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Seth Godin is fed up with the traditional business plan, suggesting they’re “often misused to obfuscate, bore and show an ability to comply with expectations.” Instead, he’d like to see the modern business plan divided into five sections:
- Truth
- Assertions
- Alternatives
- People
- Money
It seems to me that this breakdown would also be a great way to subdivide the traditional client status update (or case analysis) letter. Instead of burying tons of information in multiple paragraphs, break down the letter into the five sections Seth suggests. Your clients will better comprehend the information your giving them, and you’ll have an easy-to-use template for all your client correspondence.
Matthew
As a lawyer in private practice, it amazes me how much we now have to produce to a client to comply with our statutory, non-statutory or firm guidelines. Whilst I understand the need to have a certain amount of information, the problem is that the letter is so long by the end that a lot of the important material gets lost. I am an avid Seth fan and finished a few months ago Linchpin but I doubt whether lawyers would be comfortable in adopting a hierarchy system like this for fear of missing something out. That said this formula, which is quite prosaic, might work well in the initial meeting or perhaps as a position statement (on a without prejudice basis) in a mediation.
Great post and I only wish I had written it!
Best wishes
Julian
I’ve come to like the GPPPA template for meeting agendas, which I imagine would be useful for client status reports too:
* Goals – review and/or restate them
* Progress made
* Problems encountered
* Plans for future action – 5W+H (who, what, where, when, how, why)
* Assumptions being made