the comments what you thought. I and I've not asked for this in a while. I know I'm doing this one live in the in the association. So. And check out the association. Go to maximum Comm. I would love to have you in there, but, if you don't mind, leave me leaving us a five star review.

Tyson 00:24:51 It would really appreciate it does help spread out, spread the love to other people. And so check out the association. Check out Becky's list. Becky's list. that's where you can check out vendors that, could work for. You may not work for you. We do not charge anyone for it. It is free. This is a service. We want to build a level playing field so that, legal vendors can't take advantage of us anymore. That's the whole idea of it. But, Have a great week, everybody. We will be talking to you. So everybody.