Margaret didn’t begin searching out of curiosity. She started looking because the assumption had failed, and guessing was no longer an acceptable way to run a firm.
She stayed up late into the evening, long after the office had quieted down. She wasn’t searching for programs or benchmarking competitors; she was trying to find a way to describe what she saw without turning it into a complaint or a slogan.
Margaret ruled out what this wasn’t. The mid-level stage hadn’t changed, expectations hadn’t softened, and the work hadn’t become any less demanding. What changed was the path itself.
Associates worked hard without understanding how leadership, judgment, and business development were developed or how today’s effort became tomorrow’s opportunity. The firm hadn’t designed that path and had assumed it would explain itself.
Margaret sifted through articles, white papers, and systems that promised engagement, resilience, and satisfaction. None of them addressed the real problem she was seeing. They concentrated on morale, workload, and retention as outcomes. What she needed was to go upstream of all that.
She discovered something structured. The system was called MLARD™, named by Susan Silverman. What a funny name, Margaret thought. What’s an MLARD? It treated development as something that needed to be made visible, not inferred. It also viewed leadership as a set of skills that could be identified before someone actually had them. Additionally, it considered business development as something to start earlier than firms typically acknowledged, long before anyone is handed a client.
Margaret leaned back in her chair. This wasn’t a quick fix. MLARD was a map.
She opened her notebook once more.
At the top of the page were the two lines she’d written the night before:
Good intentions are not a system.\
Assumption is not a development strategy.
She read them again. Then, below them, she wrote:
What replaces assumption needs to be designed.
Margaret realized MLARD provides a way to clarify development without making promises, discuss leadership and business development without myths, and replace guesswork with practical steps people can follow.
The MSL Saga™, MLARD™, and the 85/15 Model™ are trademarks of Susan B. Silverman Consulting. The MSL Saga and all episodes © 2026 Susan B. Silverman Consulting. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction or distribution is prohibited.
