The 3 A's of Professional Success

Availability, Affability and Ability

I asked a lawyer I respect a lot the secret to his success. He told me that one of his mentors told him, ~40 years ago, that to be successful in Law you need to have the 3 A’s:

Availability, Affability and Ability (in that order!)

I really like this framework because it’s simple, memorable and I think it works in most professional settings.

Availability

To be a trusted advisor, you need to take the call when the client needs you. Sh*t never hits the fan at a convenient time. So when a client calls in a panic late at night or on the weekend, you need to be there for them. The client will probably ping 2-3 potential professionals and the first to have a substantive discussion and offer value upfront will probably get the business. There’s also a sub-point about being easy to do business with. i.e., not hide behind too heavy of a process of mandate letters, conflict checks that take forever, etc.

Affability

A client evaluating potential advisors will rely heavily on their instinct. Professionals often provide psychological support to clients and help them manage their emotions during difficult times. Think about a hotly contested M&A deal where the parties threaten to walk away because of bruised egos. Advisors who can bring down the temperature are key. In the end, people will simply do business with professionals they like and trust. You can’t learn affability from a book and that’s why this point is probably lost on people who try to clumsily fake it. Schmoozing is not affability. Genuine connection and trust are.

Ability

According to the lawyer who passed on this advice to me, ability is the hardest one to assess. Ultimately, ability reveals itself in the long-term. In litigation, the judge will decide and that can take months or years. In commercial matters, it’s the absence of conflict 5-10-20 years down the line. The point is that it’s hard for a client to evaluate ability upfront and success is often silent. That’s why it’s last in the list.

I was curious whether the above was common knowledge outside of legal circles. To my surprise, I learned that this adage is also popular in another field close to home: Medicine! And more specifically, in surgical training, where it has served as a “survival curriculum” for decades. In the high-stakes environment of a hospital, a resident’s Ability is often treated as a baseline assumption; it is their Availability (being on call at 3:00 am) and their Affability with the patients, nursing staff and senior surgeons that truly dictate their trajectory.

The 3 A’s travel well to our reality. At Dialogue, we’ve learned this firsthand. Our members can’t easily judge whether a clinician’s diagnostic reasoning is 10/10, but they notice immediately whether care feels accessible and whether the person on the other end actually listens with empathy (aka bedside manners in a clinical setting). Our clients are the same: they expect us to be easy to do business with, available whenever they need us, and genuinely care about them.