For my friends and colleagues who help lawyers learn to serve clients better:
Lots more info coming soon.
![The [non]billable hour](http://www.nonbillablehour.com/images/headway/header-uploads/xNonbillable,P20Hour,P20442.png.pagespeed.ic.sJ1SiCvIT_.png)
Category Archives: Innovation
Good Freaking Advice
NSFW* to be sure, but I found a site that — if you’re not afraid of reading an F-Bomb (or twenty) — has some pretty great advice for designers. Much of it is applicable to lawyers, too.
* No nudity. No inappropriate images. Just one profane word, over and over.
LexThink.1 Voting Has Begun!
The submissions for LexThink.1 are up and voting has begun. This year’s theme is Serving the 21st Century Client.
You can check them all out and vote here. Here are the speakers who’ve submitted a talk, along with their proposed title:
- Nancy Bembridge: The Director of First Impressions
- Stephen J. Best: Passion
- Nicole Black: Game Set & Match
- Mark Britton: Back to the Future
- Toby Brown: Making Alternative Fee Agreements Work
- Ruth Carter: Flash Mob Law
- Tara Cheever: Keeping Support Personal in a Mobile World
- Jason E. Dyer: Where Canasta and Counsel Collide
- Roe Frazer: Lawyering in the Thank-You Economy
- Richard Granat: Legal Industry Startups
- Will Hornsby: Five Ethics Rules That Should Be Incinerated
- Eric Hunter: Moving Towards 100% Web
- Ross Kodner: Why Do We Keep Buying New Technology?
- Patrick Lamb: Become Your Clients’ General Contractor
- Mark Lauritsen: Picturing Better Choices
- Pam Makowski: Set Your Practice on Fire With the New Kindle
- Victor Medina: Scripting the Client Experience
- Jay Pinkert: Form Follows Function, Lessons in Client Service
- Dan Pinnington: Why Client Service Matters
- Ed Poll: The Future of Law and the “New Normal”
- Larry Port: Hey Lawyers, This is What I Want!
- Carey Ransom: Acquiring the 21st Century Client
- James F. Ring: Ending Cheap Talk in Legal Bargaining
- Rachel Rodgers: Down With the Law Firm Template!
- Jay Shepherd: One Word to Reinvent Client Service
- Matt Spiegel: Don’t Just Communicate…
Check them all out and vote for your favorites. The top 12 vote-getters will be asked to present on March 28th on the eve of ABA TECHSHOW.
If you’ll be in Chicago, you can grab a free ticket to the event here.
Legal Learning Links
Together with many of my friends in the Continuing Legal Education industry, I’ve started another Tumblr site called Legal Learning Links. We’ll be sharing some interesting stuff we’ve found about learning theory and educating lawyers. Stop by and check it out.
Ditch Powerpoint and Dance Your Presentations
It is hard to describe how much I love this presentation from John Bohannon, who has a Ph.D in Molecular Biology.
He uses dancers (instead of PowerPoint) to not only share an interesting scientific concept, but also to demonstrate how dance can support business and scientific thinking.
In this TEDxBrussels talk from November 2011, he asserts that “bad PowerPoint presentations are a serious threat to the global economy,” draining it of $250 million per day.
Watch it and be fascinated.
Great Writing from the Legal Underground
My long-time blogging friend Evan Schaffer has compiled all of his best writing (and it is really great stuff) into one post. Enjoy!
Things Good Lawyers Believe
Bob Sutton, Stanford Professor, management consultant and author of Good Boss, Bad Boss
I’ve replaced “people” with “clients” in a few of them, but otherwise left the list mostly untouched. I think it is great set of principles for lawyers.
- I have a flawed and incomplete understanding of what it feels like to work with me.
- My success — and that of my clients — depends largely on being the master of obvious and mundane things, not on magical, obscure, or breakthrough ideas or methods.
- Having ambitious and well-defined goals is important, but it is useless to think about them much. My job is to focus on the small wins that enable my clients to make a little progress every day.
- One of the most important, and most difficult, parts of my job is to strike the delicate balance between being too assertive and not assertive enough.
- My job is to serve as a human shield, to protect my clients from external intrusions, distractions, and idiocy of every stripe — and to avoid imposing my own idiocy on them as well.
- I strive to be confident enough to convince clients that I am in charge, but humble enough to realize that I am often going to be wrong.
- I aim to fight as if I am right, and listen as if I am wrong — and to teach my clients to do the same thing.
- One of the best tests of my leadership — and my organization — is “what happens after people make a mistake?”
- Innovation is crucial to every team and organization. So my job is to encourage my people to generate and test all kinds of new ideas. But it is also my job to help them kill off all the bad ideas we generate, and most of the good ideas, too.
- Bad is stronger than good. It is more important to eliminate the negative than to accentuate the positive.
- How I do things is as important as what I do.
- Because I wield power over others, I am at great risk of acting like an insensitive jerk — and not realizing it.
Measuring Quality of Experience and Result
In my post earlier this week, I wrote about Measuring the Quality of Your Clients’ Experiences and not just the quality of their results. Patrick Lamb suggested that lawyers also use the grid to predict their clients’ satisfaction, and I agree.
Here’s a .pdf of a Quality of Experience Survey I designed with pages for both the client as well as attorneys/staff to complete (separately, of course) — along with room for them to suggest improvements. Let me know what you think.
For the Attorneys and Staff to Complete:
For the Clients to Complete:
Focus on Quality of Experience
Lots of lawyers claim to be “results-focused.” Clients want good results, after all, and marketing yourself as one “focused” on delivering them has got to be a lot better (to clients, anyway) than being “timesheet-focused.” However, I think many lawyers who focus only on the result are hurting their clients (and their own practices). Let me explain:
Most clients get just one “result” in their matter: it could be a divorce, a home purchase, or a settlement check. Until that moment — which can take months or years to achieve — they wait. They get bills. They attend hearings. They read letters and go to meetings. But they don’t know for certain what’s coming in their case until it finally arrives.
So what do clients focus on every day while awaiting their result? They focus on the quality of their experience: Does their lawyer return their calls? Does he validate their parking or give them a hot cup of coffee while they wait in his waiting room? Does he communicate everything he’s doing on their case and bill them fairly?
And because they don’t have any “results” to share with others, they share their experience instead:
Bill: ”How’s your case coming?”
Wendy: ”Not sure. I’m still hoping to hit the jackpot, but my attorney is an ass and never calls me back.”
So what’s an attorney to do? Start by focusing on something more than just the quality of your clients’ results. Focus on their quality of their experience as well.
Here’s how:
1. Looking at the chart above, realize that for every client, there are two distinct parts of their legal matter:
- The Quality of their Result (QoR) speaks for itself, and is measured by how satisfied (or unsatisfied) the client is as their matter concludes. It is the thing most lawyers claim to focus upon, but in certain instances (litigation, for example) is either pre-ordained or out of the control of both attorney and client.
- The Quality of their Experience (QoE) is the measure of their satisfaction with everything else, including how they feel about their lawyer and the service she provides.
2. Ask some of your former clients (or pull some old files and do this yourself) to map out on the grid above how they felt about your representation, making certain their “Experience” measure is for everything that came between hiring you and their result.
3. Unless everything is in the upper right quadrant, get to work.
If you’re a lawyer who delivers a great experience — even with the occasional bad result — you’re likely to see more repeat and referral business from your former clients than some ”results-focused” lawyers who consistently get great results but make their clients miserable in the process.
Ignite Law is Back
I’m really excited to announce that Ignite Law is back at ABA TECHSHOW this year. It takes place the evening before TECHSHOW “officially” kicks off at 7:00 pm on March 28th at the Hilton Chicago.
The focus of this year’s event is Serving the 21st Century Client.
We’ve renamed the event LexThink.1 (to reflect the tenth of an hour increments most lawyers bill in as well as the length of the six minute speaking slots), but the format will remain largely the same: Twelve six minute/twenty slide presentations that are selected by the public.
The (still free) tickets will go on sale Monday, January 16th and speaker submissions will open up on January 30th. Voting on the submitted talks will take place beginning on February 24th.
We’re still tweaking the event site, but head on over to check it out.
I’m also happy to announce that JoAnna Forshee and Jobst Elster (from InsideLegal, the producers of the event) and Andrea Cannavina (from LegalTypist) have signed on again to help us deliver another great night of legal innovation.
We’ll have sponsorship information up in a few days as well, if you’re interested in that sort of thing.
We hope to see you there!
The Essence of Successful Blogging
I found this quote in this great list of inspirational resources for writers. It seemed to hit the “how to start a successful blog” nail squarely on the head:
Find a subject you care about and which you in your heart feel others should care about. It is this genuine caring, not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in your style. ~ Kurt Vonnegut
Do Teddy Bears Drive Better Behavior?
Here’s an idea for all the mediators and negotiators out there: buy some teddy bears.
According to Sreedhari Desai, assistant professor at the UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School, Adults Behave Better When Teddy Bears Are in the Room:
Adults are less likely to cheat and more likely to engage in “pro-social” behaviors when reminders of children, such as teddy bears and crayons, are present.
Sreedhari Desai and her research partner Francesca Gino had people play classic psychology games in which the subjects controlled how much money other people earned and could earn more themselves if they lied. Half the participants were either in a room with children’s toys or engaged in children’s activities. Across the board, those participants lied less and were more generous than the control subjects.
Professor Desai continues:
In all our lab studies, we found that when subjects were near toys or engaged in activities like watching cartoons, the number of cheaters dropped almost 20%. In several studies we had participants play games in which they filled in missing letters to complete words. Those who were primed with childhood cues were far more likely to form “moral” words like “pure” and “virtue” than those who weren’t. In addition, people behaved better in the presence of childhood cues even if they weren’t feeling particularly happy.
Professor Desai discusses her research here.
If you’re looking for an edge in negotiating your next deal, it might be worth inviting a few stuffed animals into the room. You just might get a better result for your clients.
Quarantine Your Best Ideas
Many of the attorneys I work with suffer from the same thing I do: Shiny Shiny Syndrome. You suffer from S3 when you regularly give in to an overwhelming urge to start working on something new and better, instead of wrapping up your current projects.
Shiny Shiny Syndrome isn’t (usually) fatal, but the cumulative results of constantly starting projects at the expense of finishing others can have a debilitating impact upon your practice and your staff.
To combat my case of Shiny Shiny Syndrome, I’ve begun an Idea Quarantine. From Wikipedia:
Quarantine is compulsory isolation, typically to contain the spread of something considered dangerous, often but not always disease. The word comes from the Italian (seventeenth century Venetian) quarantena, meaning forty-day period.[1] Quarantine can be applied to humans, but also to animals of various kinds.
Whenever I have a great idea for a project, I capture it so I don’t lose it, but then I wait at least 90 days before I begin working on it. The “compulsory” waiting period keeps me from starting work on a poorly-formed idea I’ll later lose passion for. It also gives me time to think about the idea and socialize it with friends and colleagues. If I’m still enamored with the idea once the 90 days have passed, it goes on my “To Do” list.
If you’d like to begin your own Idea Quarantine, and want a fun template to use, here’s my Idea Quarantine. pdf from above.
Words from the Wise
If you’d like some regular inspiration from founders (past and present) of some of the world’s most innovative companies, check out Startup Quote. Each day, you’ll get a short bit of wisdom on entrepreneurship, design, innovation and management, presented in a picture like the one above. Well worth a regular read or a follow on Twitter.
Perform a File Autopsy
Remember the television show Quincy? Jack Klugman played a Los Angeles medical examiner, and in every episode, his autopsy would reveal that the decedent (who’d seemingly died of “natural” causes) was a victim of foul play. Using the clues he’d gained from his examinations, Quincy would convince the police a homicide had occurred, and then manage to singlehandedly finger the killer. In a pre-CSI world, it was pretty compelling stuff.
So why all this talk about an obscure 70′s crime-drama? Because if you’re really interested in identifying the work you love to do and learning how to serve your clients better, you may want to spend some time each week playing Quincy. Instead of investigating foul play, however, you should closely examine those things you’ve given up for dead in your office: your closed files.
Perform a File Autopsy. Here’s how:
1. Grab at least five old files that have been closed for at least a year. Though you can choose files randomly, it works better if you’ve take some you liked and others you’d rather never touch again.
2. For each file, complete the LexThink File Autopsy (pdf) form. Be brutally honest with yourself as you answer questions, which include:
About the file:
- In hindsight, should I have taken this file?
- Were there any “red flags” I should have noticed?
- What lessons did I learn from handling this file?
About the work:
- Did I like the work?
- Was I good at it? How could I have been better?
- If I didn’t like the work, how could I do less of it?
About the client:
- Does this client have any other legal work I could be doing?
- How would this client describe me to their peers?
- How could I have served this client better?
About the money:
- Was this a profitable matter for me to handle?
- Did the client feel my fees were fair?
- How could I have priced this matter differently?
3. Every week, grab a few more files and repeat the exercise. If you have staff, ask for their input as well.
4. If you’re seeing common themes (either positive or negative) throughout the files, make sure to note them as well.
5. Once you’ve performed 20-50 “autopsies,” you’ll have a better sense of the kinds of work you like to do, clients you enjoy serving and alternative ways to price your services. Perhaps most importantly, you’ll understand the kinds of work you don’t want to do and learn to avoid taking matters and clients better passed on to your competition.
Resolve to Rethink Client Service
This year, instead of sharing a resolution each day of December (like I have before), I’m going to try something new and share a piece of a new “manifesto” I’m writing. I’ll have a new installment up every day. I hope you’ll enjoy them and let me know what you think.
Becoming a Trusted Advisor
The best part of writing this blog has been the amazing people I’ve gotten to meet along the way. Two of those amazing people are Charles Green (Blog/Twitter) and Andrea Howe (Blog/Twitter), who’ve just co-authored the sequel to one of the best books for professional service providers of all times, The Trusted Advisor.
In their new book, The Trusted Advisor Fieldbook: A Comprehensive Toolkit for Leading with Trust
When Andrea asked if I’d be interested in doing a Q &A with her and Charlie on Trust, I jumped at the chance. Here it is:
Q: You’ve both written and spoken about Trust for years. In this down economy, where clients seem more focused on price, does Trust matter more or less than before?
This is a great question, Matt, and there is a clear answer: trust matters more in down times. It’s in bad times that more people are tempted to behave in untrustworthy ways—to cut corners, to cut price, to over-promise, to jump for the bird in the hand rather than wait for the delayed gratification of long-term relationships.
In down times, people are tempted to react more from fear. That means short-termism, zero-sum game behavior, and a tendency to isolate rather than collaborate.
In such times, the people who stay with the high road are even more distinguished by comparison. Someone who plays for the long run, who stays focused on client needs, and who sticks to relationships and to principles, really stands out.
Another way to put that is: the times when it’s hardest to stay trustworthy are the times when you can gain the biggest competitive advantage from being trustworthy.
Q: Speaking of price, you both know that I’m not a fan of the billable hour, which often pits the clients best interests against their lawyers’. Can you discuss ways lawyers can leverage Trust to embrace more collaborative pricing models, where risks and rewards are shared between client and lawyer?
Absolutely. We’re firm believers in leading from the four trust principles: transparency, collaboration, long-term focus, and other-orientation—all of which, when practiced, serve both parties’ best interests. Of those principles, one of the most important when it comes to pricing and fees is transparency.
Consider an alternative to what are often veiled or vague (and usually postponed) conversations about pricing: a frank, honest, sincere discussion that emphasizes candor. The lawyer in the scenario could say words to the effect of, “Let’s see if we can both agree on some basic principles when it comes to our working relationship. We’ll both be more successful if we agree to be in this together, for the long haul, with pretty much no secrets between us. That includes being jointly committed to a billing approach that maximizes the benefit to both of us. I am not interested in making a nickel if it comes solely at your expense and I hope you’d be equally disinterested in saving a nickel at my expense. Let’s work together to define fee levels and practices that are utterly fair to both of us and help our respective financial health over the long term.”
A conversation like that not only sets the stage for trust, but for the kind of collaboration and creativity that makes room for lots of pricing alternatives beyond the traditional billable hour.
Q: In the book, you suggest several ways professionals can handle their difficult clients (I believe you call them “jerks” in the book). If I’m a lawyer with a difficult client, what should I do? Isn’t it just easier to fire them?
Ha ha, well that’s certainly the temptation! The thing about our clients who are “jerks” is, it seems to be catching. Notice you’ve got one jerk for a client, and pretty soon others start popping up. Next thing you know you’re firing half your clients!
One thing we point out is that the “jerk” of a client probably has a spouse, a child, a dog, a friend—at least someone in her life— who thinks she’s pretty great. The problem statement, “My client is a jerk,” is problematic in-and-of-itself: it’s highly subjective, it’s unverifiable, and the object of the statements—your client—is not likely to agree.
What we see as bad behavior usually (usually) comes from decent people who are stressed out, anxious, or fearful. (Which is why we put the word “jerk” in quotations in the book.)
If your client behaves in ways that seem unproductive, ineffective, uncooperative, or untrustworthy, it is easy to dismiss her as a “jerk.” Freedom from difficult clients lies in taking responsibility for fixing the relationship. Lead with curiosity instead to look at what may be behind the behavioral issue—for her and for you. Have a conversation. Find out what’s going on. Name it and claim it.
And what about the real, true evil clients? Yes, there are a few. Those are the ones you refer to your competitors.
Q: When should law firms start teaching Trust? Is this new associate 101 stuff, or only relevant once lawyers begin to build significant relationships with clients? Or is this something that should be covered in law schools — once schools start embracing practical skills education?
It’s never too early to start—trust is a life skill, after all. And like a martial art, it takes a lifetime to practice. There is nothing about being trustworthy or working effective relationships that is or should be restricted to higher levels in a firm. Everyone has chances to operate from the basic principles, and to demonstrate the virtues of trustworthiness: telling the truth, behaving dependably, keeping confidences, and being mindful of the needs of others. And even though what it takes to be trustworthy is actually remarkably simple, it often isn’t easy—for anyone.
That said, it’s the senior partners in the firm who are the most effective teachers, for good or ill. Whatever they do is what junior people will mirror. We’d suggest a firm should be wary of teaching Trust 101 to the junior folks when the senior people aren’t willing to walk the talk.
Q: A lot of readers of this blog are solo and small firm practitioners to whom the economy has not been kind. What specific advice do you have for someone with a general practice who feels compelled to take nearly every client who walks in the door?
First, stop hoping your revenues will recover, and firmly address your practice areas, pricing, and means of finding clients. This recession is not going away anytime soon, and there are secular problems in the supply of lawyers on top of it.
Once you’ve done that, take the clients you know you can do good work for and help the others find another lawyer. For the ones you keep, do really good work. Resist the temptation to resent them, or to treat them as a short-term means to an end. Give them your best. Going back to your first question, it’s in times like these that people’s true character is revealed. Every downturn has an upturn, and those who do right by others will be remembered for who they are in the upturn.
Q: You both have been making the rounds promoting this book. What questions were you expecting and haven’t yet been asked? How would you answer them?
Charlie Green: Here’s a question we haven’t yet been asked: Why don’t people trust lawyers? And is it a bum rap? My answer is no, unfortunately, it’s not a bum rap; people distrust lawyers more than most other professions. There are many reasons for this, including:
- In most professions, there is a such thing as “the truth,” whereas in law, there is only evidence.
- The nature of the law, at least in the US, is adversarial—it’s all about winning, and the other side losing. Not a great attitude to take into divorce, contract disputes, or agreements drafting.
- The law is taught relentlessly as meritocratic—he who knows the most first wins. Unfortunately, in life, that attitude pegs you as a know-it-all wiseass.
The good news is, it is possible—very possible—for lawyers to treat their clients as true partners. And when they do, they stand clearly apart from the pack.
Andrea Howe: We haven’t been asked what one chapter would we advise people to read, if they could only read one chapter—which is a tough question because the book strives to provide a wealth of practical guidance for a whole slew of situations. But if I had to zero in on just one chapter, my pick would be Chapter 2: Fundamental Attitudes. It’s a short one—only six pages—and yet it’s pivotal because being trustworthy means getting right the underlying attitudes, mindsets, outlooks, and ways of thinking. To jump ahead to skills, tips, and tricks, is to work the hard way. Get the attitudes right, and the rest will naturally follow.
Thanks to Andrea and Charlie for taking some time to answer my questions. If you’d like to pick up the book, it is available here
New on the Law Firm Retreat Blog
Here is what’s new on my LexThink Law Firm Retreat Blog:
- Rapid-Fire Idea Sharing
- Conferences as Idea Containers
- Brainstorming Better CLE
- Design for Your Ideal Average Customer
- Start from Scratch for Great Firm Retreats
Check them out, and if I can assist your firm (large or small) with a retreat, practice group meeting or strategy session, let me know, I’m happy to help!
Wanting Creativity is Easier than Doing Creativity
From the Freakonomics Blog comes news of a Cornell study titled, “The Bias Against Creativity: Why People Desire But Reject Creative Ideas.” Here’s an abstract of the study:
People often reject creative ideas even when espousing creativity as a desired goal. To explain this paradox, we propose that people can hold a bias against creativity that is not necessarily overt, and which is activated when people experience a motivation to reduce uncertainty. In two studies, we measure and manipulate uncertainty using different methods including: discrete uncertainty feelings, and an uncertainty reduction prime. The results of both studies demonstrated a negative bias toward creativity (relative to practicality) when participants experienced uncertainty. Furthermore, the bias against creativity interfered with participants’ ability to recognize a creative idea. These results reveal a concealed barrier that creative actors may face as they attempt to gain acceptance for their novel ideas.
The authors of the study propose that we should worry less about generating creative ideas and more about helping institutions to recognize and accept creativity. For many working in law firms — especially the marketing and business development folks — this will ring true.
In my work, I’ve found it isn’t enough to give people “creative” ideas. Too often, a great idea is met with a “We can’t do that here,” or “That will never work,” instead of a “Let’s try it!” It is far better to help people be creative as they develop relevant, innovative ideas on their own, and then giving them a framework and timeline for implementing them.
What’s been your firm’s experience with creative ideas? Do you see the same bias that the researchers discuss?
The iPad Office
Mashable shares some creative ways small businesses are using the iPad. Here’s what an owner of a yoga studio says about using the iPad as a customer-intake device:
First order of business? Ditching the front counter and bar code scanner you see at a lot of yoga studios and gyms. “When people walk in the door, we hand them the iPad, and they sit on the couch — it’s a lot more casual, and we can bring them tea or water,” Foster says. Instead of standing awkwardly at the counter and filling out waivers and liability forms on a clipboard, the iPad makes people feel comfortable and also makes data entry a breeze for goodyoga. The studio uses a Google form, so the staff doesn’t have to worry about decoding a patron’s chicken scratch and the team saves times since the client info goes into the database automatically.
Involve Your Clients Before Impacting Them
Before you make a big decision that would impact your clients, try this simple client-relationship tip from Thrilling Your “Front-Row” Fans:
Pick up the phone and get their opinion on a decision that would impact them.
Simple, cheap and easy. Next time you’re thinking about making a change in your business, reach out to a handful of your best clients and see what they think about it. Explain the challenge you’re trying to solve and solicit any additional ideas they have.
By seeking their advice on major business decisions, you’ll show them how you value their insight and soften the blow of any changes that adversely affect them (like a fee increase). You might be surprised at how willing they are to help you make your business better.
Commit to a Minimum Client Experience
Ryan Singer writes on the Signal vs. Noise blog about the importance of delivering a consistently great experience to customers, regardless of the complexity (or simplicity) of the thing you do for them. Though he’s talking about software, his basic idea is an important one for all service providers to remember:
Features can be different sizes with more or less complexity, but quality of experience should be constant across all features. That constant quality of experience is what gives your customers trust. It demonstrates to them that whatever you build, you build well….
I want a base level of quality execution across all features. Whenever I commit to building or expanding a feature, I’m committing to a baseline of effort on the user experience. That way feature complexity — scope — is always the cost multiplier, not user experience. There aren’t debates about experience or how far to take it. The user experience simply has to be up to base standard in order to ship, no matter how trimmed down the feature is.
How is this relevant to lawyers? Instead of letting the amount (or types) of work you can do guide your firm’s strategy, focus first on the minimum experience you commit to giving all your clients. Then, take on only the additional work that you can competently handle without compromising your client’s minimum experience.
The Ritz-Carlton of Law Firms?
What would happen if a major law firm appointed a managing partner with no legal experience? Couldn’t happen, you say? At the Henry Ford Health System in Michigan, CEO Nancy Schlichting named an executive from The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company (and expert in service excellence) as the president of one of the health system’s hospitals.
Why hire someone outside of healthcare to run a major hospital? How about to jettison any preconceived notions while creating a “Hospital of the Future” that differentiates itself from the competition by:
- Has prototype rooms for planning and community input.
- Incorporates green features in the architecture and construction.
- Consists of all private patient rooms, including in the emergency department.
- Emphasizes wellness and healthy living.
- Combines traditional clinical care with complementary therapies.
- Creates a unique brand and inspiring staff to think differently.
- Includes family space in each patient room, including intensive care.
- Implements a new kind of food culture in health care.
- Putts a focus on the special concerns of the elderly.
And the results? Judge for yourself on the hospital’s website – a patient-focused portal that every major law firm should replicate.
I’d love to see a law firm take such an innovative approach. Perhaps if there aren’t any former Ritz executives in the marketplace, the firm could at least send its management committee to one of the Ritz’s Executive Education Sessions.
The Poetic Lawyer
Jordan Furlong has a great post (inspired by me, he claims) on the Attorney at Work Blog site encouraging lawyers to write “legal” poetry, which he defines as “a single poetic expression of legal information.” Jordan suggests collecting the poems and then publishing them to give to your clients, which I think is a tremendous idea.
Here are a few of his examples:
It can be iambic pentameter:
“Class actions can’t proceed,” the high court found,
“Without an issue common to the class.”
They couldn’t find a unifying ground
Of bias, so they gave Wal-Mart a pass.It can be a limerick:
A clever young Briton named Max
Thought he lived in a haven for tax.
But some new legislation
Brought much aggravation;
Our update here has all the facts.It can be a haiku:
The breeze may be free
But you still need a license
For your wind turbine.And it can be schoolyard doggerel:
If your will don’t have a witness
It’ll fail the test for fitness.
Give it a try. There’s tremendous value in stretching your creative writing muscles and learning to write in different ways. It will also give you something fun to share with your clients.
And if you don’t think poetry is worth your time, try this Haiku Elevator Pitch exercise instead.
What’s In Your Firm’s Garage?
Looking for a place to foster creative side projects and innovation, Microsoft has launched a incubation space for their employees called the Garage. According to this CNET article, the “Garage” is a workshop-type place that gives employees access to tools, a place to experiment and the opportunity to collaborate with colleagues who share similar interests and skills. It also is a place where some fun creativity can happen:
In addition to getting the new space, the Garage also hosts “science fairs,” where employees put together poster-board presentations to show off their creations. Judges, wearing white lab coats, select winners, who get to ignite a homemade volcano dubbed Mount St. Awesome as their reward. Microsoft has also begun holding “Garage weeks,” where business units stop working on Microsoft products. Instead, employees focus on pet projects. Sometimes, their creations have nothing to do with Microsoft’s business whatsoever. One employee spent a week working on a self-leveling skateboard, something of a Segway for the skate crowd. Sometimes, they’re only peripherally related, such as an immunization tracker application for Windows Phones to help parents keep tabs on the different vaccines their children had received.
This is a fascinating idea that has a place in almost any industry — including law. Imagine if a law firm set up a “Garage” for lawyers (along with invited clients) to think together on ways to bill differently, serve clients better and explore new practice areas.
If you had an opportunity to build your firm’s garage, what would go in it? What kinds of things could you accomplish if you and your colleagues had the time and place (and permission) to innovate and think differently about your business.
On the LexThink Law Firm Retreat Blog
I’ve been sharing some of my best ideas on how to design and facilitate law firm retreats and practice group meetings over on my new Law Firm Retreat Blog.
Here are some of my recent posts:
- Create an Answer Gallery at Your Next Law Firm Retreat
- Ignite Your Firm Retreat with Shorter Presentations
- For a Great Law Firm Retreat, Leave the Lawyers at Home
- Let Your Best Clients Plan Your Next Retreat
See, Think, Feel and Wonder About Client Feedback
Giving feedback is hard, Whether you’re trying to give actionable one-on-one suggestions, or delivering an annual performance reviews, there’s a deceptively easy and powerful framework you can use to deliver meaningful, actionable feedback in a consistent way.
Based upon a conversation framework for children developed by Harvard’s Project Zero, See/Think/Feel/Wonder is an elegant, easy-to-remember way to give better feedback by completing just four basic sentences:
- I see ____________________ (Something about the object, person or behavior you can see with your eyes).
- I think ____________________ (What you think about what you see).
- I feel ____________________ (An emotion you experience because of what you see or think).
- I wonder ____________________ (Something you’re curious about or a question you have).
By prompting people to begin their feedback with an objective observation (I See), followed by critical analysis (I Think), an emotional response (I Feel) and a follow up question (I Wonder), it untangles the distinct components of criticism, and makes it more likely that the person receiving the feedback will understand it and respond appropriately.
Here’s an example on ways an attorney could use the framework to give feedback to a tardy client:
- I see that you’ve arrived late again for our court hearing.
- I think that you’re not taking this matter very seriously.
- I feel like you’re disrespecting me and the judge.
- I wonder if you’d like to continue with this lawsuit.
Here’s another way a client could use the framework to share their reactions to their latest bill:
- I see that you’ve charged me for three stamps this month.
- I think that you can afford to pay for stamps out of the thousands of dollars of legal fees I’ve paid you.
- I feel disrespected because you are nickel-and-dime me every month.
- I wonder if I should find another attorney.
When practiced and used regularly, See, Think, Feel, Wonder can change the culture of an organization and provide more actionable ways to drive individual and organizational improvement.
Here’s a Worksheet (pdf) that you can use in your organization to practice See, Think, Feel, Wonder everyday.
Thinking Unthinkable Thoughts
Kevin Kelly thinks about thinking the unthinkable:
The futurist Herman Khan introduced the idea of “thinking the unthinkable” as a way to loosen up the imagination in trying to forecast the future. Most time we are unable to guess the future because we are inhibited by conventional wisdom – something that everyone knows is true. For instance everyone (including me) knew that an encyclopedia written by amateurs that could be changed by anyone at anytime was simply a silly, impossible idea. That prevented anyone from forecasting wikipedia. Herman Khan stressed that we should assume what we know is wrong and begin to imagine how the unthinkable might happen.
Looking back even ten years, who would have predicted the legal present we’re experiencing now? Services like Facebook, LinkedIn, Avvo, LegalZoom weren’t around, and the biggest technology decisions most lawyers had to make was between Wordperfect and Word.
Looking forward to 2020, what is “unthinkable” for law practice? What things are we absolutely certain won’t happen in the next nine years? Here are a few of mine:
- There will be no “medium-sized” law firms any longer. All lawyers will either practice in firms of less than 10 attorneys or more than 1000.
- The court system, as a venue for dispute resolution of any kind, will cease to exist. Every dispute will either be settled in mediation or through submission to a computerized, artificial intelligence system, and parties will be bound by its decision.
- Thompson/Reuters/West and Lexis/Nexis will merge. Nobody will notice.
- Law schools will merge with business schools to actually teach students both to “think like a lawyer” and to run a profitable business.
- Facebook will introduce a feature that automatically recommends to divorcing couples how they should separate their friends and property.
Leave your unthinkable 2020 predictions in the comments, or tag them on twitter with #2020Unthinkables. I’d love to hear what you think won’t happen in 2020, too.
Packaging for Your Practice
If you’re looking for some creative design inspiration for your practice, check out The Dieline, a website that showcases the most innovative packaging design for the kinds of things you’d find on your grocer’s shelf.
Why packaging? Because packaging professionals take generic, non-differentiated products (like milk or motor oil) and convince picky consumers — solely through packaging — to pay a premium for the items that are identical in every way to other products on the shelf.
Sounds a bit like the legal marketing business, doesn’t it?
Ignite Law 2011 Speakers Named
The official speaker roster for Ignite Law 2011 is set. The event, produced by LexThink CEO Matt Homann and InsideLegal's CEO JoAnna Forshee, will feature 12 speakers sharing their view on the future of law practice and law technology, delivered via 6 minute rapid-fire presentations. Presenters were chosen based on online voting results and include a ‘who’s who’ of legal technology spanning attorneys, legal software executives, legal technologists, consultants and industry bloggers. Ignite Law 2011 takes place on April 10 at the Chicago Hilton, the eve of ABA TECHSHOW.
A total of 25 speaking topics were submitted and based on 1000s of online votes cast, 12 candidates were selected (including 8 'first-timers') to share their 6-minute Ignite presentations. The final Ignite Law 2011 speaker’s list includes:
Jim Calloway – “A Failure to Communicate”
Kevin Chern – “Creating the Perfect Future: Strategic Planning for Your Law Firm and Your Life”
Eric Cooperstein – “(Lack of) Privacy 2.0: Law in the Age of Transparency”
Will Hornsby – “And the survey says…”
Dennis Kennedy – “The Freemium Practice of Law”
Stephanie Kimbro – “Call of Duty: Legal Ops: Serving DIY Clients”
Marc Lauritsen – “Apps for Justice – Code to the Rescue”
Victor Medina – “Bespoke Legal Services in an Off-The-Rack Culture”
Tom Mighell – “Preparing for the Post-PC Law Practice”
Kevin O'Keefe – “Facebook: Can it be really be used by lawyers and law firms for professional and business development? How so?”
Dan Schwartz – “The Elephant in the Room”
Jay Shepherd – “Quantum Leap: How You Will Practice Law in 2019”
Free tickets for the event are still available and can be secured here.
Don’t Complain
A great Venn diagram from Indexed
:
Ignite Law Details
Head on over to the Ignite Law site to submit a proposed talk, check out the submissions we've already received or pick up your free tickets for the event.
We're looking forward to seeing you in Chicago!
Ignite Law is Back
I'm very excited to announce that Ignite Law is back at ABA TECHSHOW this year! We'll have all the details up on the Ignite Law site Monday, including how to reserve your ticket (we sold out last year) and how to submit a speaking proposal.
In the meantime, check out some of last year's Ignite videos. We can't wait to see you in Chicago!
Introducing COCAbiz
A funny thing happened last month as I was meeting with the new executive director of COCA — St. Louis’ premier community arts center. It was a “get to know you” meeting, but as she and I were discussing all the workshops, seminars and training. for businesses that COCA was developing, she asked me if I had any interest at all in becoming the first Director of this new initiative, now named COCAbiz.
My first (and second) response was, “No.” While I was happy to help get COCAbiz off the ground, I loved what I did, and had no desire to do something else. Only after I lost a few nights of sleep mulling over the venture’s potential, did I finally come around.
Those of you who know me can appreciate how taken I was by the idea of building creative and innovative events, seminars, classes and training for businesses and organizations – while utilizing the resources, facilities and (most importantly) some of the 200+ talented artists, actors, dancers, and teachers who call COCA home.
That was five weeks ago.
Today, I’m incredibly honored and humbled to announce that I am the new Director of COCAbiz. COCAbiz will combine business-focused, arts-based instruction and theory with creative facilitation to help businesses, organizations and those who work for them to think better together as they solve their toughest challenges.
But what about my “day job” as a speaker, writer and facilitator? I’ll continue to speak about innovation, creativity, alternative billing and client service to lawyers and firms. I’ll keep blogging, and I’ll also keep doing firm retreats and conferences, but will have the additional resources of COCAbiz behind me. I’ll also get a few more nights each month at home with my daughter, which she and I will both cherish.
In short, it is the best of all worlds for me. The challenge of building an amazing business inside one of the nation’s most-loved arts and education institutions was too great to pass up. I’m excited beyond measure, and can’t wait to share more of what we’ll be doing at COCAbiz here and elsewhere.
Thanks for your support, and as always, let me know how I can help you.
Profit by Giving Your Fees Away
I saw this little blurb on the Church Marketing Sucks blog:
WaterFront Community Church says, “We’re going to give away 100% of our offering to help build and beautify our community.”
What would the impact be if your firm did the same thing, and donated one day’s fees a year (or month) to make your community better?
I think it is a great idea — and could be even better if combined with a contest (like Pepsi’s Refresh Project) that sought entries from school children or community groups. What do you think?
How Much Should Legal Fees Be?
Lawyers, do you think clients would use a service that describes itself as follows:
We are an independent, unbiased resource designed to deliver legal fee and price transparency and the expert information legal clients need. Our team of expert lawyers has helped us comb through a mountain of flat fee and billable time data to ensure you have the information you need when it’s time to hire a lawyer.
Well, that service doesn’t exist for legal clients just yet (as far as I know), but it does for people with car trouble. It is called RepairPal, and it gives people pricing advice (including printed estimates) for various auto service repairs. Here’s how it works:
RepairPal takes the mystery out of car repairs with a simple tool that will tell you the average price you should be paying for a repair in your zip code. You just pop in a few details about your repair and car, and it will do the rest. It breaks down the estimated repair cost in a few ways, showing you the range to expect depending on whether you go through a dealer or independent repair shop, the cost of labor and parts, plus the parts usually needed and how much they cost. The result? You can feel better about making an informed repair decision, and you don’t have to scramble to get your friend the “car expert” on the phone to ask a dozen questions.
Imagine a world where your clients’ expectations of the cost of your services is driven less by the facts of their case and more by an “estimate” they got from the internet. A brave new world is coming. Are you ready for it?
Stretch Your Thinking About Biz Cards
One of my favorite business cards of all time:
Check out the entire post at Creative Bits for lots of other cool, inspirational cards.
Ten (New) Truths of CLE
To many lawyers, their state-mandated continuing legal education (CLE) is a necessary chore to be completed, rather than an anticipated opportunity to hone their skills in an exciting and stimulating environment. Part of the reason lawyers don’t love CLE more is that the traditional panel-centric format has — to put it nicely — grown stale. Even if listening to three speakers reading their slides worked once, it doesn’t work now. The audience has changed — and the industry must change with it.
In this article, I offer ten observations, tips and even some advice to those in the CLE business. Though these aren’t my talking points, they mirror much of what I’m going to be speaking about at the Association for Continuing Legal Education (ACLEA) in my talk “The Innovative CLE: Ten Bold Proposals for Change” later this month in New York City.
1. If you ask your attendees what they’re buying from you and they answer “CLE credit,” you’ve got a terrible problem. Stop selling credit, and instead sell understanding, collaboration and community. Give lawyers what they need to keep their clients happy — not just what they need to keep their license.2. Your audience has far less attention to pay than they once did. Recognize that your events must change because your attendees already have. And never confuse your audience’s attendance for their attention: while you only have to earn their attendance once, you’ve got to earn their attention all event long.
3. Your audience’s ability to pay attention at your event is inversely proportional to their ability to pay attention to the outside world. There’s a very fine line between supporting their technology and giving them yet another way to check their fantasy football standings.
4. Lawyers love online CLE — not because it improves upon the in-person experience, but because it duplicates it. If lawyers are going to passively consume information from a speaker or panelist, they might as well do it from their desk as they get some “real” work done. If you want lawyers to attend your programs, offer them something they can’t get online, like the ability to work with (and learn from) the other attendees in the room.
5. Convincing lawyers to attend your programs begins with answering their one simple question: “How will this make me better at what I do?” Focus less on the specific things they’ll learn, and more upon how their practice will improve the moment they leave your event.
6. People complain loudest about the price of things they don’t want to buy. If your customers say your prices are too high, focus first on giving them more value — and if you must cut the price, don’t be afraid to give them less. Also, never forget that the price of your event matters less to attendees than their cost to attend it.
7. Your attendees will get far more “networking” done when they are thinking together than when they are drinking together.
8. Imagine a second-grade class room where the teacher never makes time to answer the students’ questions. Asking 300 people, with two minutes left before the next session starts, “Are there any questions?” is a lot like that.
9. You aren’t serving lawyers well if you refuse to teach them to attract great clients and run their businesses better. It is a hell of a lot easier to be a competent, ethical attorney when you’re not worried about keeping your lights on and your family fed.
10. Just because your audiences aren’t asking for a better experience doesn’t mean they don’t deserve one. Henry Ford once said, “If I’d asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” Think about ways to build a better CLE. Experiment, and try new and novel things. Your audience is far more likely to forgive your ambitiousness as they are to tolerate your ambivalence.
Who Can Change Your Firm?
I ran across this idea from an interview with a “Disney Expert” Bill Capodagli in this 37 Signals post on supportive conflict. It seems Disney gave everyone in the organization an opportunity to “pitch” a movie to the heads of the company:
Take the regular meeting they hold called The Gong Show, which is based on the old TV amateur-hour show. It’s a concept where, two or three times a year, any Disney employee can present an idea for a full-length feature animation before Michael Eisner, CEO and chairman of the board, and Roy Disney, vice chairman of the board, and other executives. Hercules, the animated film, for example, came about from an animator’s idea that was presented at a Gong Show. The company benefits because they get thousands of good ideas from their employees, some of which are developed into feature films. And the employees benefit because they know they have the freedom to submit ideas that will be listened to. Even if their idea is “gonged,” they celebrate it and learn from it.
Does your firm give every employee — from junior partner to part-time file clerk — the chance to share their ideas for ways to make the firm better? It should!
For the Low Monthly Cost of …
File this one in the "If Doctors Can Do It…" file. Qliance is one of a number of medical startups that aim to deliver high-quality care directly to consumers for a monthly fee — without involving insurance providers at all. From the website:
We're using a monthly membership approach to health care, cutting out insurance and going directly to our patients to provide the most comprehensive, high quality primary care out there. The Qliance membership approach means you can see your doctor whenever you need to – even after work and on weekends. By eliminating the hassles of insurance, we are able to put our patients first and return control of your health care to you and to your doctor.
What services could you offer to your prospective clients on a monthly-fee basis? Before you dismiss that question out of hand, check out the Qliance site. If doctors can deliver high-quality medical service to patients (whenever and wherever they need them) for a set monthly fee, surely lawyers can do it for their clients. Right?
Do Your Clients “Like” Your Bills?
What if your clients could “Like” something just as they do on Facebook? Would they “Like” the things you send to them? If not, what could you do to make them dislike those things less?
Stamp from Nation Design Studio.
The Creative Counsel
Here’s the slide deck from my presentation to the Association of Corporate Counsel’s meeting in St. Louis last month. The audience was (mostly) in-house counsel, and the presentation was geared at getting them to think a bit differently about their relationship with outside counsel. I hope you like it.
The Creative Counsel: Rethinking the Attorney-Client Relationship
View more presentations from Matthew Homann.
Build Your Culture Like Zappos Does
File this one under the "Hmmmmm, that's kinda cool!" category. In this Inc. Magazine article, Zappos.com CEO Tony Hsieh talks about why he (reluctantly) sold his company to Amazon.
What stood out to me, was his take on keeping his company's famous culture alive, even as they grow:
I've noticed that at company happy hours, you don't see as many employees from different departments hanging out with one another.
To address that, we've begun tracking employee relationships. When employees log in to their computers, we ask them to look at a picture of a random employee and then ask them how well they know that person — the options include "say hi in the halls," "hang out outside of work," and "we're going to be longtime friends." We're starting to keep track of the number and strength of cross-departmental relationships — and we're planning a class on the topic. My hope is that we can have more employees who plan to be close friends.
Imagine a law firm doing that!
KickStart Your New Practice
Want to start a new law firm, but lacking the cash to make it happen? Check out KickStarter, a really unique way to "fund creative ideas and ambitious endeavors" by reaching out to others who want to help.
Would-be entrepreneurs post an idea, and set the amount of money it would take to make it happen. Site visitors agree to contribute a portion of the startup price — though no money changes hands unless the project is fully funded.
If you want to see how it all works, check out how a few entrepreneurs are using Kickstarter to raise money to expand their Snow Cone Stand.
Looking for a Legal Job, Try YouTube
Here's a brilliant way to catch the eye of that hiring partner who won't take your calls. Worth a watch if you're trying to catch the attention of someone in a unique way.
What Does a Legal “Unconference” Look Like?
I had the privilege of facilitating the ABA’s National Roundtable on Lawyer Specialty Certification in Denver last month. We brought together around 50 lawyers, threw out the agenda, and let the attendees control their day. Here’s what happened.
Happier Clients Make Fewer Choices
Have you ever tried shopping for toothpaste at Target or Wal-Mart? Once you decide on your brand of toothpaste (I've always been a Crest man), you're still faced with a dizzying array of choices. And, if you're like me, you spend far too much time deciding upon a product and often feel dissatisfied with your ultimate choice.
Turns out we are not alone. In her new book The Art of Choosing, business school professor Sheena Iyengar presents research that proves people's decision making skills worsen when presented with a plethora of choices. In other words, people decide better (and spend more) when given fewer choices.
In this Wall Street Journal article, Professors Iyengar's famous "jam experiment" is detailed:
In a Palo Alto, Calif., supermarket known for its exceptionally vast range of products, she set up two different booths offering shoppers the chance to sample various unusual preserves. One booth offered 24 different options; the other only six. You would think that, with more choices in the first booth, more shoppers who stopped there would find a flavor they liked and go on to buy a jar. But the opposite happened: People tried more samples and bought a lot more jam at the booth with six varieties.The people who stopped at the 24-jam booth didn't say: "Please take away most of these options so I can more easily make a decision." They simply felt overwhelmed and less willing to make any choice at all. The same feeling can arise in people who are offered an array of detailed investment options or in college students who must choose four or five classes from among the hundreds listed in the course catalog. In these situations, perhaps some strategy for choice, established in advance, could help discipline the decision-making process by focusing it on a manageable set of options.
So, next time you have a client conversation, remember that you may be better off discussing a few options instead of many. Instead of giving your clients lots of choices, curate the list down to a solid few. You'll end up with happier, less-confused clients who will thoughtfully consider their options, instead of being overwhelmed by them.
Should You Touch Your Clients More?
There’s some very interesting research on the power of touch in business situations. In this Harvard Business Review post, author Peter Bregman, shares this experiment that found that a brief, light touch affects people’s decision making:
In one experiment, as a woman showed subjects to their seats in the lab, she lightly and briefly touched some of them on the back of their shoulder. Then researchers asked the subjects whether they would prefer a certain amount of money or whether they’d prefer to gamble for the chance to win more money, receiving nothing if they lost. The people who were touched were 50 percent more likely to take the gamble. 50 percent!
And it’s not just any touch. A handshake didn’t achieve the same result. A handshake isn’t comforting, but a touch on the shoulder or back is.
Another study, profiled in the New York Times, found that touch can result in:
almost immediate changes in how people think and behave …. Students who received a supportive touch on the back or arm from a teacher were nearly twice as likely to volunteer in class as those who did not, studies have found. A sympathetic touch from a doctor leaves people with the impression that the visit lasted twice as long, compared with estimates from people who were untouched.
Obviously, good taste and propriety should rule the day when it comes to touch, but perhaps next time, instead of expecting that pat on the back from your client, you should give one instead.
Legal Innovation Scarcity
While on an airplane last week, I was catching up on some long-overdue blog reading and ran across this post in Kevin Kelly's ever-fascinating The Technium. Kevin discusses "The Shirky Principle" from author Clay Shirky that says, "Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution." Put another way, "Established industries like to focus on established problems," and are often incapable of changing because, like the media industry, "they are still solving the last problem."
As law firms struggle to develop alternative billing models, I wonder if they too, are still busy solving the last problem. Shouldn't their focus instead be on how to deliver the service their clients need and want, instead of just changing the way they charge for what they always have done? It is one of the reasons that small, nimble firms and entrepreneurial start-ups will have far more to say about the future of law practice than the big-firm legal industry will acknowledge. What do you think?
Ignite Law Videos
I've been on the road pretty much non-stop the last 60 days, so I owe everyone an Ignite Law recap. Until then, here are all the videos from the great event. Thanks to everyone who made it a fun night!
Ignite Law at Techshow
What happens when you give fifteen speakers just six minutes and twenty slides each to discuss their vision of the future of law practice? Ignite Law!
Taking place on the eve of ABA Techshow, Ignite Law will be a fun evening of entertaining, rapid-fire presentations that all answer the simple question: What is the future of law practice?
If you’re interested in submitting a presentation, or if you’d like to attend, act soon!
Check out IgniteLaw.com for more info.
Ignite Law Coming to Techshow on March 24th
More details tomorrow!
Audit for Obsolescence
Jordan Furlong suggests lawyers and firms conduct an Obsolescence Audit, aimed at identifying aspects of your business that won’t survive the next ten years. Here’s his checklist of things to look for:
1. Any offering that’s the same no matter who buys it.
2. Any offering essentially the same as your competitors’.
3. Any offering not optimally designed for client value.
4. Any offering that really, truly doesn’t require a lawyer.
Read the entire post for Jordan’s elaboration on each point. A fantastic idea!
Resolve to Count Cards
As 2009 draws to a close, we all find ourselves with lots of stuff on our "to do" lists for the next year. Whether your thinking about finding time to meet your deadlines, accomplish your goals or even follow your resolutions, there never seems to be enough time to do it all.
As you begin 2010, Resolve to Count Cards, using this this incredibly powerful exercise I first ran across in 2006. From an article in the now-defunct Worthwhile Magazine (by creativity guru Eric Maisel) comes this gem:
Get seven decks of cards with similar backs. Lay out all seven decks on your living room rug, backs showing. This is a year of days (give or take). Let the magnitude of a year sink in. Experience this wonderful availability of time. (This is a powerful exercise.)
Carefully count the number of days between two widely-separated holidays, for instance New Year's Day and the Fourth of July. Envision starting a large project on that first holiday (today!) and completing it by the second.
It also works great with clients! Give it a try.
Ten Rules of Law Firm Retreats
Whether your next law firm retreat takes place at a tropical location or in the firm’s conference room, there are several things to keep in mind to make it productive, useful and fun. Here are my Ten “Rules” for law firm retreats. Feel free to add your own in the comments. Enjoy!
1. When planning a retreat, the most important voice at the table should belong to your best clients. Ask them what you need to improve upon in the coming year, and invite them if you dare.2. At a good retreat, firm management spends as much time listening to the lawyers as they do talking to them. At a great retreat, that ratio is closer to 3:1.
3. It is far more important for attorneys to think together at your next firm retreat than it is for them to golf together.
4. If you don’t make time for lawyers to improve your firm during the retreat, they’re less likely to take time to improve your firm when the retreat is done.
5. In big firms, the first thing you should teach lawyers is one another’s names. Familiarity builds collegiality. Lawyers won’t care what their colleagues do until they know who they are.
6. “Networking” cocktail parties don’t encourage firm-wide collaboration as much as they encourage firm-wide inebriation.
7. If the firm retreat is the only time lawyers talk about marketing, it will be the only time they think about marketing. Same goes for client service.
8. Your staff knows more about how to serve your clients well than your associates do. Bring them along, value their opinions and act on their suggestions. You’ll find that the cost of their attendance is far lower than the cost of their absence.
9. The three questions every lawyer should be able to answer after a retreat are: “What can I do better?” “Who should I know better?” and “Why should I be better?”
10. The two costliest items at any firm retreat are the time and attention of the attendees. Use them wisely.
If you'd like some help implementing some of these suggestions, check out LexThink and drop me a line. If you'd like to see more Ten Rules posts, here they are.
Ask Your Clients What Surprised Them
Paul Graham collects some sage advice from the founders of startups he’s helped fund. Preparing for a talk, he sent emails to all the founders and asked them “what surprised them about starting a startup?” According to Paul, asking what surprised them amounted to “asking what I got wrong, because if I’d explained things well enough, nothing should have surprised them.”
This is a very powerful question that should be on every lawyers post-matter client survey:
What surprised you the most?
Like Paul, you’re asking your clients in a polite way about the things you got wrong (or that they think you did because you didn’t communicate well). And I’m quite certain you’ll get powerful, surprising and sometimes harshly critical responses — which are just the types of feedback you can use to eliminate surprises in the future for you and for your clients.
Twenty Ideas
Here's a handout I've been using to supplement my presentations titled Twenty Ideas. I hope it is useful to you.
Free Webinar and Kansas City Keynote This Week
If you’d like to hear (or see me) speak, you’ve got two opportunities this week. The first is a (free) webinar tomorrow at 1pm Eastern and the second is in Kansas City on Thursday, where I’ll be keynoting the Kansas City Solo and Small Firm Conference.
In both, I’ll be sharing innovative strategies lawyers can use to build their practices, identify their ideal clients and thrive in this down economy.
I’m in the Spotlight
Friend and colleague JoAnna Forshee interviewed me for InsideLegal‘s “Legal Innovators Spotlight” a few weeks ago. The interview is up here, and is mostly about LexThink and the services I offer the legal industry.
However, there’s one question (along with my answer) that I wanted to share here:
What do you see as the biggest challenge facing the legal industry now and in the upcoming year?
Most lawyers are focused on returning their practices to profitability — which is a near term problem for many of us. However, I think a far greater challenge is looming in the distance, and that is irrelevance.
For far too long, lawyers have taken their clients and customers for granted. Quietly, real alternatives are emerging that are making lawyers less necessary to clients. In just the last five years, we’ve seen more and more consumers turn first to the web as they draft their will, start their LLC, etc. This is a trend that will only continue, and lawyers must begin thinking about a day when the least valuable thing they have to offer their clients is advice.
I’d love your feedback here.
Advertise What Matters (to Clients)
If you’re wondering what to put on your website (or in that next yellow pages ad), take a cue from the Central Florida Regional Hospital in Sanford, Florida. Instead of trumpeting just how great their doctors are, they’re using a nearby billboard to display a real-time statistic that lots of people care about: ER wait times.
From the Orlando Sentinel:
To find out how long the wait is in the emergency room at Central Florida Regional Hospital in Sanford, you can check its Web site, send a text, or, now, cruise past a billboard on Interstate 4.The hospital this week started posting its ER wait times on the billboard, on the eastbound side near State Road 46. It’s part of a campaign to use technology to spread the word about decreasing the wait.
“Putting our wait times to see a physician in real time on a billboard is just one more step in educating the community about our service,” said Wendy Brandon, the hospital’s chief executive officer. The wait times to see a physician are updated every 30 minutes and reflect an average from the previous four hours.
What do your clients want to know about you? Do they see the answer in your advertising? They should.
Bonus Your Staff Before Your Attorneys
In this great TED talk by author Dan Pink, he argues that while incentives improve people’s performance on routine tasks, just the opposite is true when creativity or problem solving is involved. Incentives not only fail to improve performance on creative tasks, they diminish it. What’s more, the larger the reward, the worse the performance. Might be something to think about when deciding just how to motivate lawyers.
Watch the entire talk (it is roughly 18 minutes), it is worth your time.
Want cooperation? Think reciprocation.
If you struggle to get prospects to fill out a lengthy form before meeting with you, perhaps some new research will change your mind.
In a study summarized here in the Nuromarketing blog, rearchers compared the effectiveness of two strategies often employed by websites to collect personal data from visitors: requiring the visitor’s info before allowing them to access specific content (a reward strategy), or requesting it after they’ve already seen the content (a reciprocity strategy). The result:
It turns out that a reciprocity strategy works better – give them the info they want, and then ask for their information. In the impressively titled Embedded Persuasive Strategies to Obtain Visitors’ Data: Comparing Reward and Reciprocity in an Amateur, Knowledge-Based Website, Gamberini et al found that twice as many visitors gave up their information if they were able to access the information first. It’s counterintuitive, perhaps, but even though these visitors were under no obligation to complete the form, they converted at double the rate of visitors seeing the “mandatory” form.
What does this mean? Whenever you ask prospects to do something, work with reciprocity in mind. Instead of demanding their cooperation before meeting you, ask for it after they do. You’ll likely get more cooperation and better information from them, while starting the representation off on the right foot.
Focus Wins
From Seth Godin:
When you have someone who is willing to accomplish A without worrying about B and C, they will almost always defeat you in accomplishing A.
Introduce Your Staff to Your Clients
Here's a great idea from the London Underground (subway) via the U.K.'s Creative Review. The Underground hired photographer Maria Cox to visit each of the London Underground's 264 stations and take a picture of someone who worked there.
The photographs are combined with some information about each person, and then displayed at the station where he or she works. Here's the profile of John Osborne, a customer services assistant at the Shepherd's Bush Line station:
It makes me wonder how many businesses here in the states could benefit from a similar approach. I think many clients would be more apt to hire a firm that cared enough about their employees to feature them in this way. What do you think?
Free Photos for Great Presentations
I use my own photos in almost all of my presentations. If you’re not up to taking your own pics, but still want to avoid cheesy clip art, check out this resource: 37 Places to Get Free Stock Images. I really like (and use) Every Stock Photo and Stock Exchange.
Ten Rules for Presentations Slides
Here’s are the slides for my “Ten Rules for Presentations” posted to Slideshare. Enjoy!
Ten Rules For Presentations
View more presentations from Matthew Homann.
Culture Lessons from NetFlix
Netflix recently released a "Reference Guide" titled "Culture" on Slideshare, giving everyone a chance to peek "behind the curtain" at the values the innovative company expects from its employees. There are some real nuggets in the presentation. Here are a few of my favorites:
The "Keeper Test" for managers:
Which of my people, if they told me they were leaving in two months for a similar job at a peer company, whould I fight hard to keep…"
The irrelevance of "hard" work:
It is about effectiveness — not effort — even though effectiveness is harder to asses than effort. We don't measure people by how many evenings or weekends they are in their cube. We do try to measure peole by how much, how quickly and how well they get work done — especially under deadline.
The refusal to tolerate "Brilliant Jerks" in the workplace:
For us, the cost to teamwork is too high.
The preference of "Rapid Recovery" from vs. Preventing error:
You may have heard preventing error is cheaper than fixing it … not so in creative environments.
The entire policy for expensing, entertainment, gifts and travel:
Act in Netflix's Best Interests.
Please read the whole thing, and while you do, imagine how a law firm would thrive (or fail) if it adopted a similar culture as Netflix's.
Culture
View more presentations from reed2001.
Thanks to the Emerging Leadership Circle blog for the pointer to the presentation!
Minnesota Strategic Solutions for Solos & Small Firms
If you’re in Duluth next week (or anywhere in Minnesota), come on by the Strategic Solutions for Solo & Small Firm Conference presented by Minnesota CLE. I’m delivering two speeches and participating in four workshops, including the debut of my “Real Innovation for Real Lawyers” talk, and another based upon my Twelve Truths of Time (slides below). I hope to see you there!
Twelve Truths About Time
View more presentations from mhomann.
Join LexThink on Facebook
I just started a LexThink business page on Facebook. I’ve got big changes in store for LexThink, including a complete website redesign, but wanted an easy place to post news, events, upcoming speaking gigs, etc. Head on over there, and please become a fan.
Business Card or Brochure? Both.
I'm headed to the ACLEA conference in Salt Lake City this week. I'm a new member of the Association of Continuing Legal Education professionals (I know, the acronym needs some help) and am looking forward to my first ACLEA event — especially because I'm doing lots more speaking about innovation, creativity, marketing, alternative billing, etc. to lawyers, firms and at CLE's.
Since I'm working on a website redesign (live in August) that helps show visually what I do, I thought I'd use some of the images we've created for the web on new 3" x 5" business cards that double as a kind of brochure. (I'm using a 6" x 5" card folded in half).
Here's the inside of the folded card:
And here's the back and front:
And here are the LexThink cards I've been using. Let me know what you think! Here's the card in pdf format.
Using Facebook Ads to Find Legal Work
Attention Law Students: There’s a great post over at One Day One Job abut Using Facebook Ads to Make Employers Hunt You Down that’s definitely worth a read. It recaps an experiment where job seekers used targeted Facebook ads to reach people who worked for companies they admired. For Katelyn Hill (below), here’s what happened:
Katelyn Hill recently graduated from Abilene Christian University with a degree in Electronic Media. She loves television and movies and hopes to work in the entertainment industry, so she targeted the Walt Disney Company with her Facebook advertising campaign. Her ad received 685 clicks, which garnered 21 e-mails and 4 Facebook messages. She was offered one job interview, but wasn’t quite qualified for the position, so she declined. She also had several e-mails from individuals who offered to forward her resume to their supervisors. Many others offered her general advice on finding a job with Disney or commented on how creative they thought her ad campaign was.
I think this is a brilliant idea. It isn’t a reach to take this approach and target attorneys and staff at specific firms you’d like to work for.
It could (though your malpractice carrier may disagree) also work for lawyers targeting specific clients or types of work as well.
One Thousand Dollars an Hour is Dumb.
If you must compete on price, here’s a McDonald’s billboard that might give your marketing people some inspiration:
Found on Billboardom. Full Story Here.
What Do Your Clients Think About You?
Here’s an exercise I’m working on for a Client Service Workbook that’s been an on-and-off project of mine for a while.
There will be several comic strip-like panels depicting scenes of a client interacting with you and your staff. Each will be on a worksheet you can give to yourself and your staff. Everyone will fill in the empty thought-bubbles with what they believe the “client” is thinking in situations like when:
They’re in the reception area waiting for their appointment:
They’re listening to you give them advice:
They just received their bill:
Once the thoughts are filled in, you compare and discuss the similarities and differences. To make the exercise even more valuable, ask your current and former clients to complete the same exercise.
Let me know what you think. I’m committed to finishing the Workbook by the end of the year, and will be testing similar exercises with my consulting and coaching clients ’til then.
100 Ways to Be More Creative
I found this great list of 100 Simple, Low-Cost, Soulful Ways to Be More Creative on the Job and wanted to share it with you. Next time you’re stuck, pick a few off the list at random and give them a shot.
Ten Rules for Presenters
Lately, I’ve been giving lots of presentations, and have six more coming up before the Summer ends. I work pretty hard on my speeches (here are a few examples of my slides) and thought I’d share some of the tips I’ve learned the hard way in this Ten Rules post. Enjoy!
1. The greatest gift you can give your audience is a passion for your material. If you don’t care for it, they won’t care for you.2. Your audience’s attention is a lot like your virginity. You only get to lose it once.
3. PowerPoint is always optional. A great speech doesn’t improve when accompanied by slides in a dark room.
4. If PowerPoint makes it easy to do, you probably shouldn’t do it. Avoid bullet points, clip art and cheesy animated transitions at all cost.
5. The number of words on a slide is inversely proportional to the attention your audience will give it.
6. Your slides are not your script. The purpose of PowerPoint is to help others understand your material, not to help you remember it.
7. Never read your slides. When you do, it suggests to your audience you think they’re incapable of doing so themselves.
8. The average person remembers just three things from your presentation. Great speakers make certain everyone remembers the same three things.
9. Unless your presentation tells a story, the audience won’t care about the ending — they’ll just pray for it.
10. Never underestimate the impact a great presentation can have on your audience or your career. Being prepared serves both of them well.
If you’d like to see more Ten Rules posts, you can check them all out here. If you’d like to read thoughts like these as I have them, follow me on Twitter.
Using Simple Technology isn’t Easy
Last week, I was listening to several lawyers complain about how hard it was to convince new associates to learn the technology everyone else in the firm had been using for years. From embracing dictation to using books instead of online tools, newbies “just didn’t get it” according the the group of senior attorneys.
As I tried to explain to them that the technology they utilized, though pretty basic, wasn’t easier to use for someone unfamiliar with it, I struggled to find a good example. Today, I finally found one in the unlikeliest of places: an article by a teenager who gave up his iPod for a week and replaced it with his father’s 25-year-old Sony Walkman.
The article is hilarious at times, but highlights just how older, “simpler” technology isn’t actually easier to use for people unaccustomed to it. Some of the best quotes:
My dad had told me it was the iPod of its day. He had told me it was big, but I hadn’t realised he meant THAT big. It was the size of a small book.
It took me three days to figure out that there was another side to the tape. That was not the only naive mistake that I made; I mistook the metal/normal switch on the Walkman for a genre-specific equaliser, but later I discovered that it was in fact used to switch between two different types of cassette.
Personally, I’m relieved I live in the digital age, with bigger choice, more functions and smaller devices. I’m relieved that the majority of technological advancement happened before I was born, as I can’t imagine having to use such basic equipment every day.
What’s Your Type?
I ran across Matthew Butterick’s wonderful Typography for Lawyers site today and wanted to share it here. Matthew’s a typographer turned civil litigator who started the site to help lawyers write prettier — if not better.
When you show up to make an oral argument, you make sure that you present yourself as professionally and persuasively as possible. Similarly, your written documents should reflect the same level of attention to typography.
I highly recommend you add this to your reading list. Now, if I could just stop hitting the space bar twice after each period.
Tired of Talking About the Weather?
Here’s a great collection of conversation starters from CanTeach. Organized helpfully in categories of “What is…” “What if…” “What do you think…” etc., I’d take a quick look at these next time you’ve got a get together and want to come up with something for everyone to talk about besides the weather or their occupation.
Looking for Cool Ways to Connect with Clients? -(STOP)-
Telegramstop is a company that will send an old-time looking telegram to anyone in the world for under five bucks. Could be a cool, retro way to connect with some clients or friends.
The Math of Justice
I’m a big fan of Craig Damrauer’s New Math site. He combines simple text and visuals with math to describe sometimes complicated concepts. Here’s his latest:
And my favorite:
Get Up and Think
Sitting at your desk trying to solve a complicated problem? You might be better off getting out of your chair and moving around. In this study, researchers found that, “a person’s ability to solve a problem can be influenced by how he or she moves.” In other words, our minds and bodies can work together to help us solve problems:
The new findings offer new insight into what researchers call “embodied cognition,” which describes the link between body and mind, Lleras said.
“People tend to think that their mind lives in their brain, dealing in conceptual abstractions, very much disconnected from the body,” he said. “This emerging research is fascinating because it is demonstrating how your body is a part of your mind in a powerful way. The way you think is affected by your body and, in fact, we can use our bodies to help us think.”
Next time you’ve got a problem to solve, get up off your butt, move around a bit, and you might find that your body helps your brain find the answer.
100 Tweets: Thinking About Law Practice in 140 Characters or Less.
I really like Twitter. For those who follow me, you know that I try to share lots of legal-themed tips, thoughts and ideas. In fact, most of my Ten Rules posts started out on Twitter — where I’ll test 15-25 “rules” to see which ones work best before picking the ten favorites.
However, there’s lots of stuff that lives on Twitter now that used to live here on the blog. And since I don’t expect everyone reading this to follow me there (or go back and read through my 2000+ Twitter messages), I decided to compile a “Best Of” list of my favorite tweets.
So, here (in .pdf form) is a little e-book I’ve titled: 100 Tweets: Thinking about Law Practice in 140 Characters or Less. It contains my favorite 100 tweets, in no particular order, and should give you a sense of what I share on Twitter that you don’t always see here.
If you enjoy it, and would like to follow me on Twitter, I’ll see you there.
Talk to Me About…
Instead of using name tags at your next event, try this tip (found at The Kitchn blog) to get conversations started:
The idea is that instead of “Hello my name is…” stickers, you give your guess ones that read “Talk to me about…” Guests can fill in their career specialty, their hobby, their passion of the moment, or their favorite meal (just keeping it foodie, here!).
We picked this suggestion up from SwissMiss, who used it at a talk she was facilitating, and we think it’s a brilliant idea for all sorts of social situations. Name tags like these are guaranteed conversation starters!
We think they also take away some of the discomfort factor. Personally, we feel much more comfortable approaching someone who wants to talk about a subject in which we’re interested than we would just striking up a random conversation.
I’d take it a bit further, and give each guest 4-5 name tags. Every 30 minutes or so, have them switch out their “I want to talk about…” tag with a different subject.
Wonder what my friend Scott “The Nametag Guy” Ginsberg would think?
Get a Life — In Only Two Days
I’ve been spending some time talking to the organizers of the Get a Life Conference, after connecting at Techshow and on Twitter. It looks like a great event, and I’m really working hard to figure out a way to make it — and perhaps do some cool LexThink-like unconference stuff with them if I do.
Lots of great speakers, including the incomparable Gerry Riskin, are on tap. Expect lots of talk about practical ways to make your law practice a more profitable business. From their site:
In this two-day workshop, you’ll learn how manage all the moving parts of a successful law practice and still have a life. But there’s one very important thing missing – you! One of the greatest challenges you have is making time for what’s personally important to you – your hobbies, friends and family.
It happens May 27th and 28th in Chicago. Check it out, and if you’d like to go, here’s a link to a 25% discount (Enter INSIDER upon check-out). I hope to see you there!
Afraid to Innovate?
Afraid to try something new in your business, figuring that if it really worked, everybody else would already be doing it? Think again! Here's a re-imagining of the lowly paper clip (from picocool):
Now, what's stopping you from thinking differently about your practice?
Client Collaboration and the IKEA Effect
One of my favorite lists of the year is Harvard Business Review’s Breakthrough Ideas for 2009. As always, the entire list is worth a read, but the one that caught my eye is one labeled The IKEA effect, which suggests that people are willing to pay more for things they had a hand in creating:
When people construct products themselves, from bookshelves to Build-a-Bears, they come to overvalue their (often poorly made) creations. We call this phenomenon the IKEA effect, in honor of the wildly successful Swedish manufacturer whose products typically arrive with some assembly required.In one of our studies we asked people to fold origami and then to bid on their own creations along with other people’s. They were consistently willing to pay more for their own origami. In fact, they were so enamored of their amateurish creations that they valued them as highly as origami made by experts.
What does this mean for professional service providers? Instead of defaulting to a “Let me handle that for you” position with clients, require them to actively participate in their case. By collaborating with them, and allowing them to make meaningful contributions to the work you (both) do, they’ll likely value your services more and be happier with the end result.
Let Your Clients Decide Your Price
One of the biggest barriers lawyers must overcome when contemplating alternative pricing models is understanding just how customers perceive the value lawyers provide.
One of the ways I've combated this in my consulting practice (and at LexThink Innovate) is I let customers set the price of the work I do — after it is done.
Below is a copy of my "You Decide Invoice" that I use for all my consulting work. The relevant provisions read:
YOU DECIDE: Your absolute satisfaction with LexThink isn’t just our goal, it’s the measure of our worth — and the determination of our fee. The rules are simple: you pay us what you feel we were worth to you. You decide, no questions asked. The only rule? We want to know why you paid what you did, and how we could have done better.
and
WHEN TO PAY: While we leave our fee in your hands, we can’t leave it there forever. Please send us your payment and feedback within 21 days after you get this invoice. Please send a copy of this along with your feedback and your payment. Thank you for your business.
On the second page (not shown), I ask for feedback from the customer:
Tell us, in as many words as you want, how we did. Think about your expectations, the result, and how it felt to work with us. Also, let us know if we can share your feedback with others — and if we can give you credit. Attach more sheets if you need to.
That's it. I explain to the customer before they engage me that they'll set my price, and then give them the invoice as soon as the engagement's done. So far, I've always received at least as much as I've expected — and most importantly, usually more than I would have charged if I'd set my price before beginning.
I also know that when I will ultimately receive less than I expect (or not get paid at all), it will tell me I need to learn lessons from the engagement, and improve my services (or be more selective with my clients) so it doesn't happen again.
What's keeping you from experimenting, and letting a few (trusted) customers name your price?
Who needs those Guinness Book folks?
Ever wanted to set a world record and not have to worry about those sticklers from the Guinness Book of World Records? Check out The Universal Record Database. An open, participatory site for posting your own world "record" and daring anyone out there to top it.
Some of the featured records include: Most People Complimented in One Minute, Most Panama Kicks in One Minute, and Fastest Time to Open a Can of Campbell's Alphabet Soup and Spell "Pantyhose".
The site is equal parts brilliance and sheer stupidity — and it is utterly addictive.
Now for the "legal" bit: How about brainstorming a world record for your firm to set? You can post it for the world to see. Imagine how much fun you'd have, and think about the all the fun press you'd get. I'm already thinking about what we can attempt at LexThink Innovate. Any ideas?
UPDATE: As I write this, there are no "records" posted involving "law" "lawyer" or "legal".
Ten Rules of Legal Innovation
“Innovative Lawyer” shouldn’t be an oxymoron. Lawyers — who are constantly applying their creative, problem-solving skills to help clients — too often turn their innovation engines off as soon as their “billable” work ends.
If you’re a lawyer, and willing to set aside some time to innovate, I am happy to help you. Until then, I give you my Ten Rules of Legal Innovation. Enjoy!
1. The practice of law requires precedents. The business of law does not. Knowing that other firms aren’t doing what you are isn’t cause for concern, it’s cause for celebration.2. There are (at least) ten things your clients wish you’d do differently, and I bet you don’t know what they are. Innovation begins with conversation. Engage your clients so they’ll keep engaging you.
3. If you’re the first lawyer to do something that other businesses have been doing for years, it isn’t innovative, it’s about time.
4. When you focus on being just like your competitors, the worst thing that can happen is you might succeed.
5. If you have to tell your clients you’re being innovative, you probably aren’t.
6. Innovation is just like exercise. It isn’t particularly hard to do, but you won’t see results if you don’t practice it regularly. Also, the more you do it, the better you’ll look (to clients).
7. The best ideas in your firm will come from your staff. While you’re paying attention to your clients, they’re paying attention to your business. Ignore them at your peril.
8. To be a more innovative lawyer, look inside the profession for motivation, but outside the profession for inspiration.
9. Your failure to capture your ideas is directly proportional to your failure to implement them.
10. Remember, though your clients may tolerate your failure to innovate, they’ll never forgive your failure to care.
If you enjoyed these, check out my other posts in the series: Ten Rules of Legal Technology, Ten Rules of Hourly Billing and Ten New Rules of Legal Marketing.
Also, if you’d like to get more ideas like these in real time, follow me on Twitter.
Get Started Today!
From Daring Fireball comes this nugget of advice that should serve as just enough of a push to get you to start that something you’ve been putting off:
Figure out the absolute least you need to do to implement the idea, do just that, and then polish the hell out of the experience.
So, what’s stopping you now?
Looking Back to the Future?
My friend Jordan Furlong writes a great post titled These are the Days of Miracle and Wonder about lessons we can learn from Obama’s win. The great takeaway:
Twenty years ago, our parents would never have believed it. Twenty years from now, our children will take it for granted.
What amazing thing can you do TODAY in your practice that was unfathomable in 1988 but will be commonplace in 2028? Get to it!
Ten Rules of Legal Technology
For your consideration: Ten “Rules” of Legal Technology. Not many are new, and very few apply only to lawyers, but these are a few more nuggets I’m pulling out of previous posts to fill out my portfolio of speeches I’ve got “in the can.” Enjoy:
1. Since the first PC, legal tech companies have been promising to help lawyers capture more time. Capturing time isn’t the problem, charging for it is.2. It is more important to get better at working with people than it is to get better working with technology.
3. You should never have a bigger monitor or more comfortable chair than your secretaries do.
4. Never brag about implementing technology in your firm that your clients have been using for a decade.
5. The single piece of technology all lawyers should learn to use better is their keyboard.
6. Sophisticated clients don’t demand sophisticated technology, they demand sophisticated lawyers. They assume the technology is part of the package.
7. Social Media isn’t technology. It’s your Rotary Meeting on steroids — though there are less lawyers in the room and the clients are better.
8. Want to invest in an inexpensive communication technology guaranteed to improve your thinking skills and increase collaboration with clients? Buy a whiteboard for your office.
9. Belt, meet suspenders: One backup solution is never enough.
10. The only technology ROI that matters is your clients’ return on their investment in you.
Bonus Rule: The one piece of technology your clients wish you’d get better at using is the telephone. Call them back!
Also, check out Ten Rules About Hourly Billing and Ten New Rules of Legal Marketing. If you’d like to hire me to speak, head over to LexThink.
Meet Your Future Clients
The other day, I suggested in my Ten New Rules of Legal Marketing that:
9. Your future clients have been living their entire lives online and will expect the same from you. If you’re invisible on the web, you won’t exist to them.
Now, I’ve stumbled across this article from Adweek titled Generation Watch Out that explains better than I ever could what I meant:
Today’s young talent represents not-able cultural shifts: They’re digital, message savvy, global and green. (Listen to the Flobots’ “Handlebars” and you’ll get the picture.) They mark fundamental changes from previous grads entering the industry. They’re more associative, culturally networked, nimble and intuitive. While they’re more cynical than cohorts past, they’re also more apt to call BS or volunteer for environmental or political causes. They are easy in their gay-or-straight, vegetarian-or-meat, tatted-or-not choices. F-bombs are tossed around like Frisbees. These kids run hard, adapt easily.…
It’s the shortcut generation. That toolbar up top is for old-timers; these guys learned to Cmd-Option-Shift-A in middle school because it was cool, not necessary. Desktops are institutional holdovers. Everyone has a set of on-the-go tools: camera, laptop, videocam, hard drive, cool bag to tote it all. They’re experts early on, manhandling Final Cut or Flash with intuitive authority. They’re Idea 2.0, the mashup generation and one with confluence, that place beyond convergence where the old sloughs off and the new quickly gets morphed into the cultural DNA.All this makes them, at their best, unbelievably creative and productive. On the other hand, they also think they have all the answers. Morley Safer wrote recently of this generation’s entitlement issues: They’ve grown up with everyone as winners, with inspired birthday parties and planned events, with middle-class privilege and opportunities at every camp, academy and take-your-kid-to-work experience. They expect careers, not jobs. And they expect to have their names—very soon—in an annual or this mag. Hell, they know their blog on a good day might get more eyeballs than the trades.
Get to know them. Understand them. Because love ‘em or hate ‘em, they’re not just your children, they’re your future clients, employees and partners. Learn to serve them or they’ll serve themselves.
Want to avoid your clients?
OK, I’m not advocating this, but if you’ve got just a minute and don’t want to talk to that client who goes on and on and on …, try Slydial. The free service promises to to connect you DIRECTLY to a person’s mobile voicemail. They don’t answer, but get your message, and you can go back to being productive.
Ten Rules About Hourly Billing
After the great response I got to yesterday’s Ten New Rules of Legal Marketing post, I’ve decided to share a few more “Rules” of Hourly Billing I’ve culled from my blog and my speeches. Enjoy!
1. Ask your clients what they buy from you. If it isn’t time, stop selling it!
2. Imagine a world where your clients know each month how much your bill will be so they could plan for it. They do.
3. If you don’t agree on fees at the beginning of a case, you’ll be begging for them at the end of it.
4. Sophisticated clients who insist on hourly billing do so because they’re smarter than you are, not because they want you to be paid fairly.
5. When you bill by the hour, your once-in-a-lifetime flash of brilliant insight that saves your client millions of dollars has the same contribution to your bottom line as the six minutes you just spent opening the mail.
6. Businesses succeed when their people work better. Law firms succeed when their people work longer. Your clients understand this — and resent you for it.
7. Every time your clients jokingly ask you, “Are you going to charge me for this?” they aren’t joking — and they’ll check next month’s bill to be sure.
8. The hardest thing to measure is talent. The easiest thing to measure is time. The two have absolutely no relationship to one another. Your law firm measures talent, right?
9. Would you shop at a store where the cost of your purchase isn’t set until after you’ve agreed to buy it? You ask your clients to.
10. There are 1440 minutes each day. How many did you make matter? How many did you bill for? Were they the same minutes? Didn’t think so.
If you’d like to get more ideas like these in real time, follow me on Twitter.
Touch Your Audience with These Touchy-Feely Tips
Here’s a must-read post from Laura Bergells with six “touchy-feely” tips that will help when you rehearse your next presentation (you do practice, right?).
If you ever give presentations to clients, to peers or to juries, you need to be thinking about these practice ideas. My favorite:
Record your presentation without video. Then, listen to it without watching the slides. I like putting my audio on my portable mp3 player — and taking a walk. While listening to myself on the ellipse machine at the gym last week, I found an area of my presentation that dragged so dismally, I barely registered a heartbeat while chugging along at a high incline! I went back to the office for a rewrite and added more powerful visuals. Listening to “audio only” helps you spot pace and pitch problems — but it also helps you later recall the words and inflections that work well.
More of Me Trying to Sound Brilliant
Episode Four of my interview with Jim Canterucci is up on his Personal Brilliance Blog. Take a listen.
Co-Op Your Small Team
If you’re looking for a solution to keep your small team on track, you should check out Co-Op, a lightweight, super-intuitive way to know what everyone in your team is working on right now. It is a bit like Twitter meets your time sheet, and looks very cool. Here’s a screenshot:
Pretending to Act Brilliantly
My friend Jim Canterucci interviewed me for his Personal Brilliance Podcast. He’ll be posting portions of the interviews throughout this month and I encourage you to check it out. I’m not sure how much brilliance there is in my interview, but I always enjoy talking with Jim and I think you’ll find some interesting things in there.
I’d also encourage you to check out the rest of the podcasts. I’m working though them right now, and I’ve got to say, so far all of them have been worth a listen!
Hello from Idaho
Picture of the season’s first snow in Sun Valley, Idaho.
I just returned from Idaho, where I facilitated an Idea Market for Boise-area entrepreneurs (more on that in a future post), gave a speech to the fine lawyers at Hawley Troxell Ennis & Hawley and spoke about Innovation for Real Lawyers at the Idaho Bar’s annual meeting.*
I’ll post my slides next week, along with some pretty cool thinking that came out of the Idea Market. I’m going to be in Minneapolis, New York, Boston, Atlanta and London in the next two months. I’d love to meet you when I make it to your city.
Stay tuned.
*Big thanks go to friend Steve Nipper, Travis Franklin and the Idaho Bar Association for taking such good care of me while I was there!
If Operators are Busy ..
I’ve just started Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive by Noah J. Goldstein, Steve J. Martin and Robert B. Cialdini, and can already give it my highest recommendation. It offers fifty short lessons (2-4 pages each) on persuasiveness, along with the empirical evidence to back them.
One quick lesson from the first chapter in the book: Simply by changing an infomercial’s call to action from “Operators are waiting, please call now,” to, “If operators are busy, please call again,” resulted in a huge increase in products purchased.
Why? Instead of people imagining a room full of operators waiting by silent telephones, infomercial viewers imagined those same operators going from call to call without a break, and assumed “if the phone lines are busy, then other people like me who are also watching this infomercial are calling, too.”
Very interesting stuff. A highly recommended book!
Want to Buy a Law Firm Brand?
I came across IncSpring yesterday. It is a marketplace where designers can sell (and companies can buy) “ready-made brands.” If is a pretty neat concept, and you get to deal directly with the designer. Not a lot of “legal” brands yet, but if you’re a Texas Lawyer, you can do a lot worse than Lone Star Law:
The Perfect Law Firm Retreat: Leave the Lawyers at Home
If you are serious about making your firm better, next time you are thinking about a law firm retreat, stop. Cancel (or postpone) your lawyer’s retreat and spend your money on a staff retreat instead.
Here are seven reasons you should consider a staff retreat this year:
1. Your staff know how your firm works better than you do. You know how your firm is supposed to work. They know how it actually works. They observe, notice and understand the little things that you may overlook. Unlocking their creativity will give you dozens (if not hundreds) of practical ideas to make your firm work better.2. Your staff doesn’t know what your lawyers know, but they know what your lawyers should know. If you wanted to improve the efficiency of your firms lawyers by training them to do one thing better, what would it be? You might think a seminar on “rainmaking” will improve your firm’s bottom line. The staff might suggest “copier training” instead — and they’d probably be right.
3. Your staff knows how to save you money. Every single person on your staff has at least three ways to save you $100 each month. Whether you want to reduce your overhead or prioritize your technology spending, your staff will give you better ideas than your attorneys will.
4. Your clients don’t act like clients around your staff. When “on the clock,” your clients act like clients. When talking to your receptionist, secretary or paralegal, your clients act like people. Your staff know better than you what your clients hate about your firm. Ask them nicely and they’ll tell you.
5. Your staff are your best source for competitive intelligence. Want to know what your competitors are up to? Ask your staff. They talk with their peers at other firms, and they know what’s happening in your slice of the legal market. They also know (probably before you) when and why your clients won’t pay their bills.
6. Your staff can help you say no. Your staff know which clients don’t deserve your firm’s work, and which ones you should fire. They also know the least talented and productive members of your firm, but we’ll leave that topic for another day.
7. Your staff is cheap. Well, not really “cheap,” but compared to the hourly billing rates for a day of the firm’s attorneys’ time, a day-long staff retreat is a bargain. The staff probably doesn’t expect four days in Maui, either.
The most important reason to do a staff retreat, however, is that your staff will feel great knowing you value their ideas. The single most effective way to engage your employees and make them feel good about working for you is to listen to them — and asking them to help your firm solve its most pressing challenges is a tremendous way to do it.
One important key: whether you hire LexThink or someone else, you absolutely should not facilitate this one by yourself. Keep lawyers out of the room if you want your staff to speak freely. You’ll be rewarded with their candor.
And when they get back to the office, make sure they each have their own set of business cards. If you value them, there’s no better way to show it, than by allowing them to be ambassadors for your firm.
The Perfect Law Firm Retreat: Introduction
Over at LexThink, I offer creative law firm retreat design and facilitation. It is something I really love to do, and it is tremendously rewarding to work with a firm’s lawyers as they collaborate and develop amazing ideas — along with a plan to implement those ideas — that will make their business better.
However, not every firm can afford to hire someone to design and facilitate their retreat or practice group meeting. Starting this week, I’m going to be posting some of my thoughts on building the "Perfect Law Firm Retreat." I’ll include ideas, sample agendas and descriptions of exercises I’ve used to get people working (and thinking) together.
I’ll also include fun/crazy ideas for holding an "on-site" retreat (or even eliminating retreats all together) that will he help firms get most of the benefits of holding an off-site retreat without the costs.
I’d love your input, via comment, email or twitter (@mhomann). Thanks!
So Easy a Lawyer Won’t Do It?
"So easy a plumber can do it…" might not have the ring of Geico’s caveman commercials, but when I saw this book excerpt on friend Phil Gerbyshak’s blog from The Celebrity Experience, Insider Secrets to Delivering Red Carpet Customer Service, I knew I had to share it with you.
Author Donna Cutting tells a story about Hub Plumbing and Mechanical, a Boston-area plumbing company. From the book:
Everyone in the company, including apprentices, has a business card. They give out slick folders, fun magnets, and dry erase boards. They’ve even been known to replace your toilet paper with a new roll bearing the Hub logo!
But John Wood knows something else, too. He knows that branding is not about the trucks, the carpets, or the toilet paper. It’s about the service. If John and his team weren’t consistent in the service they provide, the red trucks, the red uniforms, and the red carpets would simply be decoration. And if Hub Plumbing & Mechanical just relied on decor and didn’t deliver the goods, it would not have grown from a one-man operation to a $1.5 million business with 11 employees in just six short years.
When you call Hub Plumbing, any time of the day or night, a live person answers the phone. (Once you have an appointment) you receive an email from your plumber. He tells you approximately when to expect him, what his specialties are, and all about his family and hobbies. As John says, "When people hire a plumber, their expectations are low. Our guys have personalities!
Did I mention the e-mail is in HTML format and a photo of your plumber is included?
The day of the visit, your plumber calls when he’s on his way to the job. If he’s running late, he will call in plenty of time to see if you want to wait or if you’d rather reschedule. Assuming the best, you would soon look out your window and see the bright red Hub Plumbing truck roll up to your house.
Once you have invited your plumber in, he puts plastic covers over his shoes to keep from marking up the carpet. And he lays down the red carpet with the Hub logo, and places his tools like surgical instruments on it. It’s their Red Carpet Service.
Hub Plumbing took a look at things people said they’d disliked about plumbers: showing up late, looking bad (plumber’s crack, anyone?), overcharging and leaving a mess — and changed everything.
Lawyers, if you had to change everything about lawyers that clients hate, where would you start?
And if you want some motivation, take a look at Hub’s Testimonial page. Do your customers say the same things about you?
UPDATE: Forgot to mention, HUB charges by the project, not the hour.
UPDATE 2: Changed the title of the post and edited the content a bit. Wasn’t meaning to demean plumbers, just show how one plumbing company rethought their business to address (admittedly stereotypical) concerns people had about plumbers. I wish lawyers (who can teach plumbers a thing or two about undeserved stereotypes) would do the same thing.
Five Reasons Lawyers Need a Digital Camera
Every lawyer needs a digital camera for their exclusive use. I’m not talking about sharing one with the entire office, or using your camera phone or the one from home (when you remember to bring it). I’m talking about a small, digital camera (like this one) you can keep in your pocket, briefcase or purse.
I take mine everywhere. Here are a few not-so-obvious reasons lawyers should, too:
- To remember what your clients look like. Go ahead, admit it. When you look through your files at the end of each month (you do that, right?), you always have at least one client’s name you can’t put with a face. How about the times you get a call from Bob Smith, and you can’t remember just exactly who Bob is? Every time you retain a new client, take their picture. Upload it to your practice management/contact management program and print it out to put inside their file. Even better, also put it in an album of past and current clients (like a yearbook) and you’ll never be caught scratching your head wondering just who that person was you just bumped into at the supermarket.
- To make sure you send your bills out on time. Take a picture of something you want (a new car), or something you love that costs you money (like your children), and clip that photo on top of your stack of bills when you review them every month. The picture will remind you just why you do what you do, and motivate you to get your bills out on time.
- To make copies and turbocharge your whiteboard. This tip alone could save you (or your clients) the cost of a camera in less than six months. Sign up for a service like ScanR and send your photos of documents, business cards or whiteboards in and have them converted into .pdf files for free. This can save you $1.00/page or more vs. paying for copying court files.
- To help your clients find the courthouse. Next time you head to the courthouse, take pictures of the parking lot, the entrance, and even the place you want your clients to meet you. Send the pics along with your letter telling them about their hearing, and they’ll be far more likely to be on time.
- To capture the cool things you see. There are always things we see that we wish we’d remember. Take a picture. What you’ll find is you remember more things, and you’ll also start to become a much better photographer.
Conference Tips Revisited
Two years ago, I wrote The Conferencing Manifesto on my Real Big Thinking Blog. I’m about to put that blog to bed (more on that in the near future), and wanted to repost some of my favorites. Here are a few tips for conference goers:
Know Your Questions. Seek Your Answers. Never attend a conference without at least three questions you want answered. Never leave until they have been.
Their Conference is Your Focus Group. Want to measure the pulse of the marketplace? Want feedback on your idea, product, or business model? Go to a conference populated by your ideal customer. Forget the sessions. Hang out in the hallway. And listen. A lot.
Be Smart. Be Helpful. Then Be Quiet. Other attendees may have come to the conference to meet people like you. They may want and deserve your help (and you, theirs). They didn’t come to hear your hour-long presentation. Please understand the difference.
Paper Works Best. Your ability to pay attention to conference speakers and attendees is inversely proportional to your ability to pay attention to the outside world. Stow the laptop, turn off the BlackBerry, pull out the Moleskine, and start writing. Oh, and if you can’t leave the real world behind for an hour or two, please don’t leave it at all.
Vendors Matter. Vendors are like puppies. They crave your attention. Give it. They know your industry and the other attendees better than you do. Talk with them. Learn from them. Then take a few pens.
Blogging is not Participation. We get it. Your blog has tens/hundreds/thousands of readers who can’t wait to hear your take on the last speaker’s presentation and about how crappy the WiFi is. Your “audience” will be there tomorrow. Your fellow attendees will not.
The most important people at the conference are sitting next to you. Think Tom Peters gives a rat’s ass about your new business strategy? Is Seth Godin going to give you personalized marketing advice? Of course not. The people at any event who are most likely to have already faced your challenges (and maybe even solved them) aren’t the highly-paid keynoters, but rather your fellow attendees. They are like you. They can help you. Ignore them at your peril.
Mood Ring + Brainstorm = Moodstream
You’ve got to check out Moodstream from Getty Images. From the site:
Moodstream is a powerful brainstorming tool designed to help take you in inspiring, unexpected directions. Whether you want images, footage or audio, or just need a stream of fresh ideas, tweak the Moodstream sliders to bring a while new creative palette straight to you.
It is really hard to describe, but think of a constantly changing mixture of pictures, video and music that can be customized with sliders in the following ways: happy to sad, calm to lively, humorous to serious, nostalgic to contemporary and warm to cool. Very neat stuff. And of course you can purchase the images if you see something you like.
Boise Idea Market
If you are in the Boise, Idaho area on October 8th, I’m going to be facilitating an Idea Market from 6:00 to 9:30. The Facebook Invite is here. Cost is $20.00 to cover food and supplies. Would love to see you there.
Building Banks with Generation-C
James Gardner at Bankervision has been thinking about “future-proofing” banks, and takes inspiration from Linux and Crowdsourcing:
We’ve been tracking a trend at the bank we call Generation-C, the generation that wants to Create. These are the people who write blogs, who mash up applications to create new ones, who contribute to forums and put themselves out there….What might the power of crowds create if we let them loose on banking products and services?
Because if these Generation-C folk can create a better operating system for free than the folks at Redmond with billions to spend on R&D, what might fantastic things might Generation-C do for financial services?
Indeed. I think the same goes for law practice. What do you think?
Beep Beep
From Wikipedia, via Kottke:
The simple but strict rules for Road Runner cartoons.
- 1. Road Runner cannot harm the Coyote except by going “beep, beep”.
- No outside force can harm the Coyote — only his own ineptitude or the failure of Acme products.
- The Coyote could stop anytime — IF he was not a fanatic. (Repeat: “A fanatic is one who redoubles his effort when he has forgotten his aim.” — George Santayana).
- No dialogue ever, except “beep, beep”.
- Road Runner must stay on the road — for no other reason than that he’s a roadrunner.
- All action must be confined to the natural environment of the two characters — the southwest American desert.
- All tools, weapons, or mechanical conveniences must be obtained from the Acme Corporation.
- Whenever possible, make gravity the Coyote’s greatest enemy.
- The Coyote is always more humiliated than harmed by his failures.
- The audience’s sympathy must remain with the Coyote.
If Lawyers Didn’t Exist
I know, the title of this post sounds like the beginning of another lawyer joke, but it comes from a very thought-provoking article from Indi Young on A List Apart titled Look at it Another Way.
Indi suggests several ways we can “step out of our problem-solving role.” This is important because:
Whether we’re improving what we make, how we make it, or how we share it, we normally take the perspective of the creator by default. We can’t help it. We’re drawn into decisions about all sorts of details. We love the minutia—solving problems, finding a way around a limitation. We don’t try to see past our own role in the process.
Instead of trying to improve our businesses (or our processes/outputs/etc.) from the inside, she suggests we drop our problem-solving role completely, forget about our business’ existing limitations and become the person we serve.
Pretend you and your organization do not exist, and study what this person does with all the resources available in her life. For example, what does a citizen need from her town government? She needs a way to get from her house to the grocery store, the library, the post office, her workplace, etc. These could be roads, bike paths, public transit, and sidewalks. She needs utilities like water and electricity to be delivered to her property. She needs assurance that her property will be defended from fire, protected from floods, and accessible during a disaster. She wants to feel safe from assault, whether by a human, an animal, pollution, noise, or disease. This list goes on.
Like governments, lawyers (though some might argue) exist to fulfill a need. Here’s a way to identify those needs: Think about your clients for a moment. But, as the article suggests, don’t think of them as a “user” of the thing you provide. Instead, “think about how and why they accomplish what they want to get done.”
So, who are your clients? What do they look like? Where do they live? What do they need? What do they want to get done?
Most importantly, what wakes them up at 2:00 am the morning before they call your office? Would they say it is because they wanted “estate planning” or because they want to make sure they can “take care of their family” when they die?
Put another way, if lawyers didn’t exist, what unmet need would your clients have? And if you were the only one to recognize that unmet need (in a world without lawyers, remember), would you invent your firm as it exists today?
Would your client?
Would Steve Jobs?
Start Clients Off Right With a “Starter Kit”
Mark Hollander shares a Patient Starter Kit from drug manufacturer Shire on his Group8020 blog (great company name, btw). The “Kit” consists of:
- 16 page, full color booklet with basic information about the disease state
- An interactive CD-ROM that plays on both Windows and Macs (the latter representing a smart marketing decision. In the US, Apple represents two thirds of all new computer sales)
- An ATM-like card to be used at local pharmacies for a free 30-day trial of the product
- Standard P.I. insert
According to Mark, “The process of converting the “concerned and curious” to new customers begins immediately. The right front page prominently displays a serialized card used for enrollment in the 30-Day trial.”
Some other really cool things in the kit (for an ADHD drug):
- “Success Tracker” to chart and reinforce a child’s improvement in tasks that had previous proven difficult
- Recognition Certificate for the child – we’re assuming it works on the principle of “accomplish so many things and your reward will be..”
- Household Organizer Chart – for both child and parent, bringing a little structure back into home life
Put aside what you think about how drug companies market for a moment, and think about this instead:
What would a New Client Starter Kit look like for your firm?
Would it have basic information about the area of law concerning the client?
Would it contain links, scanned articles and documents (like questionnaires and forms) on a CD-ROM that would work on both Macs and Windows PC’s?
Would it contain photos of your office, including the outside of your building and the parking lot, as well as pictures (and bios) of all your staff?
Would it contain a FAQ?
Would it be cool?
If you’re looking for a project this month, perhaps building a New Client Starter Kit should make it onto your short list.
Line Up for Design Inspiration
Need a little design inspiration? Check out these results from a Smashing Magazine contest. The challenge? Design a horizontal line. It is a pretty basic challenge with pretty amazing results. The best part? They’re all free for reuse.
Think Bigger
I’ve recently upgraded (the understatement of the year) to an Apple Cinema 30 inch display and I can’t describe how much of a positive difference it has had on my work. Just the ability to see multiple windows at the same time has been a tremendous time-saver.
So, since I know a bigger screen helps me to work faster, I decided to try a another “does size matter?” experiment. I grabbed a pad of 18″x24″ drawing paper and a marker and sat down to do some brainstorming.
What I found is that the extra room on the paper gave me permission to think bigger.
- Doodles? Check.
- To Do list? Check.
- Mindmap? Check.
- Notes? Check.
All on the same page.
If you’ve got something you’d like to think about in a different way, go ahead and up-size your canvas. I bet you’ll find the extra space will give you (or your clients) more room to be creative. Give it a shot and let me know how it works for you.
The Curse of Almost Done
A few days ago, I wrote about how I was suffering from The Curse of Almost Happy. I realized that being “close to” fulfillment in my life and career wasn’t close at all. So, as I’ve spent this past weekend knocking off several things on my “To Do for Too Long” list, it hit me that a cause (companion?) to that Curse is another one: The Curse of Almost Done.
Unless you’re a hyper-productive, always-on-top-of-everything person, you know what I’m talking about. The Curse of Almost Done is evident all around you. It manifests itself the moment you put off completing those last few steps of a project that is “almost done.” It keeps you from picking those projects up and finishing them now because you’ve got more important things to start, and since they are, after all, “Almost done.”
Well, I’ve battled the Curse of Almost Done all weekend. I’m finally happy to unveil the new LexThink.com. It isn’t done, but it is done enough.
Let me know what you think. Still to come: links to my presentations, a client intranet site, some video, my first e-book, and a top-secret project that will launch in two weeks (I promise).
So what’s on your “To Do for Too Long” list? Set aside a day each week where you swear to not start anything new. Use that day just for completing things. “Finish Fridays” anyone?
Stop Painting a White Room White
I was talking with a friend the other day, and he was telling me how he felt that at work they kept doing the same things over and over again with similar, less-than-remarkable results. He said it was like “painting a white room white.” While the new coat of white paint was fresher and cleaner than the one it replaced, nobody really noticed the difference except the ones who did the painting.
I think the same is true about the incremental changes many of us make in our business. We notice them, and over-value their worth to others even though they’re not likely to realize we’ve made any changes at all.
Next time you contemplate a change in your business, ask yourself, “Will my clients (or co-workers) notice?” If the answer is no, perhaps you should concentrate your energies on changing something they will.
Be Mediocre Less
Bob Lotich on the Church Marketing Sucks Blog writes a post outlining some of the reasons he’s Run From Churches. In my original reading, I was thinking it explained why some clients run from their lawyers, but a second (and third) look at it made me realize he’s outlined lots of the reasons why lawyers are running from their clients — and the law practice all together.
His first point is that, in many churches, everything was mediocre:
Mediocrity has been too prevalent in the church today. Be it marketing, music, teaching, evangelism or anything else, it should be excellent. Just a few hundred years ago the greatest music, paintings, literature, etc. were glorifying God. It offends me that the word “Christian” is used as an adjective that is synonymous with mediocre by some non-Christians. It should not be.
Think about the legal profession for a bit. How mediocre have we become? To paraphrase Bob, mediocrity has been too prevalent in the practice of law today. Be it marketing, teaching, client service or anything else lawyers do, it should be excellent. Just a few decades ago, lawyers were admired, honored and the practice of law was a noble calling. It offends me that the word “Lawyer” is now too often the punch line to jokes by non-lawyers. It should not be.
So here’s a challenge for you:
- Make a list of the truly “excellent” things your firm does.
- Now, compare that to a list of things you do like everyone else. That’s your “mediocre” list.
Which list is longer? Can you think of a way to focus less on mediocrity and more on excellence? If you pick just one item from your mediocre list each week (or month) and make it better, your clients will notice.
Lessons learned. Mostly the hard way.
Just entered a presentation to SlideShare’s World’s Best Presentation Contest that I’ve been noodling around with for a while. It uses pictures of my daughter, and is titled, "If I’d only known then …. Lessons learned. Mostly the hard way." Check it out, and give it a vote if you like it.
Take Your Customers to Work?
In the her Nature his Nurture blog, Sean Hazell suggests having a “Take your customer to work day.” Here’s how it’d work:
- Invite your customer into your workplace to shadow an employee; parties are encouraged to sign up and then paired.
- Open your office, back-shop, or factory doors for the day to give your customers a behind the scenes glimpse of your working environment.
- Your employees represent your brand for the day.
- Customers see for themselves what truly makes your company special.
Still trying to figure out just how this could work with lawyers (client confidentiality and all that), but would it be impossible to have a “take your clients to court day” once a month to give clients with upcoming court dates a stress-free preview of their day a the courthouse? They’d get a chance to know where to meet, where to park, how to get through security, etc. I did this once with a Chapter 7 Bankruptcy client (she accompanied me when we filed) and she was much more comfortable during her hearing than everyone else around her.
And, if you can’t bring them in person, do you at least have pictures of what these places look like that you can share with them before they go?
Napkin Thinking for Your Practice
One thing I learned working for XPLANE, is that everyone (not just artists) can use simple visual tools to think better about almost anything. If you’d like to incorporate more visual thinking into your practicef (and communicate better with your clients), check out Dan Roam’s The Back of the Napkin. It is a great book, and if you want an intro, I highly recommend downloading the Visual Thinking Toolkit (pdf), which was just posted this week.
How To Do Almost Anything
Dumb Little Man has a roundup of 15 Tutorial Websites that can teach you almost anything. Next time you (or someone you know) needs help with something, give a few of these sites a try.
A Great Traveler’s Tip: Let Me Give You a Clue
Gretchen Rubin at The Happiness Project shares a great tip for traveling parents:
A friend of mine has a great tradition when she and her husband travel away from their children.Like many people, she brings her kids little presents from trips, but instead of just handing them over upon her return, she makes sure to pick the presents early in the trip, then allows her children to ask for clues. Each child gets one clue per day, and they have tremendous fun coming up with the questions, coordinating with each other about who will ask what, keeping a list of the clues that have been revealed, debating amongst themselves, etc.
She says that the gift itself brings them much less fun than the guessing game.
As someone who’s on the road a lot, I absolutely love this idea. Not sure it would work for clients awaiting your trip back from court.
Retreat with Me
About a month ago, I had the great pleasure of working with the Subrogation Group of Cozen O’Connor to help them design and facilitate their portion of a firm-wide retreat in Orlando, Florida. Paul Bartolacci, a fantastic attorney and great guy, just sent this testimonial I thought I’d share:
“We worked with Matt to plan and present a half day involving approximately 100 lawyers from a specific department within our firm. We were looking for something a bit different than the traditional law firm retreat program — upbeat and innovative, while at the same time useful and giving us a strategy to move forward. Matt was perfect. He took the time to listen to what we wanted to achieve and understood our goals. He spent extra time with us before the event to really get to know us as a group and what our practice involved.Matt delivered a speech that was creative and pointed us towards new ideas and a different way to view and analyze problems. Our activities were fast paced and interactive, yet produced concrete goals and results. In short, he “got it”.
This was the last session of a 3 day retreat and people left feeling very positive and focused. Following our session many members of the group commented that this had been the best session of any of the numerous retreats they attended. I would certainly recommend Matt for any law firm retreat and look forward to working with him again.”
If you are looking for a speaker or someone to help you squeeze a bit more fun, creativity and focused results out of your legal event or retreat, give me a call. I’d love to help.
What’s your practice plan?
Michael Hyatt shares the importance of having a “Life Plan.” He talks about why it is important, and openly shares quite a bit of his own. Under the “My Colleagues” category of his plan, Michael writes:
I want my colleagues to remember my servant-leadership, my integrity, my humility, and my commitment to having fun. I want them to remember how much they learned and grew as a result of knowing me. Most of all, I want them to remember how I empowered them to accomplish far more than they ever thought possible.
When you read his post, think about the things you’d include in a Life Plan for your practice. The quote above would be a great start for the “My Clients” section. Give it a try.
So you think you can dance?
For no other reason than to waste as much of your time as I just wasted of mine: The Pipecleaner Dancer. Enjoy!
You Always Have to Say “I’m Sorry.”
Want to keep your unhappy clients from suing you? Apologize. Bob Sutton writes about the Virtues of Apologies and shares a NY Times article about how doctors and hospitals are reducing malpractice claims (by a sizable amount) by simply apologizing. Read the article and the post for some of the reasons why you should apologize.
What I want to share, though, is this gem from Bob’s post:
[T]he best single diagnostic question for determining if an organization is learning and innovating as it moves forward is: What Happens When People Make a Mistake?
What’s the answer for your firm?
Title Tips for Better Slides
Want to write better titles for your PowerPoint slides (and nearly anything else for that matter)? Frank Roche gives five tips to help you Write the Best Damn PowerPoint Headlines Ever:
Make it good enough to print on a t-shirt. The word Introductions isn’t good enough for a t-shirt. Say hello to my little friend is. Not every headline has to be t-shirt worthy, but that’s not a bad goal.Make it fit on one line. Hey, what you lack in quality, you can’t make up for in volume. Read the really great headline writers. I like the New York Times and USA Today, but CNN and the New York Post write the killer headlines. They’re short. Often two words. But two killer words.
Say what’s on the slide. Obscurity is great for the CIA, but we’re talking about PowerPoint and communication. If a single word will do, then please be my guest. Otherwise, write descriptive headlines. (And if you violate the “fit on one line” rule, it had better rock.)
Forget headlines. If you can’t think of a great headline, then maybe you shouldn’t have one. Steve Jobs doesn’t need headlines.
If your slide is filled with bullet points, even a killer headline won’t help. You see that little key on your computer that says DEL? Go ahead, push that one. Watch your presentation magically get better.
How many of your titles would look good on a t-shirt? Open up that last presentation and get to work!
Only the Shadow Shows.
Now, for something completely non-legal, but completely useful (and yes, I know that’s redundant). From Rules of Thumb:
The fastest way to find a small object on [the] floor is to look for its shadow. Roll a flashlight around on the floor. The object may be tiny but its shadow will be big and easy to spot!
Join Me at the LMA Senior Marketers Summit
In two weeks, I’ll be speaking at the LMA Senior Marketers’ Program at the St. Regis Hotel in Washingon, D.C. The event takes place June 19-20, and is titled “Thought Leadership Amidst Relentless Change.” Here’s the brochure.
I’ll also be facilitating several fun, collaborative exercises, including a virtual scavenger hunt, a new rapid-idea generation experience, and a “build a board game” cocktail hour.
I just spoke with Pat at the LMA, and there are a few slots left (and attendance is not limited to LMA members). I’d love to see you there.
What if you …
My friend Ernie asks the big questions:
What if every day you showed up to work, eager to do something really good? Something meaningful.What if you came up with ideas on how to do things better? Not at first, but only after you felt confident that you understood the point of the work and all of the subtle forces surrounding it.
What if every day you felt a sense of satisfaction about your work? What if you could try a new approach at the very moment you realized it was better? What if your boss completely supported this? What if you were the boss? What if you worked for yourself?
What if? Indeed. These are some of the things we’ll be talking about at LexThink ’08. Look for more info soon.
Who Killed the Cat?
Here’s what happens when you take a comic strip about a fat, self-absorbed cat and remove the main character. From the intro:
Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life? Friends, meet Jon Arbuckle. Let’s laugh and learn with him on a journey deep into the tortured mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against loneliness in a quiet American suburb.
Sorry, Mom. ;-)
May I have your attention?
Watch this video:
Remember, what we look for is what we see. It is only when we open our eyes to see everything that we notice what should be obvious.
What are you looking for in your practice? Billable hours? Maybe you should look for something different. You might be surprised at what you’ll find.
Need a Vacation?
Brad Feld has a great recap of the ways he takes time off to recharge, including a quarterly, week-long vacation and semi-regular weekend getaway:
Go Dark Weekend: When I find myself feeling burned out, I do a go dark weekend. I turn off my computer and cell phone at 6pm on Friday night and don’t turn it back on until 5am Monday morning. I cancel anything that is scheduled for the weekend and just do whatever I feel like doing. This is usually a once a quarter event; occasionally more frequently depending on how busy I am. I’m considering doing this around each of my marathon weekends also.
Anyone reading this feeling burned out? How about “going dark” this weekend and reconnecting with your kids?
Your Brain Rules!
Want to learn more about what’s going on inside your own head? Check out Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home and School by John Medina. The site (linked to above) has lots of pretty cool, short videos explaining why our brains work the way they do. Working for XPLANE, I especially liked Rule # 10: Vision Trumps All Other Senses, and it contains this rule of thumb for presenters:
You’ll get 3x better recall for visual information than for oral. And you’ll get 6x better recall for information that’s simultaneously oral and visual.
Here’s why:
- We are incredible at remembering pictures. Hear a piece of information, and three days later you’ll remember 10% of it. Add a picture and you’ll remember 65%.
- Pictures beat text as well, in part because reading is so inefficient for us. Our brain sees words as lots of tiny pictures, and we have to identify certain features in the letters to be able to read them. That takes time.
- Why is vision such a big deal to us? Perhaps because it’s how we’ve always apprehended major threats, food supplies and reproductive opportunity.
- Toss your PowerPoint presentations. It’s text-based (nearly 40 words per slide), with six hierarchical levels of chapters and subheads—all words. Professionals everywhere need to know about the incredible inefficiency of text-based information and the incredible effects of images. Burn your current PowerPoint presentations and make new ones.
Wow!
The Devil’s In the Details
The New Yorker has created a series of 10 second animations for several of their cartoons. If you are a PowerPoint (ab)user, check out this one.
Let’s ReThink LexThink
If you head over to the LexThink! site, you’ll see it is “Under Construction.” We’ll have some more info soon after Techshow.
This Speech Sponsored by …
My pal JoAnna Forshee has (finally) started to do some blogging at her new venture InsideLegal. She recently hosted the InsideLegal Summit, and it appears to have been a fantastic success. The one topic that really caught my eye was the debate surrounding the “Pay to Speak” trend. What is Pay to Speak? It is when conferences (like LegalTech*) allow vendors to “sponsor” a conference track. The controversy, which has been brewing in the legal conference industry for a while, is over what level of control the vendors have over their sponsored track, and what responsibility conference organizers have to disclose that control.
Why is this a big deal? If a (fictional) company XYZ Discovery Solutions pays $25,000 to sponsor the “Electronic Discovery” track at a conference, what do they get for their investment? More specifically:
- Does XYZ get to pick the topics for the track?
- Does XYZ get to choose the track’s speakers, favoring those who sell or promote XYZ products, and excluding other speakers who don’t?
- Does XYZ have a responsibility to present information the attendees want to hear instead of information they want attendees to hear?
If the answers to any of these questions are yes, do the attendees know that the “CLE accredited” sessions they attend are given by a hand-picked roster of sponsor-friendly speakers? And are any CLE accreditation rules compromised?
Right now, the answers to these questions aren’t clear, and I’m sure each conference organizer and each sponsor approach the “sponsored track” differently. I don’t think the sponsored track should go away, but I do think some disclosure is in order. Just as lawyers must avoid actual or apparent conflicts of interest (which in some cases can waived by agreement), conference organizers must recognize the inherent conflicts that arise when a for-profit vendor sponsors, designs and staffs a CLE accredited, “educational” session
At a minimum, the conference must disclose whether the speakers in a sponsored track are chosen by the conference or by the sponsoring vendor, and whether those speakers are paid by the vendor.
I applaud JoAnna and her InsideLegal partner Jobst, for getting this out in the open. Your comments are welcome.
* I use LegalTech as an example here only because I know they have sponsored tracks, and the InsideLegal Summit happened in NYC at the same time of LegalTech. I don’t know what the vendors get for their investment and what rules (if any) LegalTech places on the speakers or the content in those sponsored tracks.
(How) Do You Take Credit?
Here’s a great idea for ways to remember the folks who’ve helped you along the way, from this post on How to Take Credit:
So when the time comes to take the stage, remember that you didn’t get here alone: go ahead, grab the microphone and acknowledge your team. Do it before a crowd and in e-mail. Say it with bonuses and baked goods — but be sure to say it. No one likes to be left out. By sharing the credit the right way, you won’t diminish your own accomplishments, you’ll add to them by building a reputation as the kind of person people want to work for and for your focus on developing others.Not sure whom to credit? In their book, Becoming a Resonant Leader, Annie McKee, Richard Boyatzis and Frances Johnston suggest keeping running lists of peers who have helped you along your route to success — along with notes about what you actually learned from them. Keeping such a list will likely help ensure that you don’t forget them in your acceptance speech.
I really like the idea of keeping a running list of people who’ve helped you along with a note or two about how they’ve helped. This is a pretty powerful way to not only remember how you’ve gotten to where you are, but to also remind you to give help to others who seek it from you. More on this in the next post.
Six Word Memoirs
If you liked my PowerPoint Haiku exercise, you’ve got to check out this Six-Word Memoir video (thanks, Magda). Can you write your memoir in six words?
My first shot: Stopped lawyering. Having way more fun.
Simple Solutions, Informally Delivered
Paul Graham shares his product development strategy in a wonderful essay:
Here it is: I like to find (a) simple solutions (b) to overlooked problems (c) that actually need to be solved, and (d) deliver them as informally as possible, (e) starting with a very crude version 1, then (f) iterating rapidly. When I first laid out these principles explicitly, I noticed something striking: this is practically a recipe for generating a contemptuous initial reaction. Though simple solutions are better, they don’t seem as impressive as complex ones. Overlooked problems are by definition problems that most people think don’t matter. Delivering solutions in an informal way means that instead of judging something by the way it’s presented, people have to actually understand it, which is more work. And starting with a crude version 1 means your initial effort is always small and incomplete.
Paul suggests that his technique extends beyond startups to any type of creative work, and I’m inclined to agree.
In the delivery of legal services, what are the overlooked problems that can be simply solved? How many of us ask our clients (before, during or after they’ve engaged us) about the one thing we could change in our practices to improve their experience? Is it something as simple as shifting our office hours to be available when our clients can see us? Or, is it something more profound like changing the way we charge for our services? No matter what that one thing is — and it could be a different one thing for every client — what’s keeping us for trying it? Just once. To see if it works.
New Research Explains Billable Hour’s Staying Power!
Well, not exactly, but this article in the Telegraph discusses an experiment exploring humans’ preference for a familiar (though less efficient) path, and found:
most of us are happy to play follow-my-leader, even if we are trailing after someone who does not know where they are going and taking the most meandering route. Even more striking, even when we are shown a faster route, we prefer to stick with the old one and tell others to take the long road too, a finding that could have lethal implications when it comes to evacuating a building or ship in an emergency.
In the study, participants were led from one room to another. When asked to return to the first room, almost all took the familiar path back, even when they were aware of a shorter path:
All but one person took the route they had been led. What we were surprised by was how strong this effect was, even when the alternative route was much shorter …. They preferred the long route even when the experimenter had drawn attention to the alternative route, or when the experimenter took the long route solely to pick up a fallen poster, eliminating the possibility that participants thought the experimenter had a good, but unknown, reason to take the long route. By asking participants to collect the next guinea pig in the experiment, the scientists observed that each person in the chain copied the route of the participant before them: a simple tradition that meant the alternative route was never discovered.
Interesting food for thought, don’t you think?
Here are Some Posters for Your Waiting Room
Need some subtle reminders to your clients as they wait for their appointment? I ran across this online poster shop titled Advice To Sink In Slowly that has well-designed posters containing GREAT advice. My favorite (and there are many I absolutely love) is Work Hard. Play Hard. Create something amazing. Check it out.
Go Ahead, Write on Your Walls
I’m certain that I think better when I’m standing in front of a dry-erase white board, so my perfect office (or house, for that matter) would have dry erase boards everywhere. If you are like me, check out Markee Dry Erase Paint. According to the website, it is a clear paint that turns any smooth surface into a dry-erase board. It is about a hundred bucks a gallon. If you’ve tried it, I’d love to know your results.
Tags: Markee, whiteboard
Use Haiku to Get to the Point
I just returned from VizThink, where I facilitated a few exercises for the nearly 400 attendees. My favorite — and the one I used to close out the conference — is one I call PowerPoint Haiku. Here’s how it works:
- Everyone gets three "slides" (one each for the questions they have to answer) that can be notecards, 8.5 " x 11" cardstock, or even (gasp) actual PowerPoint slides.
- You pose three questions to the group. At VizThink, they were: "Why did you come to VizThink?" "What did you learn?" and "What are you going to do next?"
- Each question is answered on a separate slide with this Haiku-like twist: The first question MUST be answered in 5 words, the second question in 7 words, and the third in 5 words. And yes, I know that in true Haiku, you count syllables instead of words.
- Everyone can then take their "slides" and add a drawing, picture or other visual images to each one.
- The mini-presentations are then shared around the table.
Here’s the VizThink recap from the VizThink Blog. I love this exercise, and use it in almost all of my XPLANE sessions to understand "what good looks like" to the stakeholders. It is fun, and often provides startling insights. Give it a try with your clients. Ask them:
- Why are you here? (5 words)
- What can I do for you? (7 words)
- Why is it important to you? (5 words)
Let me know what happens.
Tags: vizthink08, presentations, powerpoint, haiku, facilitation
In San Francisco Next Week? Come to VizThink!
I’ve not written much about my work at XPLANE on this blog – ok, I’ve not written much of anything, lately — but I’m really enjoying my work at “The Visual Thinking Company.” I’ve had an amazing time working with some really amazing clients. One of the super cool things I’m going to be doing happens next week at VizThink, a conference for visual thinkers that takes place in next week San Francisco from January 27-29th. I’m going to be facilitating several visual “icebreakers” for the 325+ attendees before each of the plenary sessions. I’ll also be hanging out a lot after the sessions, so if you are in the S.F. area, give me a call on my cell 314-541-6412 or email me if you’d like to meet up.
One more thing. Here’s a Slideshare presentation about why you should go. Enjoy!
Tags: vizthink, xplane, visualthinking, homann
Big News Coming Tomorrow
I’ve got some big resolution-themed news coming Monday. Until then, make sure you spend an hour or two with the NY Times Magazine’s annual Year in Ideas issue.
A “Business Card” for Litigators
Do your clients think you are full of hot air? Here’s a business card that might just prove them right:
Check out several other cool “cards” here.
Ideate for the Holidays
Church Marketing Sucks continues a great series on Lessons in Not Sucking with this post on Building an Ideation Team. There are some absolutely great tips in the post, including: “Invite People You Don’t Like,” and “Invite People with Unusual Professions.” Read the post, and then think about ways to do a firm-wide ideation session at your holiday party this year. That’s right, gather up some of your people and your clients and spend a bit of time thinking of ways to get better as a firm — perhaps by focusing on what your top-ten firm resolutions for 2008 should be. You might be surprised at the result.
Boise, Idaho … Here I Come!
I’m going to be in Boise, Idaho on Monday (November 5) to speak about innovation for lawyers to the Idaho Bar Association. If you are in the neighborhood (and really, who isn’t?) come on by.
15 Thoughts for Law Students: A Mini-Manifesto
I’ve written a few mini-manifestos for clients and lawyers before and remain quite enamored with the format. Here’s one for law students with some random (semi-related) thoughts on law school and the legal profession. Let me know what you think, and feel free to add your own in the comments.
1. Law school is a trade school. The only people who don’t believe this to be true are the professors and deans.
2. Want to piss off your professors? Ask them if they’ve ever run a successful law practice.
3. Being good at writing makes you a good law student. Being good at understanding makes you a good lawyer. Being good at arguing makes you an ass.
4. You can learn more about client service by working at Starbucks for three weeks than you can by going to law school for three years.
5. Law school doesn’t teach you to think like a lawyer. Law school teaches you to think like a law professor. Believe me, there’s a huge difference.
6. You can get through law school without understanding anything about what it is like to be a lawyer. That is a terrible shame.
7. The people who will help you the most in your legal career are sitting next to you in class. Get to know them outside of law school. They are pretty cool people. They are even cooler when you stop talking about the Rule Against Perpetuities.
8. Your reputation as a lawyer begins now. Don’t screw it up (and quit bragging on your MySpace page about how drunk you got last night).
9. Law is a precedent-based profession. It doesn’t have to be a precedent-based business. Be prepared to challenge the prevailing business model. Somebody has to.
10. Experienced lawyers work with clients. Young lawyers work with paper. You like working with paper, right?
11. You are about to enter a world where getting your work done in half the time as your peers doesn’t get you rewarded. It gets you more work.
12. Except for prosecutors and public defenders, nobody tries cases anymore. Especially not second year associates.
13. You have a choice: You can help people and make a decent living, or you can help corporations and make a killing. Choose wisely.
14. There are plenty of things you don’t know, and even more things you’ll never know. Get used to it. Use your ignorance to your benefit. The most significant advantage you possess over those who’ve come before you is that you don’t believe what they do.
15. People don’t tell lawyer jokes just because they think they are funny. They tell lawyer jokes because they think they are true. Spend your career proving them wrong.
Outsource Your (Non)Legal Practice
I’m a big fan of Tim Ferriss’ book The 4-Hour Workweek, though some of his suggestions are a bit impractical for an office-dwelling professional. That’s why I really liked this post on 43 Folders that gives several realistic examples of ways to outsource your personal and professional life. Well worth a read, if only for this fantastic advice for those to whom “delegation” is a four letter word:
It’s easy to tell yourself that it would take too long to figure out how to explain a project to someone else than to do it on your own. After all, you’re the only person who has the grand picture, understands the purpose of the work, and is familiar with the details. But with a bit of pluck and a capacity for seeing projects for what they truly are (collections of discrete actions,) you’ll be astonished at how much you can rid yourself of. I have often found that what at first seemed daunting to explain to someone else actually just required a few moments thinking about how the problem needed to be approached—which is a process I was going to have to go through anyway if I were ever going to complete the task in the first place.
“Build a team you shall, young Skywalker.”
Want a team-building activity for an afternoon that "only" costs $500? Got a few geeks in your office? Have I got an idea for you: the LEGO Ultimate Collector’s Millennium Falcon. Check out this post, and make sure to watch the YouTube video of seven people putting one together in just over two hours.
And if anyone wants to get me something cool for Christmas…
20 Slides. 20 Seconds Each. Pecha-Kucha
How would your next presentation go if you only had twenty slides and could show each one for “only” twenty seconds (for a total of 6 minutes 40 seconds? A format embracing these very constraints is called Pecha Kucha, and was started by two architects in Tokyo as part of a designers’ show and tell. It seems like a natural fit for an Idea Market, as a replacement for a panel presentation, or any time a lot of presenters have something to say.
I’m doing a very short speech (nine minutes) on innovation in two days, and am going to give this presentation format a try. I’ll let you know how it goes. In the meantime, if you’d like to learn more, check out several examples on You Tube, or this recent Wired magazine article. If you are in the St. Louis area and want to have a Pecha Kucha night, let me know.
Idea Market in the News
I’ve written about my Idea Markets here before. Here’s an article from the local Suburban Journal that talks about one I did for the International Association of Business Communicators.
The Mobile Lawyer 2.0
It has been a long while since I’ve been so WOW’d by a business model as I’ve been this morning. Simply put, this is the BEST template I’ve seen for building a home-based practice from, of all people, a physician. Dr. Jay Parkinson, MD is building a web-based medical practice. From his website:
- I AM A NEW KIND OF PHYSICIAN.
- I strictly make house calls either at your home or work.
- Once you become my patient and I’ve personally met you, we can also e-visit by video chat, IM and email for certain problems and follow-ups.
- I’m based in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. My fees are very reasonable.
- I’m extremely accessible. Contact me by phone, email, IM, text, or video chat. Mon-Fri 8AM-5PM. 24/7 for emergencies.
- I specialize in young adults age 18 to 40 without traditional health insurance.
- When you need more than I provide, I make sure you wisely spend your money and pay the lowest price for the highest quality.
- I’ve gathered costs for NYC specialists, medications, x-rays, MRIs, ER visits, blood tests, etc…just like a Google price search.
- I mix the service of an old-time, small town doctor with the latest technology to keep you and your bank account healthyl
How much for this service? According to the "How it Works" on his site, his fee is "far less than your yearly coffee budget but a little more than your Netflix." His web site also provides "Real Life Examples" that describe, in plain English, how you’d use his service. Oh, and he’s blogging, too.
Lawyers, if you are looking for a real dose of inspiration (or a glimpse to the future of mobile practice) you HAVE to check this Parkinson’s site and business model. Simply brilliant. Great idea, great web site, amazing copy. If I were still practicing, I’d steal it in a heartbeat. Look at it now.
Via: Zoli’s Blog.
Lose Your Receptionst’s Desk?
Via Brand Autopsy comes a pointer to the Building Better Restaurants Blog’s Top Ten Reasons to Take a Sledgehammer to Your Host Stand. I think a lot of these are also good reasons to rethink/redesign/remove your receptionist’s desk:
- It accumulates clutter that is an eyesore.
- It does not have any functional utility for the guest.
- It allows staff to “hide” from the guest.
- It forces the guest to come to you, and not the other way around.
- It becomes a hub for business other than the business of the guest.
- It becomes a leaning tool and not a Hosting [verb] tool.
- It will force you to talk to your guests and actually “Host” [verb] the guest experience.
- It will force more physical contact with the guest and thereby a more meaningful greeting.
- It will allow the guest to take in the whole “show” as they enter and immediately be caught up in the experience more.
- Because you don’t have one at your house when you host people there!
Dis[is the]place to be Creative
My friend Scott Ginsberg has another great post on building your own creative environment. The best tip:
Make a list of five alternate environments for your creative success. Perhaps your art is more conducive to the park, the bus station or sitting in a public square. If so, great! Experiment by displacing yourself regularly.Once you’ve narrowed your list down to a few options, visit them regularly. Learn to incorporate various components of creative stimulation into your “portable creative environment.”
That way you can thrive anywhere!
As someone who has been on the road a lot lately, I’m going to give it a try.
Youth Plus Inexperience Equal Success
I ran across a paper published by my friend Betha L. Whitlow, the director of the Visual Resources Collection at Washington University, titled "The Shock of the New: Using Youth and Inexperience as Tools for Success." In the paper (link to Word document), Betha argues that newcomers to her field of Visual Resources should view their youth and inexperience as distinct advantages to be leveraged, not handicaps to be overcome:
[Because] there are still many people at your institution who are unable to let go of the previous culture, thus limiting their ability to move forward and offer your institution a new and highly productive perspective … [i]t is my belief that by the very nature of being a [young] Visual Resources professional, you are uniquely positioned to be at the forefront of changes in the culture of your institution. With just a little bit of a brave and diplomatic push forward, [you] can embody the new role of the resource provider, promote interdisciplinary teaching and learning, be the model of the flexible professional, and tread the fine line between providing access to solid yet technologically innovative resources.
Young professionals, take this advice to heart. There are plenty of things you don’t know, and even more things you’ll never know. Get used to it. Use your ignorance to your benefit. The most significant advantage you possess over those who’ve come before you is that you don’t believe what they do. Because you’ve never "always done it that way," you’re free to do it differently. Question the business model. Deliver products (yes, products) and services your elders would never consider. Embrace technology. Innovate. Revel in your inexperience. You have but one opportunity to start from scratch. Don’t waste it.
Idea Market X
The tenth Idea Market takes place Monday. We are going to be doing some cool things, including working on personal mission statements and learning how to give better presentations by using children’s books. If you’d like to come, sign up here.
Get Your Clients Home Free
The Springwise Blog has a story on a pilot program in Minneapolis (where I’ll be next week) called Get Home Free. Here’s how it works:
Launched in eleven Minneapolis suburbs this month, Get Home Free is a flat rate, prepaid cab card that gets its holder home safely. Mainly targeted at teenagers and college students, the concept’s initiators are aiming to help out kids who are stuck with car trouble, have been drinking, or whose ride home has fallen through. Cardholders place a call to the Get Home Free hot line, and a car is immediately dispatched to bring them home, no questions asked.
If your firm is looking for a image-boosting promotion, this one just might work — especially if you regularly represent clients accused of DUI. Having your firms name and number on the back of each card isn’t a bad idea either.
Meet Musicovery
I LOVE Pandora, and listen to it almost all day long. Today (courtesy of VSL), I found Musicovery. Hard to describe (think Pandora meets a mood ring meets the Visual Thesaurus) but if you like music, check it out.
Funky Fun with Fotos
Here are 15 Crazy and Cool Photo and Video Web Sites. Worth a peruse.
BlawgWorld 2007
I am honored to be one of the bloggers featured in BlawgWorld 2007, the one-of-a-kind e-book from my friends at Technolawyer that collects the best posts from the best writers in the legal blogosphere. If you’d like to download your own copy for free, you can do so here (pdf). Enjoy!
Idea Market is Tonight!
I’ve been so swamped with a couple of cool projects that I forgot to announce one of my favorites: The Idea Market. Tonight’s takes place at XPLANE’s offices here in St. Louis. I’d love to see you there. RSVP Here.
AILA Presentation
Here’s the presentation I did at the AILA convention on Building an Innovative Firm. I’d love to know what you think, though it loses a lot without my narration to accompany the primarily visual slides. All but four of the photos used are ones I’ve taken myself. (Direct Slideshare Link)
PowerPointing Audiences to Death
I’m going to be posting my presentation from the AILA conference later today. Until I do, check out this video: How NOT to Make a Powerpoint.
Remind Yourself It is Your Money You’re Not Earning
Just got back from the American Immigration Lawyer’s Association annual convention. I presented twice there, hosted an Idea Market and an Idea Gallery (more on those later) and hung out with a bunch of cool immigration law practitioners.
One tip I shared at a round table discussion that really resonated with a practitioner who had a mountain of accounts receivables is this one:
Every month, when you print out your bills and your accounts receivable statement, clip a family photo to the top of the stack. Whenever you are tempted to write down a bill or not try to collect on one, look at your family before you make the decision. While there are dozens of great reasons to reduce a bill or not collect upon an amount owed, every dollar you don’t collect is a dollar your family doesn’t get to spend on something important, or you don’t get to donate to a worthy cause.
Boise Idea Market on June 8th
I’m going to be in Boise, Idaho next Friday to speak on innovation to a group of Idaho lawyers. While I’m there, I’m going to be hosting an Idea Market with Steve Nipper and Tac Anderson for a group of entrepreneurs and technology folks. Here are the details from Steve’s Blog:
I’m thrilled to announce the Boise Idea Market. It is something I’m putting together with Tac Anderson (TechBoise) and Matt Homann (http://www.realBIGthinking.com). I’m really looking forward to it.
What is an Idea Market™? Think brainstorming + collaboration + networking + happy hour. The brain child of innovation consultant, retreat facilitator and conference planner Matt Homann, an Idea Market is part think tank, part focus group and part social club. At the Idea Market, attendees bring their business challenges, questions and (of course) ideas, and share them with some of the most creative and generous people in the community as they participate in fun exercises designed to cram the most innovation into a two-hour collaborative experience.
Who Should Come: If you are a blogger, entrepreneur, speaker, consultant, designer, webmaster, writer, artist, salesperson, or technologist, you’ll enjoy the Boise Idea Market. We only ask that you be passionate about sharing ideas and helping others. Everything else will take care of itself.
When: Friday, June 8, 2007 at 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM
Where: Louie’s Pizza & Italian Restaurant, 620 W Idaho St, Boise, ID 83702-5930
Cost: $10.00 (to cover pizza & soda & tip)
How To Attend: We’ll have room for around 35 people for the Idea Market. We’ll use Renkoo to handle the invite process. Email me (snipper@gmail.com) and I’ll send you an invite.
Powered by ScribeFire.
Explaining XPLANE.
As I wrote the other day, I have joined XPLANE as a full time consultant. I want to thank everyone who has reached out to me to offer me their congratulations and support. I also want to answer several of the questions I’ve received, and figured it was far easier to do in a blog post. So here goes:
WHAT IS XPLANE? XPLANE (Wikipedia Entry) is one of the pioneers in Visual Thinking, which is the process of distilling complex processes and concepts into easy-to-understand and visually striking XPLANATIONS. In short, XPLANE helps companies improve their business communication. XPLANE has offices in St. Louis, Portland and Madrid.
WHY XPLANE? Since I returned to St. Louis over a year ago, I have been spending many of my Thursday afternoons at XPLANE’s Visual Thinking School, a weekly design and thinking exercise conducted primarily for internal XPLANE personnel. I was invited by XPLANE CEO Dave Gray to attend, and found myself intrigued by the way XPLANE used drawing and visuals to communicate complex business processes. At the same time, XPLANE folks started coming to my Idea Markets, where I began to incorporate many visual thinking and drawing exercises and found it startling how much more effective a little "out of comfort zone" drawing could be than simply a verbal-based exercise. After several months of VTS, Dave asked me why I didn’t work for XPLANE. Surprised by the question, I began to consider it. Six months later, and after a trip to visit the Portland office, I’m here.
WHAT WILL I DO? My official title is "Consultant," though that really doesn’t describe what I’ll be doing. Part of XPLANE’s unique process is pairing up a consultant/facilitator (me) with an artist/concept designer (the people with real talent), and going to a client’s office for a day-long discovery session. Instead of taking written notes, the artist will actually use live drawing to help visualize the client’s story, audience, goals and needs. By combining this live-sketching with a number of brainstorming and drawing, XPLANE is able to elicit a far more complete picture (literally!) of what the client wants to communicate. Here’s an overview of the process.
My role is to be the consultant/facilitator in the client sessions. In addition, I will work within XPLANE to expand the consulting practice and further develop the process for multiple client scenarios — not just those that need an XPLANE "product" delivered at the end of the engagement. Finally, I am going to work on a "visual thinking module" that will bring the benefits of visual thinking to workshops, conferences and retreats.
In short, I get to do the same kinds of things I was doing before, but within a really cool organization, with amazingly talented people, and for much larger clients.
XPLANE will also begin to sponsor the Idea Markets. More on that soon.
WHAT ABOUT THIS BLOG? I will keep the [non]billable hour going. I am working on a redesign, and you will see some cool new things in the next 90 days. I am also going to be re-purposing much of the older content in ways to make it more accessible to newer readers.
WHAT ABOUT LEXTHINK? Dennis, JoAnna and I will be having a sit down soon to figure out what’s next. We have too many cool things planned for LexThink to let it go. Stay tuned.
WHAT ELSE? If you have any more questions, shoot me an email at homann@gmail.com or mhomann@xplane.com, and I’d be happy to answer them. I am so excited to be working for XPLANE. I have spent most of my working life as an entrepreneur, and to find an employer where the entrepreneurial spirit is part of the fabric of the organization is really cool. Thanks for all your support!
Matt
Sweat the Outline
From the Church Relevance blog come Perry Noble’s 6 Preaching Tips. Two worth remembering for your next speech:
1. Prepare your messages weeks in advance. You’d be amazed at what the Holy Spirit will reveal in a month compared to what he reveals in a week.4. Sweat the outline not the manuscript.
Raise the Roof or Lower the Ceiling?
I found something interesting in a study titled The Influence of Ceiling Height: The Effect of Priming on the Type of Processing People Use (via Science Daily — my new favorite RSS subscription):
“When a person is in a space with a 10-foot ceiling, they will tend to think more freely, more abstractly,” said Meyers-Levy. “They might process more abstract connections between objects in a room, whereas a person in a room with an 8-foot ceiling will be more likely to focus on specifics.”The research demonstrates that variations in ceiling height can evoke concepts that, in turn, affect how consumers process information. The authors theorized that when reasonably salient, a higher versus a lower ceiling can stimulate the concepts of freedom versus confinement, respectively. This causes people to engage in either more free-form, abstract thinking or more detail-specific thought. Thus, depending on what the task at hand requires, the consequences of the ceiling could be positive or negative.
If you are designing your next office or workspace, should you build in different ceiling types and plan to do different kinds of work in each one? For lawyers, should you take your depositions in low-ceilinged rooms?
Idea Market VII is Tonight!
My seventh Idea Market (link to Meetup site) happens tonight, April 16th, at 6:00 pm at Lucas School House. I’m going to be trying out a new networking/relationship-building activity that I’m really excited about, and we are going to figuring out ways to make the Gateway Arch blue for Autism awareness. I hope to see you there!
Cool Tool(Bar) for Clients?
How about giving your tech-savvy clients their own firm- (or client-) specific toolbar for their browsers? Techcrunch profiles Conduit, a company that makes it easy to “roll-your-own” toolbars. Here’s the Techcrunch Toolbar, for an example.
An Unreasonable Request
I am a big fan of making Unreasonable Requests — requests that I don’t expect a “Yes” answer to, but that I make nonetheless.
I’m going to be sharing several on this blog over the following months. Here’s the first:
I need someone to redesign my blog. I’ve got quite a few projects I’m working on, and need to incorporate them in a new, non-template based site. I know what I want, but don’t have the HTML and CSS chops to do it myself. In exchange (in addition to ample credit) I will work with you to make your business better — and I promise you’ll find the trade more than fair.
Extreme Outsourcing
I just happened across Timothy Ferriss’ site (blog) and saw this article on “Outsourcing Life” that I’d like to share. If you are experimenting with outsourcing work in your firm, check out some of the extreme suggestions on outsourcing a few other things. Timothy has a book coming out. I’ve asked for a review copy and will share my thoughts if it comes my way.
PowerPoint Bullets Kill Comprehension
Garr Reynolds has a good summary of the newest PowerPoint controversy started by this article in the Sydney Morning Herald that describes a study suggesting speakers who essentially read their bullet points from their slides are ineffective communicators. The study’s author suggested:
It is effective to speak to a diagram, because it presents information in a different form. But it is not effective to speak the same words that are written, because it is putting too much load on the mind and decreases your ability to understand what is being presented.
Another way to Bill for E-Mail
Postful is a pretty ingenious service that creates and sends written snail-mail correspondence from e-mails forwarded to the service for just $0.99 each. This could be a KILLER application for lawyers, especially if confidentiality issues, firm branding and other details could be worked out. Imagine being able to send real honest-to-God letters from your blackberry, without secretarial help. Very Cool!
Getting Less Done With a Messy Desk?
Not sure if there is any scientific basis to extend this study to productivity, but people eat less when they can see how much they’ve already eaten. When there were visual cues (an un-bussed table) of how much food study participants ate, they continued to eat less.
This makes me wonder: If we can see how much work we’ve already done (a long timesheet, for example), are we less likely to do more? The same goes for a messy desk. If we are surrounded by cues of work we’ve done, do we work less?
Ultra-Rapid Focus Group
Kathy Sierra talks about an Ultra-Rapid-Design Party with some great brainstorming tips that I’m going to shamelessly steal for my Idea Markets and Innovation Retreats. Here’s how she describes it:
Forget focus groups. Forget endless meetings and brainstorming sessions. Throw an ultra-rapid-design party, and do it in a single day. This approach exploits the wisdom-of-crowds through a process of enforced idea diversity and voting, so no consensus, committee, or even agreement is needed. And it’s way more fun.The Product Design Dinner Party takes 9 people, a pile of diverse “inputs”, and has each of the 9 people voting on–and pitching–one another’s ideas to continuously reconfigured groups of 3 people, letting the best ideas rise to the top. The process is a little complicated, but it’s derived/modified from an existing rapid-prototyping design I’ll talk about later in the post.
Go to the post for a step-by-step guide. Definitely worth a try.
How to “Black Out” During Your Next Presentation
Bert Decker has a great (and easy) tip to improve your next presentation: Use Black Slides. According to Bert, a blacked out slide (as opposed to justing hitting the “B” key) accomplishes three things:
1. Clear the screen. Once you’re done with the picture, graph or supporting information, you want to remove distraction, and go to a black slide so you can amplify, tell a story, or make an additional point, etc.
2. Black out the screen. Simply put, so you can walk in front of the projector. Almost all meeting, board and conference rooms are poorly designed so that they have the projector screen right in the middle of the room or stage. It should be at the right or left, so YOU can be in the middle. After all, YOU should be the center of your presentation, not your slides.
3. Totally change your mindset. Change he creation and emphasis of the presentation. This is by far the most important of all, and needs it’s own paragraph.
Who is Going to Pay for Those 18 Minutes?
NYT article on the perils of multitasking. The money quote:
In a recent study, a group of Microsoft workers took, on average, 15 minutes to return to serious mental tasks, like writing reports or computer code, after responding to incoming e-mail or instant messages. They strayed off to reply to other messages or browse news, sports or entertainment Web sites.
There are some other good studies mentioned in the article. Worth a read — if you’ve got the time.
Presentation Inspiration
If you want to see some best-in-breed presentations, check out Slideshare’s World’s Best Presentation Contest. Slideshare is an online, presentation sharing application. Worth a look.
Building the Perfect Innovation Retreat – Call for Help
Readers, I need your help. I’m designing an intensive, two-day, innovation-focused law firm retreat that I can sell to medium and large firms. Before it goes “live” I need to do it at least twice to iron out the kinks and make it hum.
Here’s what I’d like to do:
- Do the retreat for a firm of 10-20 lawyers, their staff and selected clients (yes, I said clients). The cost to the firm will be my travel, lodging and retreat materials. I’ll also ask the firm to pay me an amount commensurate with the “value” of the retreat to the firm — but only if they thought it was the best retreat they’d ever done.
- Assemble a group of 10-20 small firm or solo lawyers for a two-day innovation retreat here in St. Louis in early June. Because most solo and small-firm lawyers don’t get the benefits of a law firm retreat, I want to bring several of these lawyers together to collaborate with one another and to bring innovation into all of their practices. Also, I want to see if the concept of a solo/small firm “retreat” will work. If I get enough people, I’ll set the fee at an amount sufficient to cover my costs (probably at $250 per attendee or so). Each attendee will be on their own for travel and lodging.
Let me know if you are interested. You can e-mail me at Matt@LexThink.com if you or your firm would like to participate. Thanks.
Start Wine-ing in Your Business
Hugh at Gaping Voidingvoid recaps some “lessons learned” in his first two years of working with Stormhoek winery. Just a few of his points should resonate with anyone (including lawyers) trying to build an amazing business:
14. We can make this as lucrative and as intellectually stimulating as we want to. The ball is in our court.16. What’s driving innovation and sales on our end is not a technological issue, it’s a cultural issue. Get the right culture going, and the tech looks after itself.
17. When I started working in the advertising business as a young buck in London, back in the late 1980s, Bartle Bogle Hegarty were considered the best game in town, even if they were not the biggest agency. Every young advertising student aspired to have a gig there one day, everyone daydreamed of one day having John Hegarty return their calls. The were considered the Praetorian Guard. Within two years from now, I want every smart, driven young person in the wine trade to be thinking the same way about us. That to me would be a far more worthy definition of “success”, than how many cases we sell.
Techshow Blogger Bar Crawl
ABA’s Techshow is just around the corner, and we need to do something to get the bloggers together. Since there’s nothing formal planned for us, I’m organizing the First Annual Techshow Blogger Bar Crawl. We are going to meet in the Sheraton Hotel’s lobby at 7:00 pm on Thursday, March 22nd and head out on a walking (and drinking) tour of the neighborhood. I’ll have more info on the places we’ll be soon, but expect to hit between three and five bars. I will enforce the schedule, so if you can’t make the beginning of the crawl, join us along the way.
I’ve set up a Techshow Bar Crawl page here to register. Cost is free. See you next week!
Office Motivation Hack: Complete a Puzzle
Here’s another fantastic Parent Hack that could work wonders in an office setting:
My 7 year-old son can be particularly stubborn and no matter how much we beg, plead, or reason with him, he stands his ground. Sometimes I resort to bribery. He likes puzzles so I came up with puzzles to help him do certain things. It started the summer before Kindergarten — he already knew how to tie his shoes, but claimed that he “forgot” how over the summer since he wore sandals all summer. So I found a pair of running shoes that he wanted online (I used Zappos.com) and printed out two full-sized pictures. One was in color and the other black and white. I then decided that I wanted him to tie his shoes for two weeks on his own before I would buy him the shoes he wanted so I cut the colored picture into the appropriate number of “puzzle” pieces. Then every time he tied his shoes on his own he earned one piece that he could tape onto the black and white picture in the correct spot. When the puzzle was complete we ordered him his shoes.
What are the goals for your office, and what is an appropriate reward when the goals are met? Can you make a huge "puzzle" for your workers to complete as they reach appropriate milestones?
Cool Client Giveaway
If you are looking for something cool to give to your clients, try to find someone who makes this (courtesy of Autoblog). It is a feature on the new Renault Twingo, and may not be for sale, but if you can find it and give it away, you’ll be the talk of the conference. I know I want one.
Does Your Firm Have the Guts to Seek Anonymous Client Feedback?
Mike Arrington posts about The Gorb, a online reputation monitoring service:
Gorb allows, even insists on, anonymous comments and ratings about an individual. Like someone? Hate them? Tell Gorb all about it, using their handy Ajax slider to rate them from 1 – 10 in their professional and personal lives, and leave written comments as well.
According to Gorb:
The professional marketplace in general is inefficient when it comes to distributing information about a person’s reputation. Many of us often make daily decisions based on relatively few inputs, some which are poorly validated. When these decisions begin to form the basis for our perceptions about others that we don’t know, it should be no surprise that there’s a hit-and-miss nature to this “off-line” system!On the other hand, many of us also use people that we know very well as references to gather information and make decisions about others. The GORB aims to leverge reliable professional references and personal opinions to provide a balanced and widely adopted “online” rating system, that allows us to gauge the reputations of one another.
What do you think? Would you or your firm tell your clients about The Gorb and ask them for an anonymous review of your services? Why or why not? What are you afraid of?
Buy Your Clients a Virtual Lunch
My friend Scott Ginsberg (who has some really cool things up his sleeve, BTW) shares this really great way to connect with someone who doesn’t live or work close by. I’ll let Scott tell the story:
A month ago, I got a surprising email from a woman named Lena West.Lena lives in New York, which explains why I was so surprised.
See, she invited me to have lunch with her.
A VIRTUAL lunch.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Well, I buy you lunch from your favorite delivery place. Then we eat while chatting on the phone for an hour.”
Hmm. Cool idea.
So, last week we did it.
And our Virtual Lunch rocked.
Lena and I had an enlightening, energizing conversation for over an hour! We talked about websites we loved, books we read, places we traveled, you name it. Other than the obvious physical limitations, it was really no different than having lunch in person.
I challenge you to buy your best, non-local client lunch this week. Let me know how it goes.
Actual, Actually.
I came across this article on Honda from an old issue of CIO Magazine and really liked the part about Honda’s focus on an interesting Japanese concept:
The collaborative environment at Honda is a byproduct of the company’s emphasis on the Japanese concept of the three actuals—go to the actual place, work with the actual people or part and understand the actual situation. Although it might seem unnecessary or impractical, adherence to the concept helped facilitate the efficient design of the ’98 Accord. When the designers weren’t sure whether a part they were designing could actually be welded, for example, they’d drive over to the manufacturing plant to ask a welder directly . A visit to the site about a specific problem not only prevents engineers from becoming detached from the actual process, it often yields insight into a completely unrelated and unforeseen issue, says Shriver.
I’d highly recommend implementing the same concept when working with clients: go to their actual place, work with the actual people, and understand the actual situation.
Can Your Firm Offer a “Genius” Bar?
Thanks to 37 Signals for pointing out a great article in CNN/Money about Apple’s retail stores. The article talks about the inspiration for Apple’s amazing “Genius” Bars:
When we launched retail, I got this group together, people from a variety of walks of life,” says Johnson. “As an icebreaker, we said, ‘Tell us about the best service experience you’ve ever had.’” Of the 18 people, 16 said it was in a hotel. This was unexpected. But of course: The concierge desk at a hotel isn’t selling anything; it’s there to help. “We said, ‘Well, how do we create a store that has the friendliness of a Four Seasons Hotel?’” The answer: “Let’s put a bar in our stores. But instead of dispensing alcohol, we dispense advice.”…”See that? Look at their eyes. They’re learning. There’s an intense moment – like when you see a kid in school going ‘Aha!’
There are two things about this quote that really hit home:
First, how many law firms ask the same question the Apple store designers did (Tell us about the best service experience you’ve ever had?), and actually modeled their firm on that best-in-breed service experience?Second, how could a “genius bar” be implemented at your firm? Could you open that “bar” at your firm for walk-in clients? What if they paid an AppleCare-like fee to avail themselves of that service?
I bet you could make it work. Let me know if you need help.
Cure (Brief) Writer’s Block
Having a hard time writing that brief that’s due next week? Here’s a great list of tools, toys and inspirational sites to get you from your Statement of Facts all the way to your Table of Authorities — or at least inspire you to write some poetry or the next great American novel.
Ask Your Clients for Ten Ways You Can be Better
Guy Kawasaki shares a study by Craig R. Fox (pdf) that compares two groups of students, each asked to evaluate an MBA course:
One group was asked for two ways to improve the course; the other was asked for ten ways to improve the course. The group that was asked to list ten ways showed a higher level of satisfaction with the course.
So, when will you start asking all of your clients for ten ways to improve your service?
Footprints (and a toll-free number) in the Sand
Do you practice near a beach? Here’s a great marketing idea (hat-tip to Church Relevance) that just might get your firm noticed: environmentally safe ads that are imprinted in the sand.
Of course, it may be hard to “save” the advertisement for those pesky bar advertising rules.
Join Me March 8th for a Teleseminar
I’d like you to join me for a teleseminar on March 8th, titled: Think Real BIG — Ten Creative Strategies for Building an Innovative Law Practice. It is part of the online-only Career & Practice Development Conference.
I will share ten unique and easy-to-implement strategies to help you create an innovative, service-centered law practice that you’ll love as much as your clients do.
The teleseminar takes place from 1:00 – 2:00 pm EST and the cost is $59.00. You can register here.
Hand-y Advertising for DUI Lawyers
Check out this post from Ankesh Kothari about a Bombay nightclub that stamps a public service message on the hands of entering patrons. DUI lawyers, you’ve got to see the picture, and think about paying a bar to use a rubber stamp with your phone number on it to stamp the hands of everyone who enters the bar. When they get pulled over later that night, they’ll know who to call. Not sure if ethics-safe, but inspiring nonetheless.
A Tip for Parents
Here’s an absolutely brilliant tip for traveling with young children from Parent Hacks:
When we go to crazy places like amusement parks and fairs, we just use a Sharpie and write on the kids’ stomachs “My mom’s cell # is….” The kids are all drilled on what to do if they get lost, and we have photos of them at Disneyland and everywhere else, flashing their bellies with the emergency plan.
The 18 Percent Solution – January 23, 2007
I’ve been working with several great people to develop a small business seminar here in St. Louis on January 23rd called The 18 Percent Solution. It takes place at the amazing Gran Prix Speedway in Earth City.
The entire event is focused on sharing innovative tips and tricks that help small businesses thrive. I’ll have a lot more on the event over on my Idea Surplus Disorder Blog tomorrow, including a preview of the creativity and innovation portion of the program I’m running (think UnConference + LexThink + Idea Market + Go Cart Racing).
If you sign up at the link above and add “Homann” in the special instruction field, you’ll save $20 off the normal price ($95 before 1/3 and $125 after).
See you on the 23rd!
Resolutions III: December 1
Build a 2007 Resolution Wall.
Find a blank wall in your office where everyone can post as many firm-related “resolutions” as they want on 5×8 inch Post-It Notes.*
At the beginning of 2007, draw a line ( tape) down the middle of the wall. Label one side “Someday” and the other side “Now.”
Ask every staff member to pick JUST ONE resolution they personally commit to achieving and move that Post-It from the Someday side to the Now side.
Every week, review the resolutions and ask everyone for an update on their progress.
Once a resolution is achieved, place a huge checkmark (or big gold star) on it, and move another over from the Someday side to the Now side.
Repeat as necessary all year long.
* If you are feeling particularly brave, ask your clients to add their resolutions for your firm to the wall, and keep them up-to-date on your firm’s progress.
Blogging for Fortune, from Fortune
The Fortune Innovation Forum is about to get underway. I’m going to be immersing myself in the event today, and recapping as much as I can this evening. So far, it looks to be an amazing event.
Conference Hacks
I’ve been doing a series on my Idea Surplus Disorder blog titled “Conference Hacks” where I share some of the ideas we’ve used at LexThink! events and others I’d like to try. Here are my entries so far:
I’ve also written The Conferencing Manifesto. I’d encourage you to check it out.
Idiot-Proof Bread
Just had to share this. Here’s a great and incredibly easy way to make amazing bread. Four ingredients. No kneading. About ten minutes of actual work. Yummy.
Turkeys Don’t Fly?
Just a few days late, but the funniest Thanksgiving episode from any sitcom. Ever.
I need another blender!
I don’t really need another blender, but I want one after seeing this: Will it Blend? One of the best viral marketing ideas I’ve seen in a long while.
LinkedIn for Lawyers?
From TechCrunch:
LinkedIn, a social networking website primarily focused on business connections has added a section to their site that allows users to recommend service providers — a yellow pages based on user referrals. From web designers to doctors, users rate service providers in a thumbs up, thumbs down voting system similar to Digg.
Here’s another article article with more:
In the case of LinkedIn’s directory of service providers, users can search narrowly for services recommended by friends, or they can widen their search to friends of friends. Failing that, a global search capability is offered to allow users to search across the full LinkedIn network.
Making the system work will depend on whether LinkedIn users bother to write recommendations for other businesses, building on an existing feature within LinkedIn that encourages colleagues to recommend other colleagues.
It also could draw in new users. Most LinkedIn members currently are executives, professionals, sales people and other office workers. The new directory could attract trade workers.
Are you ready for this?
Idea Market III Reminder
Just a quick reminder: If you are in the St. Louis area and want to attend the next Idea Market on November 20th at the Lucas School House from 6:00 – 9:00 pm, you can sign up here.
Don’t Be Later, Aligator
Joyce Wycoff shares an interesting strategy to keep employees from being late to work:
On Monday morning, my CEO and I stood at the company’s entrance lobby at 8:30 am sharp, the time employees were supposed to report for work. There was a constant stream of latecomers. As people strolled in, my CEO and I gave a warm smile and shook their hands, greeting them with a hearty ‘Good morning!’ … then we handed each a slip of paper … still smiling.
It read, “Thank you for coming to work today. I was here at 8:30 am to welcome you. Would I have the pleasure of greeting you tomorrow morning at the same time? Signed, CEO”
After a few days, there were no more latecomers. And we saved a big chunk in production costs.
This would be a lot harder in those law firms where 2000 billable hours is the norm. In those firms, the managing partner may need to stay in the firm’s lobby and keep people from going home. ;-)
Last Week on My Idea Surplus Disorder Blog
The Conference Bike Rocks!
Through a serendipitous series of events, I was able to hook up with Eric Staller, inventor of the Conference Bike. He just happened to be driving through St. Louis as part of his cross-country tour and I made arrangements to check out his invention. Eric arrived with his bike on the back of a special truck:
Within minutes, it was ready to go.
I rustled up several friends from my building and we went for a ride around the Soulard area of St. Louis. It was a blast. I cannot come close to describing not only the fun we had riding it on the streets around the Farmer’s Market, but the sheer joy and wonderment the sight of seven people facing one another while pedalling a bike caused on almost everyone we passed.
I don’t know yet how to incorporate this bike into my retreat and conference business, but I can’t imagine an easier (and more fun) way to do some quick team building and encourage collaboration. Very cool!
If Eric is coming through your town, you owe it to yourself to meet him and take a spin on the Conference Bike. It was the most fun I’ve had in a long time.
Thank you, Eric!
Conference Bike
I wrote about the Conference Bike the other day. As luck would have it, the inventor is doing a cross-country tour and just happens to be coming through St. Louis tomorrow (Saturday)! Anyone want to go for a ride? Call my cell at 618–407–3241 or e-mail me at Matt@LexThink.com if you want to join me. I’ll know more details on time/place tomorrow.
Introduction to Real BIG Thinking
I’ve been a bit light on the blogging lately. The primary reason is that I’ve been building another web site as a home for my Idea Markets as well as my fledgling personal retreat and consulting business. While Dennis Kennedy and I are working with the incomparable JoAnna Forshee on several future LexThink events (more on those next week), I felt it was easier to leave LexThink as a legal-focused company and move my other stuff under a different umbrella.
I’m calling that different umbrella real BIG thinking, and I’d love for you to take a look. The website is not quite done, and I’ll be tweaking the copy, mapping the domain name, adding new resources, and cleaning up the interface over the next few weeks.
I’m also blogging about facilitation, retreats, innovation and creativity on my new blog: Idea Surplus Disorder.
Let me know what you think.
Idea Market is Tomorrow
The second St. Louis Idea Market takes place tomorrow, October 17th. I expect between 30 and 50 people there, though there could be more. If you plan to come, please e-mail me and let me know. Thanks.
Could Your Law School Curriculum Do This?
Yale’s business school is experimenting with a new MBA curriculum:
The heart of the new first-year curriculum is a series of eight multidisciplinary courses, called Organizational Perspectives, that are structured around the organizational roles a manager must engage, motivate, and lead in order to solve problems — or make progress. These roles are both internal to the organization — the Innovator, the Operations Engine, the Employee, and Sourcing and Managing Funds (or CFO) — and external to the organization — the Investor, the Customer, the Competitor, and State and Society.
I can’t wait for the first law school to follow suit. What would the courses be? The Managing Partner, the Overworked Associate, the Out-of-Touch Professor, the Client Who Can’t Get a Call Returned, etc?
Add your suggestions in the comments. And for a slightly more serious take on law school curricula, check out this prior post: If Blawggers Ran Law Schools.
Details for the St. Louis Idea Market
It is time for the second St. Louis Idea Market, set for October 17, 2006. The Market will again take place at the fabulous Lucas School House at the corner of Allen and Gravois in the Soulard area of St. Louis (Map).
The St. Louis Idea Market is an opportunity for you to meet, interact, and brainstorm with some of the most interesting and creative folks in the St. Louis area. This month’s focus is on CREATIVITY and PLAY: the big post-it note questions, the “idea speed dating,” and the conversations will all focus on bringing more creativity into your work and personal life, and leveraging that creativity to do amazing things.
Now, for the who, what, where, when and why:
Who Should Come: If you are an entrepreneur, business person, blogger, speaker, consultant, designer, webmaster, writer, artist, salesperson, technologist, or _____________, you’ll enjoy the Idea Market. I only ask that you be passionate about sharing ideas and helping others. Everything else will take care of itself.
What We Will Do: Well, there really is no “Agenda,” because the Idea Market is the kind of place where people can bring their business problems, issues, questions, and (of course) ideas and share them with other innovative, creative, and generous folks. Think of the Idea Market as a sort of a “beta test” for a new type of networking/brainstorming social club that just happens to take place at a private happy hour in a cool, hip place.
When We Will Do It:
5:30 – 6:00 Bar Opens, Attendees Arrive, Initial Brainstorming. In the last several LexThink!(R) events and private retreats I’ve done, we’ve posted provocative questions on large Post-It Notes all around the facility. When attendees arrive, they’ll be given a marker and a pad of smaller, half-page Post-It’s and asked to walk around and contribute their thoughts and answer the questions posted. This works wonders to get the creative juices flowing and opens up attendees to sharing other ideas the rest of the event.
6:00 – 6:45 Introductions. Idea Speed-Dating. We’ll have our own version of speed dating: Attendees will have forty-five minutes (broken up in much smaller chunks) to meet as many other attendees as possible and answer questions ranging from their favorite idea, to their ideal super power. This is a really fun way to “network” without having the same “Hi, my name is Matt, here’s what I do” conversation over and over. This was clearly the favorite part for many of the August event.
6:45 – 7:15 Open Space Problem Solving. If any attendees are facing a particularly vexing business problem, and would like to tap the creative power of the group, now’s the time. Attendees can announce the problem (or post it on the wall) and any others who’d like to help can break up into small discussion groups to brainstorm solutions. Alternatively, anyone with a topic they’d like to discuss can also announce it here and interested people can join the discussion.
7:15 – 8:15 Open Space Idea Sharing. This is just like the Open Space Problem Solving session, except we’ll focus on new ideas.
8:15 – 8:45. The Idea Market’s Greatest Hits: We’ll share with the entire group the best ideas, greatest tips, and most interesting conversations from the evening. We may even play musical chairs or a game of Twister. ;-)
8:45 Unreasonable Request Time. One of the most compelling ideas I’ve stumbled across while blogging is Lisa Haneberg’s Unreasonable Requests. In short, we often have things we’d like to ask others for, but are afraid to ask. I’m going to ask everyone to write down an unreasonable request, post it on the wall with their name and phone number, and anyone who wants to grant the request can do so. Because the requests are, by definition, “unreasonable,” I don’t expect many to be granted — so everyone who gets one granted will be totally surprised.
8:45 – ??.?? Cocktails on the Patio (or elsewhere). We’ll stick around the School House as long as they’ll let us, but anyone who wants to continue their discussions after we’re politely asked to leave can do so at one of about 30 Soulard bars/restaurants that are within walking distance.
The Food/The Drink: I’m looking for a sponsor for the food. The School House will have a full cash bar open for the duration of the event.
The Cost: FREE.
The Space: The Lucas School House is one of the coolest spaces I’ve found in St. Louis. It is a hybrid space, with plenty of space for discussion, along with a stage and state-of-the-art audio/video capabilities. There’s also wifi, of course. Here are some pictures of the downstairs and upstairs spaces.
Did I mention there’s a full bar?
How To Attend: If you’ve e-mailed me before, I hope I’ve sent you a link to sign up at a site I’ve set up for the event. If you’d like to come, and haven’t gotten an e-mail from me, you can sign up here.
Any Questions? E-mail me at Matt@LexThink.com or call my cell phone at 618–407–3241.
We look forward to meeting all of you.
St. Louis Idea Market: Take Two
I’ll have much more information by tomorrow, but wanted to get the word out that the next St. Louis Idea Market (I know, the first one was “The Soulard Idea Market”) will take place the afternoon of October 17th.
Provocative Post Pondering Provocativity
Kathy Sierra posts a tremendous article (even by her lofty standards) about how to be provocative and why it matters. Please read it.
How does your service rate on the ZSEG scale?
If you were asking your clients to rate your service (and you are doing that, right?), you could ask them to use the traditional ABCDF scale, or, you could use the Zinn-Segaran Experiential Grateness Scale:
0. Forgettable. Events that could be forgotten and have no impact on your life. A typical example is a regular morning commute, which people often cannot recall at all due to having spent the time daydreaming about other things.
1. Inconsequential. Many day-to-day events occur at this level. Running into and greeting a neighbor on the street, an uninteresting work project or a mediocre meal at a diner are all inconsequential. These events are distinguished from “forgettable” by the fact that they are usually remembered briefly, but usually not considered.
2. Eventful. Experiences at this level are moderately memorable, and will possibly be discussed by those present for no more than a day or two after they occur. They are unlikely to come up in conversation with others except in responses to specific questions like “what did you do last night?”. Usually active concentration will be required to remember much of the event a week later.
3. Noteworthy. Noteworthy experiences tend to elicit a fairly strong emotional response at the time whether confusion, amusement or anger. Usually the subject is eager to share them with others in the following few days, even without being prompted.
4. Significant. When reminiscing about important things that happened in the past year, most events that are recalled will be significant. Typical examples include winning a minor award or totaling one’s car without serious injury.
5. Remarkable. Remarkable experiences are those that have a strong impact on behavior or change strongly held views. They may not always be remembered, but they stick with a person in a meaningful way through their outlook and opinion.
6. Exceptional. This is the lowest rating at which things will likely be somewhat memorable for one’s entire life, and recalled on occasion with a moderate emotional response.
7. Monumental. These experiences are always remembered and likely to be discussed with those present for life. Oblique references to stories are understood without too much explanation. Many monumental experiences will elicit a strong emotional response upon recollection.
8. Epic. Epic experiences become folklore not only among those present, but those familiar with them. Neologisms, handsigns or movements which reference but do not describe the experience may be invented and be recognizable to a large group of people for many years afterward.
9. Legendary. The highest category of Experiential Greatness. Experiences that fall into this category, when related to others, become stories in their own right which are retold by others who are several steps removed from the original parties. The platonic ideal of a legendary experience is one that, years after having it happen to you, is relayed to you by stranger beginning with the words “I heard about this guy one time…”
This list was clearly done in fun, but it is significant to note that “Remarkable” is only in the middle of the scale. Who knew being remarkable wasn’t enough?
Put The Higest Price Items First On Your Menu
Found this link via The Church Relevance Blog: A-Z Retail Tricks to Make You Shop. If you can get past the annoying graphics on the page, there are some interesting tips that may make you rethink your office’s design. Here’s something I didn’t know that has multiple practical applications:
Order Of Price- Shops will often be laid out in order of price with the most expensive items being encountered at the beginning of your visit and the cheapest at the end. This is done to play on our sense of comparion, we are much more likely to spend money on accessories etc if we have just agreed to buy an expensive item, as in comparison they will seem cheaper than had we encountered them first.
If you are offering a “menu” of prices for multiple levels of service (estate planning, for example) try placing the more expensive services at the beginning of the menu, instead of the end.
And continuing down my trail of links, from the Retail Tricks site, I found ConsumerPsychologist.com that has some great articles on consumer behavior.
Will Your Firm Be Better Tomorrow?
Black Belt Productivity suggests we Be Better Tomorrow Than We Are Today and I agree. For some reason, the simple question, “How did I get better today?” has given me a productivity boost since I read the post last week.
I also think it is an appropriate question to ask of your business. When you have your daily/weekly/monthly “all hands” meeting, I suggest you ask everyone there if your business is better today than it was yesterday. Despite their answers, I’d also ask them will they make it even better tomorrow.
Open an Art Gallery — In Your Office
I just stumbled across Parent Hacks today, and found this post about an “Art Gallery” Sara Brumfield found in a neighbor’s garage:
Out running in my neighborhood, I nosily noticed a neighbor’s garage open with the lights on. When I glanced in, I saw that the entire back wall was covered with a child’s artwork, and big letters spelled out what I assume is the artist’s name — “Caleb.” I thought this was a great idea — after all, how many pieces of art can a refrigerator hold? I can imagine kids getting a big kick out of having their own art gallery, and taking vistitors out to see it.
I think this is a phenomenal idea. I’m going to set up something similar for my daughter’s work.
If you have an office, take it to another level. Ask your employees to bring in the artwork of their children/grandchildren/nephews/neices/etc. and hang it in your firm’s “Gallery.” Every year, have an art show, where all the kids are invited (with parents, of course) to see their work.
And if you are a divorce lawyer/mediator, I’d even think about hosting your client meetings or mediations in the room with all of the kids’ art work. It would make it a heck of a lot easier to remind your clients to focus on their children during their divorce, without having to tell them over and over. Heck, I’d even invite your clients to add some of their children’s work to the Gallery.
Total Information Awareness, for Lawyers AND Clients
Pronet Advertising has a great list of 10 Things You Should Be Monitoring online. Other bloggers have jumped in with numbers 11–17 and 18–23. The first ten:
- Company name
- Company URL
- Public facing figures
- Product names
- Product URLs
- The industry “hang outs”
- Employee activity/blogs
- Conversations
- Brand image
- Competitors
Good advice, but I’d take it a bit further. You should absolutely be monitoring these things for all your clients, too.
Fire Us, Please!
Joel Spolsky has noticed that FAQ pages for online services almost never include instructions for how to cancel your account, then talks about making it easy for his clients to “fire” his company. And about their moneyback guarantee?
Since we started the company in 2000, the moneyback guarantee has cost us precisely 2% of revenues, which also includes chargebacks, credit card fraud, and people who accidentally ordered twice. That figure that has remained remarkably stable through the years and which I think is well worth it, but then again, I’m only measuring the cost, because the benefit is too hard to measure!
Do you have instructions how your clients can fire you? And about that guarantee….
The Anti-BlogHer?
This looks like an interesting conference, but wow, only one woman speaker? No thanks.
Office Design for Employees
Designing your firm’s new space? Take a look at this post about a printing company in Montana. Some of the unique office features:
Day Care and ‘family’ is built in; there are no other options! The first thing you see when you come walk the parking lot to the front door are little kiddos playing under the Montana sky. All employees pay a pitance to have their young kids on site with them. It’s a fundamental. Andrew made it a key design driver. And the # of Baby Bjorns in the office was an indicator that for many of the employees, a family ‘quality of life’ decision was made without compromising their careers. And its a spectacular daycare. Small adult/kid ratio. Healthy environment. Kids loved. And obviously very happy teachers and parents on site. It wins all visitors over the second they come into the building. The main floor is designed for humans, not executives or administrators. Andrew had been told by the design team at first that a ‘traditional’ executive/client floor was needed. Sends the right message. Fits the design. Tradition. Andrew felt that didn’t match the company’s feel. Instead, the upper floor does have all of those elements — like a typical ‘entry’ to a school — but for any visitor, the real sense is that it’s an open series of collaborative spaces that are designed for all team members (regardless of rank) to relax, create, rest, and connect. Every space is a learning space. Man, there just weren’t any spaces in the building that didn’t suggest learning, collaboration, experiment, and team. Sure, business had to be done and things were divided up by tasks and teams, but the real take-away had to do with energy and collaboration. I’d have given anything for teachers/administrators and school designers alike to have spent time on the bottom floor (ground level, due to the slope that building sits on) where the teams were moving at full speed, serving clients around the nation, and providing rigorous real-time design/printing solutions. Spaces were vibrant. Team members were free to work in a variety of settings. And the place had a learning buzz about it. All workers are humans, learners and team members first. I was struck by one programmer/service expert that had forgone the chair entirely. He used a yoga/exercise ball as his chair — not only did it help create a different dynamic, but it also had a huge impact on his back problems. I also liked that it allowed him to move. To bounce. To fidget. To shift. Mmmm….imagine if kids were given the same option. Imagine. We talked about this a bit, but what really struck me was that the ‘trappings’ of professionalism were tossed out the window with a grand investment being made instead to support ‘how’ people worked, created, succeeded, and collaborated. Every team member looked happy/healthy. And the spaces reflected that — not choosing expensive design but instead being creative and letting the teams be able to gravitate towards what worked best for them. Solo. Small groups. Large groups. Formal. Informal. Inside. Outside. In other words, every space a learning space. Even hallways. Very little wasted…and a far more vibrant learning organization because of it!
Check out the entire post for more.
Know When Your Files Go Bad
This nifty little product would be great for lawyers keeping track of deadlines. From the company website:
Timestrips® are single-use, disposable, smart-labels, which automatically monitor lapsed time, ranging from under 1 day to 6 months.
Imagine sticking one to every file, phone slip, or letter. Then you could just look through the piles on your desk to see what’s about to go bad. ;-)
(Seen first at CoolBusinessIdeas.com)
Good (Net)Vibrations
Here’s an exercise for today. Check out NetVibes, a really cool customizable home page, with the ability to display multiple types of content in drag-and-drop boxes (read a quick review here). Then think about the kind of RSS-driven content your firm or company could generate (think RSS feed for each case, for example) and imagine giving your clients a home page customized just for them. Oh yeah, the cost of a NetVibes page? Free.
Please Judge Me by the Company I Keep
One of these things is not like the other: David Maister, Sylvia Coulter, Bruce MacEwen, Patrick McKenna, Merrilyn Astin Tarlton, Simon Chester, Dennis Kennedy, Dan Pinnington, Gerry Riskin and me.
We all contributed to the Innovaction E-Magazine (link to pdf), “The online publication celebrating innovation in the practice of law.” I took part in a roundtable on law firm innovation with several of the luminaries mentioned above. The e-zine was put together by the fantastic Jordan Furlong (Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Bar Association’s National magazine). Check it out, I think you’ll find it valuable.
Soulard Idea Market Recap, Idea Speed Dating
It has been a week since the Soulard Idea Market, and though I’ve been crushed by a few projects, I wanted to share at least a little about the event (with more to come later). Others have shared their mostly positive impressions about the night (see here, here, and here), and Dave Gray even posted a video to the “Unreasonable Request” portion of the event.
While I’ll share my full recap later this week, for now I wanted to focus on the “Idea Speed Dating” that kicked off the evening.
At the beginning of the event, I asked everyone to pair up with someone they hadn’t met before. For the next three to five minutes, they were to discuss the topic I gave them. At the end of the time period, everyone moved on to another person in the room and I asked a different question. In no particular order, here are the questions:
In what ways would you like to make a difference in people’s lives?
What would be impossible for you to do, but if you could do it, would make the most difference in your success?
What new skills have you learned inthe past year (or want to learn in the next year)?
Talk about the most interesting book you’ve read lately?
What is your favorite St. Louis Restaurant?
What is the most compelling idea you’ve heard in the last year?
What surprised me is how engaged everyone became in each conversation. Granted, we had some pretty cool and interesting people at the event, but at the end of every question, I had to pry people apart and encourage them to pair up again before I could ask the next one. This will definitely be a part of other Idea Markets that I put on, and I’d highly recommend using a version of this as an ice breaker for your next networking event.
technorati tags: soulard+idea+market, brainstorming, facilitation, speed+dating
Soulard Idea Market Final Details
I think I’ve communicated with everyone who has expressed interest in tonight’s Soulard Idea Market, but if I’ve missed anyone (and you find this post today) here is the text of the e-mail I just sent:
Good Morning! If you are receiving this e-mail, it is because you have told me you’d like to come to tonight’s Soulard Idea Market. Though we have quite a bit of flexibility on space, I’d like to know if you are still planning on attending. Here are the details for tonight:
When should I arrive? I have reprinted the agenda below, but we’ll get started between 5:30 and 6:00 pm. Arriving late is OK.
Where should I go? The Lucas School House (www.lucasevents.com) is the venue for the event. It is located at the intersection of Gravois and Allen, on the Western edge of Soulard. Here’s a link to a Google Map. There should be plenty of on-street parking available.
How can I contact you? My cell phone number is 618-407-3241. I will also have my BlackBerry with me, so I will receive my e-mail.
Should I bring my laptop? You can, though I’d discourage it. While there is WiFi available, I don’t know how robust the wireless connection will be. Most of the brainstorming will be done on Post-it Notes and in small group discussions. I think laptops tend to get in the way of effective in-person collaboration. Of course, your experience may differ.
What should I bring? Paper, pen, money for the cash bar, and ideas. Bring lots of ideas.
Who can I bring? Like I said above, we have some room for additional people. At this point, I have absolutely no idea how many people will be there tonight. Somewhere between twenty and sixty. If you’d like to bring a guest, just let me know. I may have to order more food.
Will there be food? Yes. There will be cold appetizers, courtesy of Gill Wagner, president of Honest Selling.
Will there be drinks? Yes, but it will be a cash bar.
When will we be done? We have the space until 8:30. However, if we have enough people who want to hang around, they may let us stay later.
Flickr, Delicious, Technorati? Yes. Use “SoulardIdeaMarket” as the tag. If you don’t know what this means, we’ll explain tonight.
Why didn’t you answer my question? E-mail me or call me and I will.
What else can I do? If you can, log in to the CollectiveX site (an event/networking site for the Idea Market) and add your contact info and details. Here is the link.
Here’s the Agenda I posted on my blog:
The Agenda: Well, there really is no “Agenda” as I’d like to have the Idea Market be the kind of place where people can bring their business problems, issues, questions, and (of course) ideas and share them with other innovative, creative, and generous folks. Think of this first event as sort of a “beta test” for a new type of networking/brainstorming social club that just happens to take place at a private happy hour in a cool, hip place. There is at least a 70% chance that this agenda will change, or even be ignored when we all show up, but for now, here’s how I see things happening:
5:30 – 6:00 Bar Opens, Attendees Arrive, Initial Brainstorming. In the last several LexThink!(R) events and private retreats I’ve done, we’ve posted provocative questions on large Post-It Notes all around the facility. When attendees arrive, they’ll be given a marker and a pad of smaller, half-page Post-It’s and asked to walk around and contribute their thoughts and answer the questions posted. This works wonders to get the creative juices flowing and opens up attendees to sharing other ideas the rest of the event.
6:00 – 6:30 Introductions. Idea Speed-Dating. I want to take a page from speed dating events: Attendees will have thirty minutes (broken up in much smaller chunks) to meet as many other attendees as possible and share the most compelling idea they’ve heard, best book they’ve read, most interesting person they’ve met, or most difficult problem they’ve faced in the past year.
6:30 – 6:45 Break.
6:45 – 7:30 Open Space Problem Solving. If any attendees are facing a particularly vexing business problem, and would like the group’s help to solve it, they can announce the problem (or post it on the wall) and any attendees who’d like to help can break up into small discussion groups to brainstorm solutions. Alternatively, anyone with a topic they’d like to discuss can also announce it here and interested people can join the discussion.
7:30 – 7:45 Break.
7:45 – 8:30 Open Space Idea Sharing. This is just like the Open Space Problem Solving session, except we’ll focus on new ideas.
8:30 Unreasonable Request Time. One of the three most compelling ideas I’ve stumbled across while blogging is Lisa Haneberg’s Unreasonable Requests. In short, we often have things we’d like to ask others for, but are afraid to ask. I’m going to ask everyone to write down an unreasonable request, post it on the wall with their name and phone number, and anyone who wants to grant the request can do so. Because the requests are, by definition, “unreasonable,” I don’t expect many to be granted — so everyone who gets one granted will be totally surprised.
8:30 – ??.?? Cocktails on the Patio (or elsewhere). We’ll stick around the School House as long as they’ll let us, but anyone who wants to continue their discussions after we’re politely asked to leave can do so at one of about 30 Soulard bars/restaurants that are within walking distance.
I will see you all tonight. This is going to be cool!
Matt
technorati tags: soulardideamarket, innovation, soulard+idea+market
One Week Until the Soulard Idea Market
The Soulard Idea Market happens next week, August 8. Let me know ASAP if you want to come by e-mailing me at Matt@LexThink.com.
Party Tip: Get Your Guests Out of Their Comfort Zones
I had a party over the 4th of July and decided to mix it up a bit. I provided the food, but told all my guests to bring a six pack of beer that they’d never tried before. It was fun, and we all got to try something new.
Turn Off Your E-Mail
Here’s an interesting productivity tip, via LifeHacker:
Get one thing done first – THEN check your email:
Author of Never Check Email in the Morning Julie Morgenstern suggests spending the first hour of your workday email-free. Choose one task – even a small one – and tackle it first thing. Accomplishing something out of the gate sets the tone for the rest of your day and guarantees that no matter how many fires you’re tasked with putting out the minute you open your email client, you still can say that you got something done. Once you’re “open for business” and paying attention to incoming requests, it’s too easy to get swept away into the craziness. So get your day started off on the right foot, with just one thing done.
Soulard Idea Market Details
The Soulard Idea Market is set for August 8, 2006 at the Lucas School House.
Who Should Come: If you are a blogger, lawyer, entrepreneur, speaker, consultant, designer, webmaster, writer, artist, salesperson, technologist, or _____________, I think you’ll enjoy the Soulard Idea Market. I only ask that you be passionate about sharing ideas and helping others. Everything else will take care of itself.
The Agenda: Well, there really is no “Agenda” as I’d like to have the Idea Market be the kind of place where people can bring their business problems, issues, questions, and (of course) ideas and share them with other innovative, creative, and generous folks. Think of this first event as sort of a “beta test” for a new type of networking/brainstorming social club that just happens to take place at a private happy hour in a cool, hip place. There is at least a 70% chance that this agenda will change, or even be ignored when we all show up, but for now, here’s how I see things happening:
5:30 – 6:00 Bar Opens, Attendees Arrive, Initial Brainstorming. In the last several LexThink!(R) events and private retreats I’ve done, we’ve posted provocative questions on large Post-It Notes all around the facility. When attendees arrive, they’ll be given a marker and a pad of smaller, half-page Post-It’s and asked to walk around and contribute their thoughts and answer the questions posted. This works wonders to get the creative juices flowing and opens up attendees to sharing other ideas the rest of the event.
6:00 – 6:30 Introductions. Idea Speed-Dating. I want to take a page from speed dating events: Attendees will have thirty minutes (broken up in much smaller chunks) to meet as many other attendees as possible and share the most compelling idea they’ve heard, best book they’ve read, most interesting person they’ve met, or most difficult problem they’ve faced in the past year.
6:30 – 6:45 Break.
6:45 – 7:30 Open Space Problem Solving. If any attendees are facing a particularly vexing business problem, and would like the group’s help to solve it, they can announce the problem (or post it on the wall) and any attendees who’d like to help can break up into small discussion groups to brainstorm solutions. Alternatively, anyone with a topic they’d like to discuss can also announce it here and interested people can join the discussion.
7:30 – 7:45 Break.
7:45 – 8:30 Open Space Idea Sharing. This is just like the Open Space Problem Solving session, except we’ll focus on new ideas.
8:30 Unreasonable Request Time. One of the three most compelling ideas I’ve stumbled across while blogging is Lisa Haneberg’s Unreasonable Requests. In short, we often have things we’d like to ask others for, but are afraid to ask. I’m going to ask everyone to write down an unreasonable request, post it on the wall with their name and phone number, and anyone who wants to grant the request can do so. Because the requests are, by definition, “unreasonable,” I don’t expect many to be granted — so everyone who gets one granted will be totally surprised.
8:30 – ??.?? Cocktails on the Patio (or elsewhere). We’ll stick around the School House as long as they’ll let us, but anyone who wants to continue their discussions after we’re politely asked to leave can do so at one of about 30 Soulard bars/restaurants that are within walking distance.
The Food/The Drink: I’m looking for a sponsor for the food. I want to have appetizers at least, although several Black Thorn pizzas would certainly fit the bill. The School House will have a full cash bar open for the duration of the event.
The Cost: Right now, I’m shooting for FREE. If I can’t find a food sponsor, it might be $5.00–10.00 per person.
The Space: The Lucas School House is one of the coolest spaces I’ve found in St. Louis. It is a hybrid space, with plenty of space for discussion, along with a stage and state-of-the-art audio/video capabilities. There’s also wifi, of course. Here are some pictures of the downstairs and upstairs spaces.
Did I mention there’s a full bar? The address is 1246 Gravois Avenue, St. Louis, MO (Map).
How To Attend: We’ll have room for around fifty people for our first event. If you’ve e-mailed me before, I hope I’ve sent you a link to sign up at a site I’ve set up for the event. If you’d like to come, and haven’t gotten an e-mail from me, you can sign up here.
Any Questions? E-mail me at Matt@LexThink.com or call my cell phone at 618–407–3241.
I look forward to meeting all of you.
Soulard Idea Market
The Soulard Idea Market is at the Lucas on August 8, 2006, from 6:00 until 8:30. I’ll have more details tomorrow.
Top Ten Things They Never Taught Me …
Michael McDonough has an article in the Design Observer titled The Top 10 Things They Never Taught Me in Design School that made me think he was actually writing about Law School. Here are a few:
1. Talent is one-third of the success equation. Talent is important in any profession, but it is no guarantee of success. Hard work and luck are equally important. Hard work means self-discipline and sacrifice. Luck means, among other things, access to power, whether it is social contacts or money or timing. In fact, if you are not very talented, you can still succeed by emphasizing the other two. If you think I am wrong, just look around.
2. 95 percent of any creative profession is shit work. Only 5 percent is actually, in some simplistic way, fun. In school that is what you focus on; it is 100 percent fun. Tick-tock. In real life, most of the time there is paper work, drafting boring stuff, fact-checking, negotiating, selling, collecting money, paying taxes, and so forth. If you don’t learn to love the boring, aggravating, and stupid parts of your profession and perform them with diligence and care, you will never succeed.
7. When you throw your weight around, you usually fall off balance. Overconfidence is as bad as no confidence. Be humble in approaching problems. Realize and accept your ignorance, then work diligently to educate yourself out of it. Ask questions. Power – the power to create things and impose them on the world – is a privilege. Do not abuse it, do not underestimate its difficulty, or it will come around and bite you on the ass. The great Karmic wheel, however slowly, turns.
10. The rest of the world counts. If you hope to accomplish anything, you will inevitably need all of the people you hated in high school. I once attended a very prestigious design school where the idea was “If you are here, you are so important, the rest of the world doesn’t count.” Not a single person from that school that I know of has ever been really successful outside of school. In fact, most are the kind of mid-level management drones and hacks they so despised as students. A suit does not make you a genius. No matter how good your design is, somebody has to construct or manufacture it. Somebody has to insure it. Somebody has to buy it. Respect those people. You need them. Big time.
I’d love to get a list of those things you wish they’d taught in school, but never did. Leave a comment, e-mail me, or trackback to this post and I’ll compile them all for a future post.
The Myth of the “Short” Meeting
In practice, I always preferred a face-to-face meeting with my clients to a telephone conversation or an exchange of correspondence. I believed in-person conversations were much more effective and better for both client and lawyer — and still do. However, it is important to keep in mind the true costs (to the lawyer and client) of that “short” meeting. From 37signals:
If you’re going to schedule a meeting that lasts one hour and invite 10 people to attend then it’s a ten-hour meeting, not a one-hour meeting. You are trading 10 hours of productivity for one hour of meeting time. And it’s probably more like 15 hours since there are mental switching costs associated with stopping what you’re doing, going somewhere else to do something else, and then resuming what you were doing before.
Remember how valuable your clients’ time is. Though you may not think their time is worth as much as yours, at the end of the meeting, neither of you will get that time back.
technorati tags: meetings, productivity, client+service
Soap Box Derby for Adults — In St. Louis!
This looks like it is going to be fun (and it takes place in St. Louis):
The Red Bull Soap Box Race happens on the streets of St. Louis’ Forest Park October 28. Unlike most gravity-powered events, the Red Bull race follows a drag racing-like single elimination, bracketed duel format, with two racers fighting it out side-by-side down the course. The racers get a power boost at the start, too, in the form of a hefty push from their crew of four “mechanics.”
Red Bull is looking for fifty teams, who will be scored not only on speed, but also on creativity and showmanship. If you’re looking for design ideas, check out photos from some of Red Bull’s previous gravity races in Austria, England (pictured above), Sweden, Czech Republic, Australia, Italy, Finland, Ireland, Germany and
South Africa.
If you firm couldn’t afford that NASCAR sponsorship, how about sponsoring a Soap Box car?
When Creativity Takes a Holiday
One of the reasons lawyers aren’t a more innovative bunch is that we spend so much time working in our businesses, that we don’t have time to work on them. Does this sound familiar?
When pressure’s intense, creativity is one of the first casualties. Fear of producing still more work, fear of censure and fear of losing face foster cultures that are risk-averse; together with an attitude that protecting your butt always takes precedence. People become too afraid—or too tired—to do more than stick with what they know and what’s worked before. You can say goodbye to any possibility of outdistancing the competition through innovation.
Besides, in today’s most typical culture, internal competition is more intense as job cuts proliferate and promotion prospects diminish. No one can afford to make mistakes. Mistakes cost results and time; they undermine your credibility; they’re noted by those who control promotion, political influence and employment itself. Why risk any of these to back some unproven idea? “Making the numbers” gets you a pat on the back—more or less however you do it.
Time is already in such short supply in companies like that no one dares use any on innovation. They all go instead for the quick, obvious answer; the “done it before a thousand times” answer; the quick-fix. That new idea may be a winner—sometime in the future. But who looks that far ahead, when getting through the rest of today looks uncertain enough? Unless it comes with one of these adjectives attached—instant, quicker, simpler, cheaper, fail-safe—or fits the “get it done and move one” fashionable attitude, dump it right away.
I’m working on a presentation right now, with the working title “Being a More Creative Lawyer,” that I’ll share here online when the first draft is done. I’m having a tremendous time merging my thoughts on creativity and Idea Surplus Disorder(tm) with my new, still developing presentation style. I’ll have more soon.
Get Down With NLP — Yeah You Know Me
Want an introduction to Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP)? Check out this 12 part series on the Life Coaches Blog: NLP 101. What is NLP?
A powerful bag of tricks that allows you to help people change themselves through its mental models, patterns of influence and techniques of change.
Instead of giving you generals, NLP has many step-by-step specifics, which is great when practitioners recognize the principles so they know how not to go step-by-step, and terrible when practitioners don’t know the principles and follow the steps to the letter or bend it all out of shape.
A lot of trial lawyers have been studying NLP to help them connect with juries. If you are curious, check out the whole series.
Charge Late Fees for Missed Appointments?
What do you do when clients don’t show up for scheduled appointment? Rob May’s new doctor has a pretty good idea:
A few weeks ago I started going to a new doctor, and was made to sign a document explaining their late fee policy. It was unique. If you miss a scheduled visit, you are charged a $20 fee. If you are late by more than 10 minutes, that qualifies as a missed session. But the doctor’s office doesn’t keep the money. All money from late fees is donated to the local children’s hospital.
I haven’t missed a visit, but if I did, I can’t imagine arguing with the penalty. I think it’s brilliant. It turns the debate from a me vs. them fight for my money to a decision about whether to give money to a third party charity. In essence, it diffuses customer anger while still imposing a penalty. It reminds me that innovative solutions to business problems do exist, but they sometimes require you to step a little bit outside the lines of conventional wisdom.
Easy, not Free, Does It
Joyce Wycoff suggests that “Easy” is the New “Free” on herGood Morning Thinkers! blog. She recounts her experience applying for a mortgage, both in person at her local bank, and online. She raves about her “easy” experience with QuickenLoans and asks a question we all should take time to answer:
So, how could you make life easier for your customers (internal or external)? It may be the most powerful thing you could do.
Indeed. How often have we focused on making things easier for us (as professionals) but not for our customers? In fact, do any of us know what our customers/clients want or need? What would make it “Easy” for our customers to do business with us?
Go ask them.
The Client is Not Broken
Have you ever come across something so forward-thinking you read it several times and said “Wow” after each read? Maybe it’s the caffiene or lack of sleep talking, but I came across this post, titled The User is Not Broken: A Meme Masquerading as a Manifesto, from K.G. Schneider on Free Range Librarian that hit that spot for me.
I’m cherry-picking the best ones (OK, almost all of them), but they are all that good. If you are not a librarian, and I know many of you aren’t, I’ve taken the liberty of replacing “librarian, library, and user” with “lawyer, law firm, and client.”
All technologies evolve and die. Every technology you learned about in [law] school will be dead someday.
You fear loss of control, but that has already happened. Ride the wave.
The [client] is not broken.
Your system is broken until proven otherwise.
That vendor who just sold you the million-dollar system …doesn’t have a clue what he’s talking about, and his system is broken, too.
Most of your most passionate [clients] will never meet you face to face.
Most of your most alienated [clients] will never meet you face to face.
Your website is your ambassador to tomorrow’s [clients]. They will meet the website long before they see your building, your physical resources, or your people.
It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than to find a [law firm] website that is usable and friendly and provides services rather than talking about them in weird [legal] jargon.
Information flows down the path of least resistance. If you block a tool the [clients] want, users will go elsewhere to find it.
You cannot change the [client], but you can transform the [client] experience to meet the [client].
Meet people where they are–not where you want them to be.
The [client] is not “remote.” You, the [lawyer], are remote, and it is your job to close that gap.
The average [law firm] decision about implementing new technologies takes longer than the average life cycle for new technologies.
If you are reading about it in Time and Newsweek and your [law firm] isn’t adapted for it or offering it, you’re behind.
Stop moaning about the good old days. The card catalog sucked, and you thought so at the time, too.
If we continue fetishizing the format and ignoring the [client], we will be tomorrow’s cobblers.
Your ignorance will not protect you.
This kind of work is what’s so amazes me about the Blogosphere. K.G. Schneider is a writer and librarian. As I sit here today, this “Meme Masquerading as a Manifesto” is at least as good (and frankly, IMHO, much, much better) as anything I’ve seen Tom Peters or Seth Godin write this year. I’m looking forward to reading what she has to say next. Your thoughts?
Computer Programs I Want: ToDo-per Scooper
Saw this about scheduling productivity “dashes” on 43 Folders, and had this thought:
Say you’ve got 10 (30, 200?) items on your To-Do list, and you are so overwhelmed, you don’t know where to start. What you need is a Random Task Generator, (alternative title “ToDo-per Scooper”). Here’s how it would work:
1. It would take the list of your to-do’s, either inputed directly or scoured (scooped?) from your Outlook tasks list, along with the estimated amount of time you think each task will take.
2. It would automatically add 50% more time to your estimate (to account for innacurate and overly-optimistic estimating).
3. Whenever you set aside a certain amount of time on your calendar for non-specific task completion, it would fill in that time with a randomly-selected To-Do (or To-Do’s) that fit the time you set aside.
4. The randomness could be changed to give more weight to more important tasks — kind of like adding more balls for the bad teams in the NBA lottery.
BONUS: If this feature were incorporated into an enterprise-wide calendaring and task-management program (legal software vendors, are you listening?), the business could set aside an hour each day when everyone could get access to a fresh set of to-do’s to complete in that hour. I think it could make the whole enterprise more productive.
Anyone want to build this application with me? Or is it already out there?
technorati tags: productivity, procrastination, lifehacks, software, web2.0
Soulard Idea Market – Update
I’ve found a location for the Soulard Idea Market that will accomodate 30–50 people, and am ironing out the details with the landlord. I’ll have more information soon — perhaps as early as tomorrow. Stay tuned.
Why Blog?
Christopher Carfi pointed me to this essay by Chris Brogan titled Cavemen at the Fire that captures the essence of the “why” of blogging for so many of us:
But the truth is, I’m getting value. I get value in talking with you. I’ve met so many engaging people, and every time one of you risks delurking and sending me an email, I meet a new friend…. I feel that every day I post something new is another micro resume. I’m telling people out there what I stand for, how I think, what matters most to me. Some days, that’s probably not going to land me a job. Other days, it’s something that people might relate to.
Be Ready to Leave Your Best Message
Here’s a great tip to keep in mind next time you call a client:
Prepare for every telephone call expecting to get voicemail. This will help you focus your message and prevent rambling. You should treat your voicemail message as a short presentation, thinking it through ahead of time, not during the recording…
From this 1999 Report, via 43 Folders.
Soulard Idea Market
Since I returned to St. Louis, I’ve been living in the Soulard Market Lofts, next door (as the name obviously suggests) to the 160 year old Soulard Market. I floated the idea at a recent St. Louis bloggers lunch for a regular LexThink-ish brainstorming, networking, and fun event to be held every month here in Soulard.
I’m working on some basic details, but if you are in St. Louis, and want to connect with some cool, interesting people to discuss business and technology issues, the Soulard Idea Market may be for you. If you are interested, e-mail me at matt @ lexthink.com or leave a comment. We’ll try to get the inaugural one set for late June.
Why is making a small change so difficult?
Next time you pull out your hair because your spouse, friend, or coworker (or you) can’t seem to change his or her habits, think about this (from Scott Young):
One of the biggest mistakes I’ve made when trying to change habits, is simply in underestimating the amount of conscious focus keeping the habit will take. In many ways, making big changes for diet, exercise or sleep is easier than making a little change because it is too easy to undervalue exactly how much emphasis is required to make the change.
Lessons for Ford, and for Lawyers
In The Truth About Cars, Robert Farago offers up his prescription for an ailing Ford:
You want bold moves? Kill Jaguar. Kill Mercury. Sell Volvo. Sell Mazda. Sell Land Rover. Cut half the remaining models and plow money into the ones that survive. Re-invigorate your rear-wheel drive, box-frame car with new sheetmetal, a bad-ass motor and a killer cabin. Build a world-beating Lincoln luxury sedan. Make the Ford Focus the world’s best small car. Get the Explorer’s mileage into the mid-20’s. Develop a more powerful engine than the Hemi and stick it into everything– including a new minivan. Set SVT loose on the entire model line-up. OWN quality interiors. Don’t badge engineer ANYTHING.
Lose the glass fishbowl; redesign Ford showrooms to look like a modern retail outlet. Trim the dealer network and sell cars on the web. Undercut everyone’s price with every vehicle. Interact with every single customer on a regular basis via internet. Institute no-haggle pricing. Make financing cheaper. Drop 80% of your print budget and dominate the web. Do it all, and do it all at once– regardless of cost. Then sell value for money. Ford: the best car money can buy.
Imagine a big law firm (or any law firm) making similar moves. What would that advice be, and what would the resulting law firm look like?
Crayon Your Way to Better Presentations?
Here’s an interesting tip from the Sales Presentation Training Blog:
Write your entire presentation out and then get some colored markers. For example, for all the facts that you have written down, highlight them in red. Next, color all your humor in green. Lastly, color all your audience participation in blue.
Ok, now step back and look at your work of art. What, you don’t see any green for humor? Where is the blue, for audience participation? Even if you are giving a sales presentation to manage $50 million dollars for a pension fund, you will be amazed by the audiences receptivity if you make the presentation about them. Red is a nice color but make sure your presentation has some green and blue to involve your audience.
Try the same thing with your marketing materials. Use highlight all of the sentences talking about you (your technology, your offices, your expertise) in red, and all of the sentences talking about your clients (their needs, their testimonials, their satisfaction) in green. Too much red? Maybe you need some new marketing materials.
A Great Motivational Tip
Jason Womack shares a tip he received when he asked the audience at a recent workshop for their productivity tips. Jason asked, “How do you stay motivated when the project outcome is a long time off?” The best tip:
Label the project in terms of what I will receive when I’m done. Make it one I “want to” complete.
Training for Big Law Management
This is tounge in cheek, of course, but if your goal is to run a MegaFirm, then I humbly present to you The Evil Overlord List. There you’ll find 100 tips, tricks, and bits of advice for the Dr. Evil wanna be. Here are a few of the more serious ones:
When I’m an Evil Overlord …
12. One of my advisors will be an average five-year-old child. Any flaws in my plan that he is able to spot will be corrected before implementation.
24. I will maintain a realistic assessment of my strengths and weaknesses. Even though this takes some of the fun out of the job, at least I will never utter the line “No, this cannot be! I AM INVINCIBLE!!!” (After that, death is usually instantaneous.)
27. I will never build only one of anything important. All important systems will have redundant control panels and power supplies. For the same reason I will always carry at least two fully loaded weapons at all times.
40. I will be neither chivalrous nor sporting. If I have an unstoppable superweapon, I will use it as early and as often as possible instead of keeping it in reserve.
45. I will make sure I have a clear understanding of who is responsible for what in my organization. For example, if my general screws up I will not draw my weapon, point it at him, say “And here is the price for failure,” then suddenly turn and kill some random underling.
46. If an advisor says to me “My liege, he is but one man. What can one man possibly do?”, I will reply “This.” and kill the advisor.
48. I will treat any beast which I control through magic or technology with respect and kindness. Thus if the control is ever broken, it will not immediately come after me for revenge.
50. My main computers will have their own special operating system that will be completely incompatible with standard IBM and Macintosh powerbooks.
52. I will hire a team of board-certified architects and surveyors to examine my castle and inform me of any secret passages and abandoned tunnels that I might not know about.
60. My five-year-old child advisor will also be asked to decipher any code I am thinking of using. If he breaks the code in under 30 seconds, it will not be used. Note: this also applies to passwords.
61. If my advisors ask “Why are you risking everything on such a mad scheme?”, I will not proceed until I have a response that satisfies them.
74. When I create a multimedia presentation of my plan designed so that my five-year-old advisor can easily understand the details, I will not label the disk “Project Overlord” and leave it lying on top of my desk.
85. I will not use any plan in which the final step is horribly complicated, e.g. “Align the 12 Stones of Power on the sacred altar then activate the medallion at the moment of total eclipse.” Instead it will be more along the lines of “Push the button.”
90. I will not design my Main Control Room so that every workstation is facing away from the door.
There are a lot of good lessons here. Of course, there are just as many like these:
63. Bulk trash will be disposed of in incinerators, not compactors. And they will be kept hot, with none of that nonsense about flames going through accessible tunnels at predictable intervals.
72. When my guards split up to search for intruders, they will always travel in groups of at least two. They will be trained so that if one of them disappears mysteriously while on patrol, the other will immediately initiate an alert and call for backup, instead of quizzically peering around a corner.
89. After I captures the hero’s superweapon, I will not immediately disband my legions and relax my guard because I believe whoever holds the weapon is unstoppable. After all, the hero held the weapon and I took it from him.
The Simpsons Live
Not sure how I missed this, but waaaayyy cool. The Simpsons intro, with live actors.
My Attempts at Better PowerPointing
Over the last several months, I’ve done quite a few presentations. Since I have been reading great blogs like Beyond Bullets, Presentation Zen and Powerpointless, I find that I am focused more than ever on using PowerPoint as a complement to my speech, and not as a replacement for it. In other words, I don’t want people to be able to read on a slide what I’m about to say. I’d rather them look to me for the information instead of the screen.
In my PowerPoint journey, three interesting things have happened. First, the more tuned in I am to the importance of “good” PowerPoint, the more offended I become by “bad” PowerPoint — I’m told former smokers experience a similar reaction to cigarette smoke after they quit. Second, I’m emboldened to try even more radical presentation experiments (my BlawgThink presentation in MindManager is one example). Finally, I’m amused at how others, only familiar with the “traditional” way of powerpointing, are mildly offended when I suggest my way may be better (or at least more fun).
If you attended my BarCamp or Techshow presentations, let me know what you thought. For everyone else to see what I’m talking about, I’ll attach my three most recent presentations to this post later today for your feedback. I look forward to your comments.
UPDATE: Here are the slides from my BarCamp presentation, as well as my two Techshow presentations, 60 Marketing Tips and Beyond ROI. All are in .ppt format.
More Smart Moves for Business
Here’s a list of Ten Smart Moves to Improve your Business that had a few gems:
On writing:
… take a topic that everyone has already written about but add a new twist to it. Children and Accessibility: It Matters was one such piece for me. It was well received and got some attention, which has ultimately led to people contacting me for other work because they saw something different.
On expanding:
Stay as small as you logically can: Small is flexible. Small can change direction in an instant if needed. I’m sure at some point my company will get bigger, but it won’t happen without good reason. Small is where it is at, baby (at least that is what all the other small companies are saying)
On pricing:
Raise prices every year: Just do it. Tell people about it beforehand so that they are expecting it. I’ve heard before that if you have never had push back from your clients telling you “that’s too much” then you aren’t charging enough. I’m not sure how true that is, but I look at it this way: I get better every year, and with more experience I can provide more value. Higher value = higher rates. Just do it.
Time Alone for the Zone
Jason Fried has some great advice on how to get into the zone:
Getting in the zone takes time. And that’s why interruption is your enemy. It’s like rem sleep – you don’t just go to rem sleep, you go to sleep first and you make your way to rem. Any interruptions force you to start over. rem is where the real sleep magic happens. The alone time zone is where the real development magic happens.
One tip to help you create some alone time is… Set up a rule at work: Make half the day alone time. From 10am-2pm, no one can talk to one another (except during lunch). Or make the first or the last half of the day the alone time period. Just make sure this period is contiguous in order to avoid productivity-killing interruptions.
How much more work would your business get done if you set aside “zone” time.
Is it all the same thing?
Will lawyers ever realize that it is all the same thing:
We don’t spend 2 hours every day on marketing, we spend all day on marketing. We don’t spend 1 hour every day figuring out the best way to communicate what our products do, we spend all day figuring out the best way to communicate what our products do. We don’t spend 3 hours on interface design, we spend all day on interface design.
When the edges are blurred, and one thing is many things, you can achieve so much more with less time, effort, and people.
Good work for clients is marketing. Sending a fair bill is client service. Returning telephone calls and e-mails is relationship building. It is all the same thing. Go read the original post and the comments. Great Stuff!
Mingling Advice
Always enter a conversations with a drink you are about to finish. If things don’t go well, all you need to do is take one last gulp from your drink and excuse yourself to get another, never to return. If the conversation is going well, finish your drink and ask the other person if you can get them anything when you go to get another. They will appreciate the gesture even if they decline, and it impies that you’ll be returning for a longer conversation.
Don’t Worry About CopyCats
Startups worry far too much about people copying them.
First of all, it will take competitors a long time to realize that your idea is even a good thing to do. It seems obvious to you that your idea is good. You had it. Other people will take longer to see that.
Especially big companies– as anyone can attest who has tried to convince a big company of something obvious. Often big companies don’t want to see that an idea is good, because they already have a lot invested in some other plan.
Even when competitors realize your idea is good, (a) it will take them a long time to implement and (b) they’ll probably screw up critical things.
And finally, working on your ideas will lead you on to new ideas. So you’ll be a moving target; by the time competitors copy what you’re doing now, you’ll be doing more.
A lot of lawyers who want to implement some form of value pricing or flat-fee billing in their firms are reluctant to do so because they believe their competitors will just swoop in, copy their pricing model, and then undercut their price. My advice (and Paul Graham’s) is to stop worrying about that and just do it. Once your competitors realize just how good your idea is, it will be too late.
Writer’s Block?
From this 43 Folders Post:
[Writer Anne] Lamott also mentions how she keeps a one-inch square picture frame on her desk. And every time she feels stuck, she picks it up and remembers that all she has to do to get started is fill one square inch with words.
Knowledge Arbitrage for Attorneys
Writing about 10 ways to get more ideas, Rajesh Setty shares a gem that should be in every lawyer’s toolbox:
4. Harness the power of association
The more you associate things the faster you will get new ideas. Knowledge arbitrage is one way of associating things. Here is a simple way to develop your association muscle. List all the people that are close to you in your network. Also list their current projects and interests – basically list what matters most to these people. Once you have this data handy, whenever you meet a new person, see if there is a match in the interests of the new person and one of your earlier contacts in your network. If there is a mutual gain possible, connect these two people without expecting a gain.
The hidden benefit from the above mentioned approach: The more you do this, the higher the chances that the power of reciprocation will kick in and more people will be introduced to you. The more new people in your life, more fresh perspectives they will bring into your life. In turn, more new ideas will flow in.
This is one of the best ways to keep your existing clients happy and to get more. Can you go though your client list and compile your clients’ current projects and interests? Do you collect this information in your intake process? You should.
Technorati Tags: knowledge, networking, relationships
Scanner or Planner?
“If you’re a Scanner, you are a very special kind of thinker. Unlike those people who seem to find and be satisfied with one area of interest, you’re genetically wired to be interested in many things. Because your behavior is unfamiliar — even unsettling — to the people around you, you’ve been taught that you’re doing something wrong and you must try to change.
“But what you’ve been told is a mistake — you have been misdiagnosed. You’re a different creature altogether. What you’ve assumed is a disability to be overcome by sheer will is actually an exceptional gift. You are the owner of a remarkable, multitalented brain trying to do its work in a world that doesn’t understand who you are and doesn’t know why you behave as you do.”
I know I am.
Dreaming About Technology
I’ve been jonesing for a second monitor since I moved to California (I had a dual monitor setup in my law office). Adding a second monitor to your computer can increase work efficiency by leaps and bounds, and is probably the single best technology “tweak” you can make to improve your productivity.
Now that I’m coming back to St. Louis, and will be setting up a permanent home office, I’ve been on the lookout for a second monitor (or even a third) for my dream technology setup.
On one monitor, I’d have EverNote on all the time. I recently rediscovered this great program and have jumped head first back into it. It is essentially a digital doodle pad that resembles a huge, endless spool of paper. You can drag and drop nearly anything in to it, and it is an AMAZING note-taking/list-making application. If you can forego some of the bells and whistles in the $34.95 TabletPC “plus” edition, it is even free. I haven’t even scratched the surface of what it can do, but I’m already hooked!
On the second monitor (and since this is my dream setup, I’m running three monitors here), I’d have my trusty MindManager Pro with Gyronix’s Results Manager open. For me, there is simply no better way to flesh out ideas and keep track of them than with this combo of fantastic products. Pricey, to be sure, but if you pay attention to this blog, I’ll have an announcement soon telling you how you could win both.
On my third, and primary monitor, I’d have Outlook running in the background with my web browser (Firefox) in the foreground. If you use Outlook, you have to try Anagram. Outlook seems naked to me without it.
Once I get the new setup up and running after the LexThink Lounge, I’ll post some pics.
Technorati Tags: anagram, mindmanager, gyronix, productivity, technology
The Weekly Reader
Here’s a great management idea I’d never heard before from The Window Manager himself:
One of my tasks when I worked at Texas Instruments was to do a “weekly”. For those of you not familiar with this little management tool, this is a bulletized memo that lists the tasks you accomplished for the week, the tasks you are going to do the following week, and what your upcoming schedule looks like, particularly if you’re traveling. It also might include short summaries of customer meetings or market data that was picked up in the field.
My manager collected the weeklies of everyone under him, picked the “best” bullet points, and sent a weekly to his manager. His manager collected the weeklies from HIS people, picked the best bullets, and sent a weekly to HIS manager, and so on up the chain. At twenty-two, I thought it was an accomplishment if one of “my bullets” made it into the VP’s weekly since it had to percolate up three or four layers of weeklies to make it to that level.
If you work for (or by) yourself, do your “weekly” on Friday, put it in a drawer, and then review it on Monday. However, instead of listing the tasks you accomplished, think a bit bigger. List the things you are proud you accomplished, and things you have to do next week that will make you proud and/or happy when they are done. If you are lucky enough to have a support group, share your weekly accomplishments with one another.
Sketch a Solution with Clients
Ever have a client that’s has a problem you are struggling to solve? Here’s a tip from Noise Between Stations that could help:
When you’re trying to solve a problem and you’re stuck it’s because you’re trying to solve it in your head. Just as you can do simple calculations in your head but need a calculator for everything else, you can’t solve tough business problems in your head.
When you draw, build, write, or use something that is physical, your physical senses help you understand more about the situation. You more fully understand the problem than if you only thought about it. Financial analysts do this by writing calculations on the back of a napkin or playing with numbers in a spreadsheet. Designers do this by sketching on paper or carving foam in the shape of a product. Engineers do it by combining parts they have on hand to make something new.
…
It’s important to ignore how well you’re doing what you’re doing, because that will distract you from accomplishing the goal. This may go against our usual inclinations to do things “right.” We’re taught to think things through and carefully design a solution. But when you’re stuck we need to overcome this tendency. Free your mind from all the rules you normally follow. Pick up the pencil and just sketch.
You might even use techniques you know to be incorrect because they help you move more quickly. This is good. The are only two guidelines here:
1. Do it quickly
2. Create something tangible
I can’t recommend this tactic enough. When I was mediating custody disputes, I used huge easel-sized 3M Post-It notes to sketch out custody scenarios with my clients. I’d draw a month’s worth of days in a grid, and would give each client their own big Post-it to diagram their ideal custody situation. Often times, once the parents got up and put marker to paper, they broke out of their mindset that a reasonable custody arrangement couldn’t be negotiated.
If you have an office or meeting room, take down some of your diplomas and expensive art work and instead throw up some big Post-it notes (or a whiteboard) on the wall and see how many more client problems you’ll solve.
That Giant Sucking Sound Could be Your PowerPoint Slides.
Kathy Sierra has another thought-provoking post titled Stop Your Presentation Before it Kills Again. In it, she shares her “Do My Slides Suck” test:
1) Do your slides contain mostly bullet points?
2) Do you have more than 12-15 words on a slide?
3) Do your slides add little or no new info beyond what you can say in words?
4) Are your slides, in fact, not memorable?
5) Are your slides emotionally empty?
6) Do your slides fail to encourage a deeper connection to or understanding of the topic?
7) Do your slides distort the data? (That’s a whooooole different thing I’m not addressing now)
8) Do your slides encourage cognitive weakness? (refer to Tufte)
A “Yes” to any of those could be a huge red flag that something’s wrong.
If you’re still committed to slides, or if you’re certain you need them, here’s my favorite overall recommendation: Put each slide on trial for its life. Ask it to defend itself. Show no mercy.
As I finish up my preparations for the ABA Techshow, I’ll be giving my slides another once-over. I’ll post them up by tomorrow.
Be the Same and Be Second
Found this summary of the 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing on Mike Vance’s absolutely fantastic MineZone Wiki, where there are dozens of business book summaries. Here is one great nugget:
If you’re shooting for second place, your strategy is determined by the market leader.
- “You must discover the essence of the leader and then present the prospect with the opposite. (In other words, don’t try to be better, try to be different.”
What’s that Thingamy
I have to admit, I’m intrigued:
One single system to run your business.
No need for other enterprise software nor middleware.
No need for hierarchies nor information tree structures.
No need for management to run the workflow.
Enter the future at your own pace, start small or big.
Refine your business model and processes continuously.
And yes, you’re not the first to utter unbelievable, bollocks, bullshit, etc. under your breath.
We like that, leaves us only one task: Prove that the system actually works.Would that not be kind of cool if we did?
Technorati Tags: thingamy, innovation, timekeeping, legal+software
I Believe that Children are our Future …
At the Conferenza Blog, they just posted a great recap of the TED Conference. One of the three trends that emerged at the event was really fascinating, and its something I’d like to talk more about at our LexThink! Lounge event and maybe even at LexThink! 2020.
Youth, Innovation and ‘Upgrade Paradox’. A variety of speakers addressed the issue of innovation, creativity, educating youth and our future. Sir Ken Robinson argued creativity is as important as literacy, and said we train it out of our youth. Zany astronomer Clifford Stoll suggested those who want to know the future 20 years out should ask kindergarten teachers, not technologists or futurists. Neil Gershenfeld of MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms described how his $20,000 mobile fab labs are used by young children, who are often bedazzled and spend hours learning to build complex technical systems. Finally, NYTimes tech columnist David Pogue described the “upgrade paradox” by which well-meaning, consenting (presumably) adults work to “improve” a piece of software so many times “you finally ruin it.”
WWJDTMAC – What Would Jesus Do to Market a Church?
Do you think legal marketing sucks? Then read Church Marketing Sucks, a great new blog focused on — yep, you guesed it — church marketing. Great blog design too!
Client Experience Matters
Found this article (via Digg) titled Why Features Don’t Matter Anymore: The New Laws of Digital Technology. In the author’s words, “user experience (along with a strong brand, and clever marketing) is much more important for the success of a device then technical specifications.” There is much to be learned here for all service providers as well, so I encourage you to read the entire article with that in mind. Here are the author’s 10 fundamental rules (read the article for his explanation):
1) More features isn’t better, it’s worse.
2) You can’t make things easier by adding to them.
3) Confusion is the ultimate deal-breaker.
4) Style matters
5) Only features that provide a good user experience will be used.
6) Any feature that requires learning will only be adopted by a small fraction of users.
7) Unused features are not only useless, they can slow you down and diminish ease of use.
8) Users do not want to think about technology: what really counts is what it does for them.
9) Forget about the killer feature. Welcome to the age of the killer user-experience.
10) Less is difficult, that’s why less is more
Technorati Tags: client+service, experience, marketing
KM for Law Firms
Jack Vinson summarizes the two days of a legal KM (knowledge management) conference he attended. Check out his posts about Day One and Day Two.
Technorati Tags: km, knowledge+management, law
Join Me at BarCamp
I’m going to be hanging around a lot of people waaaaaaaay smarter than I am at BarCamp Los Angeles next weekend (Saturday and Sunday, March 4–5, 2006). I’ve tentatively titled my session “UnConferencing for Normal People — Taking the UnConference Mainstream.”
While everyone else is building cool web2.0 applications full of ajaxy goodness (I don’t really know what that means, either), I’ll be working to build the perfect conference. I’ll post my presentation up here later this weekend.
Come join me! Have a Beer. Don’t cost nothin’.
Technorati Tags: unconference, barcamp, barcampla
Domain Name for Sale
Don’t know how I missed this one, but Kevin Heller is selling the domain name sucksmyan.us. Too funny!
Pickle Your Great Ideas
Here’s another idea from David Seah that I absolutely love: The Pickle Jar. Here’s his explanation:
I’m sometimes distracted by too many project ideas. When the ideas pile up, my productivity sinks because I keep thinking about them, and multitasking slows me down. To keep focused, I evolved a mind trick called The Pickle Jar that, despite its hokey name, actually works for me. It got me through my thesis, when writing was the last thing I felt like doing.
The Pickle Jar is an actual glass jar that once held pickles. Next to it is a square pad of paper, about 4 inches on the side. To get unrelated thoughts out of my mind, I write down a brief synopsis down, fold it twice, and put it into the Jar.
The physical act of writing down, folding, and then “pickling” the idea for later consumption is weirdly cathartic. Since I’m no longer in danger of forgetting the thought, I can relax. The act of formulating on paper has also satisfied the urge to follow up on it. The size of the paper also prevents you from writing too much…there’s just enough room to get the essence of the idea down.
Technorati Tags: picklejar, DavidSeah, innovation,
Build a Strategy Network in Your Firm
Andrew Razeghi has a great article titled Create Success: Stop Thinking Like a Lawyer he wrote a few years ago, but that I just found. Among other things, he takes on the topic of law firm retreats:
No firm can create strategy in a half day, or even a full day. Not only is the time insufficient, the contributors are isolated. There are typically no clients at such retreats, or any investment bankers, accountants, and other professional advisers that law firms work with. Therefore, the retreat often devolves into a feel-good exercise.
Wouldn’t it be better to have 20 attorneys thinking about strategy for four hours a month for 10 months? Who are those who make things happen? Who are the thought leaders in your firm? What if you gave them the chance to think strategically as a part of their job? Create a “strategy network” within your firm – a web of business thinkers with a structured forum in which to think about the business of law, not the practice of law. This network should not just include senior partners and rainmakers, but new partners and senior associates too.
I really like this idea and think it could be a good fit for a practice group or small law firm. Anyone want to try this in their firm? I’d be happy to help you get it off the ground.
Best Management Ideas
Lisa Haneberg posts the winning entries in her Best Management Ideas contest. All are worth a read.
Great Client Brainstorming Tip
I ran across this great tip on brainstorming a better career on the Achieve-It! blog:
Take a pad of paper and write down at the top your objective in question form. Then, simply list out 20 answers to your question.
For example, in this case, you would write “What should I be doing with my time and life?” Then stay seated for a half hour to an hour coming up with answers to that question. The key to this exercise is coming up with 20 answers – don’t quit until you have 20 answers.
Take this tip, and at your next client meeting take 30 minutes for you and your client to both complete the exercise, answering the question “What is a successful outcome of this case” or something similar. Trade answer sheets and discuss.
I wish I’d thought of this for my mediation practice. Imagine having each side do the exercise and then giving their answers to the mediator
Legal Writing Tips from Elmore Leonard
Well, not exactly tips on legal writing, but pretty solid advice from my favorite author. The best of the bunch?
Never use a verb other than “said” to carry dialogue. The line of dialogue belongs to the character; the verb is the writer sticking his nose in. But said is far less intrusive than grumbled, gasped, cautioned, lied. I once noticed Mary McCarthy ending a line of dialogue with “she asseverated,” and had to stop reading to get the dictionary.
Never use an adverb to modify the verb “said” . . . he admonished gravely. To use an adverb this way (or almost any way) is a mortal sin. The writer is now exposing himself in earnest, using a word that distracts and can interrupt the rhythm of the exchange. I have a character in one of my books tell how she used to write historical romances “full of rape and adverbs.”
Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip. A rule that came to mind in 1983. Think of what you skip reading a novel: thick paragraphs of prose you can see have too many words in them. What the writer is doing, he’s writing, perpetrating hooptedoodle, perhaps taking another shot at the weather, or has gone into the character’s head, and the reader either knows what the guy’s thinking or doesn’t care. I’ll bet you don’t skip dialogue.
Imagine if Law Review writers followed the last tip. No more footnotes!
Technorati Tags: elmore+leonard, writing, law+review
Law Office of the Future for the Mobile Lawyer
Man, I’ve got to get me one of these. The only problem, not much of a waiting room.
Attorneys Aren’t Knowledge Workers – Ron Baker
Attorneys Aren’t Knowledge Workers by guest blogger Ron Baker
In light of my last post titled Your Employees are Volunteers, this one is sure to cause some cognitive dissonance. My VeraSage Institute colleague Dan Morris thinks I’m wrong about professional firms being filled with knowledge workers; he believes the majority of them are more akin to factory workers.
Now I know this is a heretical view, but Dan assembles a very powerful argument to support his assertion. He doesn’t deny professionals have the potential to be knowledge workers. His argument is they are not largely because of the incentives and structures of the firms in which they operate, which function like sweatshops of yore.
Now this is a powerful argument, and it made me pause to reexamine my core assumptions about automatically asserting that just because someone is a credentialed professional they are automatically a knowledge worker.
There’s no doubt they can contribute a certain amount of creativity and innovation to the jobs they perform and the customers they serve, but being a knowledge worker also requires that the leaders of your organization recognize and treat you like one.
Stephen Covey writes about exactly this in his latest book, The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness: “It’s the leadership beliefs and style of the manager, not the nature of the job or economic era, that defines whether a person is a knowledge worker or not.”
When you consider the metrics used by most firms to measure their team members, they all come from the Industrial Revolution’s command-and-control hierarchies (realization, utilization, billable hours, etc). Yet as I discussed in my posts on The Firm of the Past and The Firm of the Future, the metrics we use to measure a knowledge worker’s effectiveness are woefully inadequate.
Dan further supports his argument by stating that true knowledge workers:
- Don’t have billable hour quotas.
- Spend at least 15% of their time innovating and creating better ways to add value to customers (this destroys efficiency under the old metrics!).
- Understand that judgments and discernment are far more important than measurements in assessing performance.
- Are focused on outputs, results and value, not inputs, efforts and costs.
- Don’t fill out timesheets accounting for every 6 minutes of their day.
- Are trusted by their leaders to the right thing for the firm and its customers.
- Are passionate and self-motivated, and don’t need constant supervision.
If the above describes your firm, congratulations — you are a true knowledge organization. Perhaps nothing illustrates the value knowledge workers can add to a business than last week’s purchase of Pixar by Disney for $7.4 billion in Disney stock.
Disney will have to respect Pixar’s culture and continue to let it make quality movies at its own pace, in its own way. Otherwise, if Pixar’s creative talent leaves, “Disney just purchased the most expensive computers ever sold,” according to Lawrence Haverty, a fund manager at Gabelli Asset Management.
Unfortunately, most professional firms we’ve come into contact with around the world do not fit Dan’s criteria, which is why he makes such a strong case they function more like manual laborers than knowledge workers.
UPS founder Jim Casey remarked in 1947: “A man’s worth to an organization can be measured by the amount of supervision he requires.”
The moment you feel the need to hover over your knowledge workers, either physically or metaphorically with the Sword of Damocles — the timesheet — you’ve made a hiring mistake.
Until professional service firm leaders begin to grant their team members autonomy — Greek for self-governance — and treat them like self-respecting knowledge workers, I think Dan’s argument trumps mine.
What do you think?
Technorati Tags: ron+baker, knowledge+workers, law, firm
A Tip for Sleepy Lawyers
The Caffeine Nap is simple. You drink a cup of coffee and immediately take a 15 minute nap. Researchers found coffee helps clear your system of adenosine, a chemical which makes you sleepy. So in testing, the combination of a cup of coffee with an immediate nap chaser provided the most alertness for the longest period of time. The recommendation was to nap only 15 minutes, no more or less and you must sleep immediately after the coffee.
Constraints for Lawyers?
Here is a good practical introduction to the Theory of Constraints from the Juice Analytics blog. The author is going to try imposing these constraints on his company:
-
Create artificial deadlines with teeth. Something real and bad has to happen when a project extends beyond a deadline. What if a team had to write a document describing why a deadline was missed?
-
Limit design freedom with less space, fewer colors, fewer tabs and buttons. At Juice, we recently found that we had some fairly radical limitations on the space available to create a web interface. What started as an annoyance helped us take some great steps forward.
-
Cap team size. What if you limited every team to five or fewer people? Just imagine the efficiencies and focus — and all the people you could legitimately exclude!
-
Try without money. What if you had no marketing budget for a new product? I bet most of the companies that succeed with viral marketing are those that need to. Big companies admire the power of using customers as a salesforce — but advertising is so much more well understood.
As the author notes, “There is pain in fitting into constraints. And it isn’t always worth it. But there can be pay-offs in innovation, efficiency and focus.” Where can you utilize the Theory of Constraints in your practice?
Technorati Tags: constraints, law+practice
The Marketing Concept – Ron Baker
The Marketing Concept by guest blogger Ron Baker
There is only one boss: the customer. And he can fire everybody in the company, from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else. -Sam Walton, founder of Wal-Mart (1918-1992)
I miss Peter Drucker. He was one of the few management consultants who had original insights, could write without making his readers feel like they were watching a fly ascend a drape, and has taught me so many lessons there is no way I can even separate his thinking from my own. He deserved a Nobel Prize, and it’s a shame he didn’t get one (they are not given posthumously).
One of his lessons was you are not in business to make a profit. Profit is merely oxygen for the body; it is not the reason for being. Profit is nothing more than a lagging indicator of what is in the hearts and minds of your customers.
He indefatigably pointed out that “there is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer.” This is known as the marketing concept.
The purpose of any organization–from a governmental agency, non-profit foundation to a corporation–exists to create results outside of itself. The result of a school is an educated student, as is a cured patient for a hospital. For a law firm, a happy and loyal customer who returns is the ultimate result.
The only things that exist inside of a business are costs, activities, efforts, problems, mediocrity, friction, politics, and crises. There is no such thing as a profit center in a business; there are only cost and effort centers. In fact, Peter Drucker said in a 1997 interview, “One of the biggest mistakes I have made during my career was coining the term profit center, around 1945.”
The only profit center is a customer’s check that doesn’t bounce. Customers are absolutely indifferent to the internal workings of your firm in terms of costs, desired profits levels and efforts. Value is only created when you have produced something the customer voluntarily, and willingly, pays for.
For example, cosmetic companies, as Revlon founder Charles Revson pointed out, sell hope. What makes the marketing concept so breathtakingly brilliant is the focus is always on the outside of the organization. It doesn’t look inside and ask, “What do we want and need?” but rather it looks outside to the customer and asks, “What do you desire and value?”
Your firm exists to serve real flesh and blood people, not some mass of demographics known as “the market.” In the final analysis, a business doesn’t exist to be efficient, to do cost accounting, or to give people fancy titles and power over the lives of others.
It exists to create results and wealth outside of itself. This profound lesson must not be forgotten.
Thank you Mr. Drucker. R.I.P.
Technorati Tags: peter+drucker, cost, profit, law+firm, ron+baker
You Only Need Four Ideas
From this month’s edition of Brainmail:
A US study says that just four ideas copied thousands of times account for 80% of all breakthrough new businesses created between 1965 and 1995. The four ideas are: power retailing, focus/simplify/standardize, value chain bypass and mega-branding. Ref: Strategy + Business (US)
Which of the four will your firm rely upon to create your breakthrough new business?
Introducing Ron Baker – Guest Blogger
One of the coolest things about blogging for me is that I have gotten to know some really amazing people. One of those folks is Ron Baker. When I first started blogging, I called him an absolutely amazing visionary and called two of his books, The Firm of the Future (with Paul Dunn) and The Professional’s Guide to Value Pricing “absolute must reads.” Ron left a comment to that post, and since then he and I have grown to be friends.
Ron and I were talking about his new book, Pricing on Purpose, and I asked him if he’d like to promote it on this blog. Instead of a quick Q&A, he’s written several provocative posts for my readers. The first will follow today.
I can’t tell you how excited I am to have him here on the [non]billable hour this week. I hope you enjoy what he has to share.
For those of you who don’t know Ron, here’s his bio:
Ronald J. Baker started his accounting career in 1984 with KPMG Peat Marwick’s Private Business Advisory Services in San Francisco. Today, he is the founder of VeraSage Institute, a think tank dedicated to teaching Value Pricing to professionals around the world.
As a frequent speaker at events and conferences, and a consultant to professional service firms on implementing Total Quality Service and Value Pricing, his work takes him around the world. He has been an instructor with the California CPA Education Foundation since 1995 and has authored eleven courses for them.
He is the author of the best-selling marketing book ever written specifically for the professions, Professional’s Guide to Value Pricing, Sixth Edition, published by CCH, Incorporated. Also, Burying the Billable Hour; Trashing the Timesheet; and You Are Your Customer List, published by The Association of Chartered Certified Accountants in the United Kingdom. His book, The Firm of the Future: A Guide for Accountants, Lawyers, and Other Professional Services, co-authored with Paul Dunn, was published in April 2003 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., and is in its fourth printing. His latest book, Pricing on Purpose: Creating and Capturing Value, was published in February 2006 (John Wiley & Sons, Inc.). His next book, The Canary in the Coal Mine: Why Your Company Needs Key Predictive Indicators, is due out in the latter part of 2006 (John Wiley & Sons, Inc.).
Ron has toured the world, spreading his Value Pricing message to over 70,000 professionals, including leading a seminar series of Value Pricing seminars for the American Association of Advertising Agencies in 2005. He has been appointed to the American Institute of Certified Public Accountant’s Group of One Hundred, a think tank of leaders to address the future of the profession, named on Accounting Today’s 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005 Top 100 Most Influential People in the profession, and received the 2003 Award for Instructor Excellence from the California CPA Education Foundation.
He graduated in 1984 from San Francisco State University with a Bachelor of Science in accounting and a minor in economics. He is a graduate of Disney University, Cato University, and the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business course: Pricing: Strategy and Tactics. He is a member of the Professional Pricing Society and presently resides in Petaluma, California.
Technorati Tags: value+pricing, billable+hour, ron+baker
Thank You, Yvonne
I love Yvonne DiVita, even if she hadn’t written these kind words about LexThink! when talking about a recent conference she attended:
1. Not enough audience interaction – because you didn’t plan enough time for Q&A. It wasn’t the speakers or the presenters faults…it was the organizers fault! Puh-lease! The Q & A is THE best part of the event. Say, you should talk to Matt Homann over at the [non]billable hour. He and Dennis Kennedy know how to run a conference where everybody wins. They’ll set you straight. I hear they’re available to help plan your next event in the open space style.
If you are planning a conference, I’d love to chat with you and share some of the lessons we’ve learned at our two “unconferences,” LexThink and BlawgThink.
Get Coached Up!
If you want to make meaningful changes in the way you manage your employees, you have to check out my friend Rosa Say’s Managing with Aloha Jumpstart program.
Oh, and did I mention it’s free.
Write Your Firm Newsletter on a Postcard!
I came across Chuck Green’s Ideabook site yesterday, and once I found myself adding nearly every page of his to my daily links, I thought I’d devote an entry to this amazing resource. If you want to see how great design can improve business (and client) communication, you have to set aside some time to check out Chuck’s site. Just one great example: a postcard-sized newsletter. Freakin’ cool!
Trade Your Headache
Unless you are among the small percentage of hyper-motivated and totally focused people out there in the world, you know you have at least one “headache” sitting in a pile on your desk or on your to-do list. It may be that project you keep putting off, that client you hate dealing with, or that phone call you just don’t want to make. No matter what it is, imagine how happy you’d be tomorrow if it weren’t your responsibility any longer.
Well, odds are your co-workers have similar “headaches” they face every day too. Here is a way to cope:
Trade Your Headache. Every week (or month) get together with your co-workers and bring your number one headache with you. Identify it, and then trade it with one that someone else brought. Think of it like kind of a regular white elephant gift exchange. Just make sure the same headache doesn’t get traded over and over again.
I’m certain you’ll be happier, and more motivated, working to solve a different problem or complete a different task than the one that’s been dragging on you for so long. Let me know how it goes.
Technorati Tags: motivation, lifehacks, procrastination, white+elephant, headache
Forcast your Future
Jim McGee writes about a speech by Paul Saffo. In the speech, Saffo shared his rules for forcasting the future. Though I won’t pretend to understand the meat of Jim’s post — or Saffo’s speach, for that matter — these rules are worth remembering the next time you need to predict the future in your business or your life:
Rule 1. Know when not to make a forecast.
Rule 2. Overnight successes come out of twenty years of failure.
Rule 3. Look back twice as far as forward.
Rule 4. Hunt for prodromes.
Rule 5. Be indifferent.
Rule 6. Tell a story or, better, draw a map.
Rule 7. Prove yourself wrong.
Technorati Tags: forcasting, predictions, paul+saffo, jim+mcgee
What is your ink to data ratio?
Before you prepare your slides for your next trial, or slap together another PowerPoint for a client meeting or presentation, read this article setting out some basic principles of information design from Luigi Canali De Rossi. In it, the author gives some suggestions on ways to better present data (charts, graphs, etc.) in presentations. Here are a few:
- Drop unplanned and unfunctional 3D effects from your information graphic. Unless you are a trained designer drop 3D graphs in favor of the apparently simpler and less fancy traditional 2D graphs.
- Eliminate all frames and borders. They are not needed. Your data will not escape the newly found free space around it, but it will “breathe” and will provide with a more relaxing and legible visual space.
- Drop also all unneeded borders of colors, bars, slices. Your eye can tell a column from an empty space without the addition of black ink around every object created by computer software.
- Cut the prison bars. The horizontal and vertical “gridlines” that many graph tools utilize is nothing short of a visual prison, sold to us with the excuse of helping our eyes better find the value reflected by each bar.
- Do not utilize bitmap, hatches, patterns to differentiate different bars, columns or slices. These effects are the heritage of the old times when there was no color available to differentiate different graph elements. These solutions are highly disturbing to the eye, they “vibrate” and create so called moiré effects. More than anything they look ugly and old-fashioned.
- Drop, eliminate, mute or simplify all remaining visual components which serve only decorative or unnecessary graphic-enhancing purposes. Reiterate and improve, until you can actually see that the quantity of ink you are using is truly serving the very purpose of communicating real data.
I know I’ve violated at least four of these rules in presentations over the last few years. How about you?
Update: If you want to learn more about presenting data, check out this article about Constructing Bad Charts and Graphs.
If you want a serious meeting, hand out toys.
Kirsten Osolind, back to blogging at Re:Invention, offers several guidelines for team meetings. Some good stuff, and my favorite is the title of this post. Welcome back to blogging, Kirsten!
Technorati Tags: facilitation, meetings, fun
Count the Days by Counting Cards
Here are a few great planning and productivity tips from Eric Maisel, via this post on Worthwhile:
Get seven decks of cards with similar backs. Lay out all seven decks on your living room rug, backs showing. This is a year of days (give or take). Let the magnitude of a year sink in. Experience this wonderful availability of time. (This is a powerful exercise.)
Carefully count the number of days between two widely-separated holidays, for instance New Year’s Day and the Fourth of July. Envision starting a large project on that first holiday (today!) and completing it by the second.
I wish I’d heard about the decks of cards exercise when I was mediating family law cases. It seems like a great way to convey the healing power of time, or to help couples work out their division of custody (he gets red cards, she gets black, or vice versa).
Technorati Tags: productivity, mediation
Wanna Love a Lawyer?
I know, as a married guy, I’m a bit out of touch with the dating scene, but is there an audience for this? From the website:
Lawyers in Love is the best place to meet successful, brainy lawyers, law students, and other legal professionals for friendship, dating, fun, romance and companionship. If your schedule makes it difficult for you to meet people, if you are still working during happy hours and other social events, if weekends are devoted to writing briefs, you will love this unique opportunity to find romance on the Web.
Lisa’s Daily Practice
Lisa Haneberg is starting up her 2 Weeks 2 a Breakthrough coaching program again. She requires her students to do this “Daily Practice” everyday:
Each day:
- Tell two people about your goal.
- Take two actions that support your goal.
- Make two requests that support your goal.
It is a bit late to include this in my resolution series, but think about how it could help you get off to a great 2006.
Get Started Starting
If you are starting anything, read this. Tremendous essay.
And the second correct answer is …
Interesting advice: Look for the second right answer.
Holiday Gift Tips
OK, I know it may be a bit late for this year, but before your Aunt Hilda starts crocheting next year’s Christmas gift, discretely pass her a link to this site.
Who else thinks conferences can get better?
Seth Godin does, and so does Garr Reynolds. If I quoted the best parts of each post, I’d just end up cutting and pasting the whole things, so go directly and read them instead.
Present in Your Audience, Not to Them.
One of the things I was most worried about before BlawgThink was how the presentations would go on Day One. We had a phenomenal lineup of speakers, but they were presenting in a non-traditional setting (Catalyst Ranch). A lot used MindManager, some PowerPoint (or Keynote), and some nothing at all.
As I wandered from presentation to presentation, the thing I noticed was that it seemed our speakers were presenting in their audiences, instead of to them. There was very little physical separation between speaker and audience, and I think the presentations were better as a result.
Speaking of presentations: One of my new favorite blog reads is Garr Reynold’s Presentation Zen. For a great intro to Garr’s blog, check out his post comparing Bill Gates’ and Steve Jobs’ presentation styles. I was particularly taken by the contrasting visuals used by each. Just look at the slides and tell me which presentation you’d rather attend.
BlawgThink Reviews, Part Two.
I decided at the end of BlawgThink to take my own advice, so I asked our attendees for their thoughts on the event while still fresh in their minds.. I stuck up several huge easel-size post it notes and handed out markers. Here they are:
“Thanks for a great, creative and open-minded event. I especially liked how you left a lot of “white space” we could fill in as wanted/needed. Lots of opportunity to meet, talk, conspire with each other.”
“Great Conference. Dynamic and Stimulating. Total Success.”
“Thanks for letting me come play @ the conference. It was thought-inducing.”
“Great conference — highly interactive, tapping the collective experience and expertise of attendees and presenters. Thanks.”
“Intellectual content of the highest order, future-minded participants and all the best aspects of pre-school in the Catalyst [Ranch] created the best group experience for me yet.”
“Marvelous forum. Enjoyed both “think tank” aspect & networking.”
“Thanks! I enjoyed it and actually learned something. :-)”
“Best melding of people + technology that I’ve seen at a conference. The “open spaces” to the second day was brilliant too.”
“Thank you for the opportunity. Learned a lot — can’t wait to start blogging & trying out all these fabulous products!”
“BT has got my brain firing on all cylinders!”
“Very content rich with a wide variety subjects and very engaging and interesting group of people. The format worked very well and I’m taking a lot home with me that will be of use.”
“BT has fueled my passion to blog better.”
“Though here only 1 day, gained a week’s worth of great ideas. Seriously — found solutions to at least three different challenges, not just blog related.”
“Thanks to everyone for a great non-conference!”
“Yabba dabba doo!”
“Enthusiasm + Venue = Opportunity!”
“Open circle was terrific. Definitely a unique 2 days!”
“I heard a lot of great ideas and have many more perspectives to consider and ponder.”
“Very cool location for the gathering.”
“Surpassed my high expectations. Great mix of people (Day One Speakers and otherwise). Day Two discussions were all fascinating and productive. Looking forward to using the free software.”
“Thank you so much for allowing us to attend! We had many of our questions answered and look forward to launching our blog very soon! Carpe Noctem!”
“It was awesome — I learned an incredible amount. Thanks.”
“Blawgthink answered a few of my questions, but more importantly, it raised innumerable new questions. Primary among them, it made me question how I as using this network I have created through my blog and podcast. Thanks for bringing this creative, diverse and innovative group together.”
“A wonderful two days. It will take at least a week for all the ideas to percolate on through, but I know my blog will be better ASAP.”
“Thanks for a great non-conference! Learned a lot. Thanks again.”
“Picked up ideas that more than paid for event!”
“Very cool — totally my style + everyone else here. Heard nothing but good as I buzzed around.”
BlawgThink Reviews, Part One.
BlawgThink attendees have been saying great things about the event. I know there is a bit of navel-gazing going on here, but I wanted to collect these somewhere I could link to easily, and share them with family and friends who wonder what I’ve been doing for the last 90 days.
“…a milestone event.”
“I think it’s a more accurate reflection of our psychology that we swarm around topics that interest our minds most at any given moment as opposed to the stale one-size-fits-all mega-loaf of typical events, ensuring that the minds present in a conference are as close to perfectly allocated as possible.”
“I look forward to a rich future of non-traditional conferences from LexThink!”
“ I will say this: there are some tremendous thinkers in the small corner of the blog-o-sphere where us lawyers hang out. If I could find a way to corral all of these folks into one innovative and forward thinking organization, the world would never be the same from a client service point of view. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised to see more collaboration and innovation occurring sooner rather than later — the legal services industry is about to be shaken up. And it goes without saying, Matt Homann and Dennis Kennedy are two of the most genuine and innovative folks out there – if you ever get the chance to spend some time with either of them, do not hesitate to take advantage of the opportunity.”
“When you have a two day conference and you can only generate three minor criticisms, that’s a damn good conference!”
“The BlawgThink conference struck me as a great example of a critical mass. What happens when you identify and bring together a lot of people who have the same vision and commitment to that vision? For a positive vision, you can create such a groundswell of emotion that those people and others become infected by your vision and drive, and they jump on the bandwagon as well. It was clear to me that most people leaving the BlawgThink conference were trying to consider how to take blogging even further in their organization.”
“I learned a lot about blogging at BlawgThink, but I think I learned a lot about driving change in an organization as well.”
“ BlawgThink 2005 was a great event.”
“Joining the chorus of other attendees at this past weekend’s BlawgThink (a gathering of current and prospective legal bloggers) in Chicago, I want to especially thank Matt Homann and Dennis Kennedy for their hard work in pulling off this event.
Blogging is a terrific legal marketing tool, albeit only one factor in the overall mix of activities that should be included in a law firm’s marketing arsenal. But I truly believe, especially after BlawgThink that blogging will experience tremendous growth over the next few years.”
“So after two days of interacting with some of the best minds in legal blogging and meeting those excited on the topic here are some quick reactions:
* Awesome energy
* Great sessions
* Mind Manager Rules!
* Fabulous networking (wish I could have met more)
* Father + son with the same name attending same conference = topic of conversation
* Relaxing, yet energizing environment (Catalyst Ranch)
* Passionate people…a great conference.”
“I loved BlawgThink, and the unconference format was really just perfect. It allowed for a lot of interaction and sharing of insight that just wouldn’t have occurred in a typical conference setting.
Passion + Purpose. It’s one of those things I think about a lot, but like anyone else, you get busy, and sometimes these things take a seat on the back burner. Some events are so full of buzz and energy that they really make you think about what’s important to you, what your next step is, and how you can get from where you are today to where you’re going.”
“I owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to organizers Dennis Kennedy and Matt Homann as well as numerous other lawyers, marketing professionals and professional services business people who got together at BlawgThink on Friday and Saturday.
Dennis and Matt pulled off an excellent and rewarding event. To be honest, I had mixed feelings about the value of attending the event. I am busy as all get out with LexBlog’s growth, working with new employees that entails, traveling to our new offices in Bozeman, Montana and being a responsible spouse and parent. It sounds really selfish but I’ve been limiting traveling to events that combine lawyer blog education and the marketing of LexBlog.
But at BlawgThink, I spent time with LexBlog clients, pioneers in lawyer blogging such as Ernest Svenson (Ernie the Attorney), and many others who taught me so much. Even when not listening to presentations, my discussions with folks and the questions they asked was a real education. Plus these were some of the finest folks you would care to meet.
Sure, I got the opportunity to do a presentation on marketing blogs, something I really enjoy, but BlawgThink was something more. For that, thanks to all.”
“If I actually use one-tenth of the stuff I came away with at BlawgThink, I’ll consider it a smashing success. This gathering of legal bloggers was, by far, the most invigorating conference I’ve ever attended. The sessions were informative and the guest list impressive.
But the best part was the networking with other blawggers. Yeah – you say that about every conference you go to – but this was some supercharged networking. In fact, it was built right into the the structure of day two which was based on the Open Space model. Imagine identifying everyone in the room who wants to talk about the same thing you do – then having a designated time to meet.”
“Spending a weekend together with so many bloggers at BlawgThink chewing over so many issues with which we all struggle was a true blessing to me. I gained innumerable tips and ideas that will guide my future blogging activities. I solidified my thinking about my blogging goals and methods. Most of all, I broke out of the isolation and came face to face with this online community.
It was a bit like an immigrant who never speaks his native language, but only reads it, getting invited to a party at which everyone converses in the mother tongue.”
“The best part of the conference, and one that was particularly emphasized, was the personal contact with other bloggers.”
“I got a good deal of tips, tricks, and technical advice from the conference, but the most important, most lasting, and most valuable portion of the event was to make deeper and more meaningful relationships with other bloggers. That was priceless.”
“It was an amazing experience!”
“I just returned from the Blawgthink conference in Chicago. As the name suggests, this was a group interested in law blogging and law bloggers. You know, you’d think a room full of lawyers would be boring. You’d be wrong actually. This group was a blast.”
“… an amazing and overwhelming day.”
“BlawgThink 2005 was truly awesome! Matt Homann and Dennis Kennedy did an incredible job pulling everything together with an incredible group of attendees and speakers. I will be posting further details and perspectives later in the week…suffice it to say I learned a lot and came away with some really valuable insights and ideas.”
Faculty Additions to BlawgThink
Sabrina Pacifici (LLRX.com, beSpacific) and Jeff Beard (LawTech Guru Blog) are joining the “faculty” at BlawgThink!
Keep the Change for Charity
I love this idea from Bank of America. According to the website:
Every time you buy something with a Bank of America Visa® debit card, we’ll round up your purchase to the nearest dollar amount and transfer the difference from your checking to your savings account free of charge. Because every bag of groceries, every coffee and every tank of gas adds up to more savings for you.
Now, all that’s missing is an option to donate the balance to charity.
Business Book Reading the Five by Five way.
Though nobody ever accused me of not having enough ideas (I’ll write a post on Idea Surplus Disorder soon), I’ve found a way to have even more:
Every day, I grab five business books off of my bookshelf and set aside 45 minutes or so. Then I read a chapter (chosen at random) from each. Though I’ve never been able to re-read books once I’ve completed them, I find that the short burst of cool ideas from five different authors really gets my creative juices flowing.
I’d love to know if works for you.
BlawgThink Day Two
Here’s the info on Day 2 of BlawgThink:
There is no ‘agenda’ for the second day of BlawgThink 2005. No panel presentations. No PowerPoints. No keynote speakers either. Instead, we rely upon our attendees –cool, smart, “big thinking” folks — to talk about stuff. Really.
We are going to start the day off with a peak into the future. Tom Mighell, Carolyn Elefant and Ernie “the attorney” Svenson will join hosts Matt Homann and Dennis Kennedy in a “Five by Five” brainstorming “jam session” on the future of blawgs, technology and law practice. After that, anything goes.
Missed something the first day? Want to learn more from one of the speakers? Want to teach something yourself? The second day of BlawgThink gives you the opportunity to make sure you get the most from your conference experience by bringing together all of our attendees for in-depth conversations on the topics they find most compelling.
Because most of the collaboration and learning in Day 2 will happen in small groups, each attendee has a uniquely different experience. However, past LexThink! attendees have agreed that the collaborative brainstorming is the most productive (and rewarding) part of the event. We’ll work hard to make sure the notes from every small group discussion are made available to every attendee days after the conference ends. In essence, as a BlawgThink attendee, you’ll be able to pick your own discussions while being a ‘fly on the wall’ in the others.
At the end of the day, we’ll share the ideas that our attendees found most compelling and give everyone an opportunity to continue their collaboration with wiki’s, conference calls, and future BlawgThink events.
BaseCamp for Lawyers?
One of the things I want to talk about at BlawgThink is using new technologies, particularly the cool Web 2.0 applications (including blogs), in law firms. I’ve been a big user of BaseCamp for quite some time, using it to manage LexThink personal projects. Here’s a neat tutorial about how to use it for time tracking. I don’t expect law firms to trust their time keeping to the folks at 37 signals just yet, but the idea is certainly interesting.
Join us in the Hallway.
Buzz understands what we are trying to accomplish at BlawgThink:
In all tech events, it seems like the best part are the hallway conversations. Hallways include lunch, breakfast, dinner, drinks. I keep meeting extraordinary people, who have ideas, companies, products that are often in the stage of evolution.
We recognize, like Buzz, that the best part of most conferences is never the conference. We’re working hard to change that. Like our first LexThink event this past April, we are trying to make those “hallway conversations” a significant part of BlawgThink. For example, we’ve built in 15 minutes between every session so attendees can have some time to talk with the presenters or with one another. We’ll also be collecting ideas from each session and use them as great starting points for the second day of collaborative brainstorming. Finally, we are going to make plenty of room available for people to engage in conversations with one another if they’d rather talk instead of attending sessions at all.
For some of our thinking about conferences, head on over to our brainstorming site and add your thoughts. Just remember to “save” when you are done.
Be a better entrepreneur.
Entrepreneur.com offers these 100 Ways to be a Better Entrepreneur. Great read.
BubbleMapping your To-Do List
I really like this idea for using a “Bubble Map” for a To-Do list. Now, if I could combine the bubble list with some bubble wrap so I’d get a satisfying “pop” everytime I finished a task.
Law Schools, Meet Art Schools. Art Schools, Meet Law Schools
J.D. Jordan writes a great piece in Newsweek titled, I’m an Artist, but not the Starving Kind. In it, he takes on the lack of practical business education in America’s law art schools. Some excerpts:
In my small, windowless classroom, in front of a baker’s dozen of powerful G5 computers that line the walls, sit tomorrow’s crop of great graphic designers, illustrators, filmmakers and animators. But despite their skills, their burgeoning individual styles and their unlimited creativity, they are crippled by the narrow focus of their education.
…
What about creative business and copyright law? What about intellectual rights and business ethics? For that matter, what about basic history or civics? In a field largely defined by individual inspiration and accomplishment, where is the foundation for personal and financial success? Perhaps in an attempt to compensate for public schools which have stripped their curricula of arts education, art schools have left their graduates unprepared for the real world.
…
But what can one professor do? These kids should have to take business education as a freshman requirement to learn how to manage their artistic enterprises before their enthusiasm sweeps them into a depreciated marketplace.
How prevalent is this problem in “professional” schools?
The Printable Partner – For Solos?
David Seah introduces his Printable CEO (remixed here), that he developed to help him in his solo business:
What I need is executive focus from a leader that understands how to grow my business, a manager that knows how to motivate me. I once read that the most effective executives ask themselves a simple question: What can I do to add value to the company? If the task at hand doesn’t add value, then screw it! Do something else that does!
Hiring my own personal CEO would be great, but who has the time and money to do an executive search? I’ve got MP3s to sort! So I did the next best thing: I designed a printable form to motivate my business development activities.
I really like this idea. Keeping track of billable time is one thing, but David’s idea forces you to keep track of business-building time as well — all with an easy scoring system. Simply brilliant.
Can You Bill that Power Nap to a File?
I’ve been playing around with Pzizz, a piece of napping software that “combines several different proven techniques to give you the most refreshing and revitalizing ‘nap’ possible.” You download the software (it comes with a free trial) to your Mac or PC, select the type and length of nap you want to take, and then Pzizz:
delivers literally billions of different combinations of suggestions through the structured language patterns and the sounds that encourage the subconscious not only to relax but also to focus and energize both the body and the mind. unique combination of music and suggestions.
It sounds crazy, but if you want a short nap to kickstart your afternoon, it really seems to work. I’ve noticed a difference in my energy after a 20 minute Pzizz nap vs. a normal one. Though I can’t tell if my desire to purchase the program stems from how much I like to nap, or subliminal suggestions from the program, I give Pzizz strong five Z’s.
Because you can download the naps onto an iPod, I can’t wait to try it with my Etymotic 6i headphones on my next plane ride.
Worker Blind for Big Law Associates
A few years ago, I visited one of my law school classmates at his BigLaw job in Chicago. When we ducked out for happy hour, he threw his coat over his chair, turned on his desk lamp, and opened a book on his desk so anyone who stopped by would think he was still working, but had just stepped out for a few minutes. If he’d only had this. Thanks to B2Day for the link.
What if I want to get to 11?
Steve Pavlina has another thought-provoking personal improvement post titled How to Get From a 7 to a 10. Steve opines on what it takes to make meaningful changes in your life and overcome personal or career stagnation. I liked this quote the best:
In physics terms I’m saying that what matters is not your position but your velocity. Velocity is a vector which has both a direction and a speed. Where you’re headed and how quickly is more important than where you are.
Onederwear that’s Fun to Wear
Not sure why this interests me, but as I travel more, I admit I’m a bit intrigued by this.
Don’t Talk About It, Be About It
Rick Klau points us to an article about two guys delivering high-tech (tv/internet/phone) services in the Bronx. Two quotes jumped out at me. The first is the title of this post and the second:
New York City is so big and so dense that you don’t have to be terribly successful to be terribly successful.
The company’s founder was suggesting that his company could be successful by focusing on a small part of the market and not worrying about competing with the “big boys.” However, the quote took me in a different direction. I read it and wonder if this is the ultimate reason why we see so little innovation in the legal marketplace among big law firms. I’ve beaten this drum before, but do big firms eschew change because they don’t have to be terribly successful to be terribly successful?
The story is obviously much different for small firm practitioners. Contrary to public perception, small firm lawyers have to be terribly successful to be terribly successful. Put another way, management skills become more important as firms get smaller because the consequences are greater — one month of failing to get the bills out on time can result in late mortgage payments or uncovered payrolls. For every small firm lawyer making $200K per year, I’d wager there are five small firm lawyers making $50K or less. I’d go further and suggest there is no measurable difference in legal skill between the successful lawyer and the lawyer opening his mail each day praying for some client checks to come in so he can pay his rent and his secretary.
What separates the two? Management skills. You know, those skills that aren’t taught at all in most large law schools. Think I’m kidding? Ask your lawyer what law school taught them about running a law firm. Why is there so little focus on management skills for lawyers in most law school curriculums? I’ve got a bunch more thoughts on the issue of the woeful failure of law schools (at least those in the “top tier”) to prepare future lawyers for the harsh realities of the legal business, but here’s one: Of the people running the law schools (deans, administrators, professors, etc.), how many of them have actually practiced law? Of that number, how many worked in a small firm environment? Even of those that worked in a large firm, how many stuck it out long enough to make partner and finally get exposed to the business side of legal practice?
We are creating generations of lawyers who aren’t taught by lawyers. And don’t give me this B.S. about law school teaching students to “think like lawyers” because that’s not true. Law students are taught to think like law professors. The most successful law students are the ones most likely to follow the same career path their professors did: clerkship/big firm/academia. If law schools were in the business of teaching students to “think like lawyers” they would be teaching them to think about marketing, client development, and how to pay the bills on time. Can’t remember much of that from my law student days.
Can the same be said for business students? Architecture students? Are those students as removed from the day-to-day business of their professions as law students are? I’m just asking. I know this is heresy, but law schools could take a page from chiropractic schools: teach a bit about running the business you are ”preparing” your students to enter.
The Cat Poking his Head Out of the Bag
LexThink Legal Blogging Summit. November 2005. Chicago. More soon.
Idea x Execution = Value
Derek Sivers does some “entrepreneurial” math:
AWFUL IDEA = -1
WEAK IDEA = 1
SO-SO IDEA = 5
GOOD IDEA = 10
GREAT IDEA = 15
BRILLIANT IDEA = 20NO EXECUTION = $1
WEAK EXECUTION = $1000
SO-SO- EXECUTION = $10,000
GOOD EXECUTION = $100,000
GREAT EXECUTION = $1,000,000
BRILLIANT EXECUTION = $10,000,000To make a business, you need to multiply the two.
Look at the Other Side of the Coin.
Zane Safrit, remembering Peter Jennings:
I’m not writing an eulogy. I’m writing because of one thing he said about covering the news. He compared it to looking at a coin. He always wanted to look at the other side.
This may be the single best explanation of true intellectual curiosity I’ve heard.
Unreasonable Requests
I had the pleasure of a long telephone conversation with Lisa Haneberg yesterday. Lisa gave me some great tips I’m sure to implement in my Innovation Coaching Program, but one thing she told me really got my attention. Each week, she resolves to make at least five “unreasonable requests” to people she has no business asking for favors. She reasons that if just one request is granted, she’s gotten a bit of a bonus that week. Doing a quick google search, I realize I’m not the only one impressed by Lisa’s approach.
I’m working on my list of unreasonable requests now. I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.
Announcing LexThink Innovation Coaching
I have spent the last two months working on a project I’m happy to announce here first: LexThink! Innovation Coaching. The formal announcement will come September 1, 2005, but I wanted to share a sneak peak at my business plan with my blog readers.
- Seventeen Clients: I’m absolutely focused on giving my clients the best coaching experience they’ve ever received. Each coaching class will be limited to seventeen clients because that’s the number I can best serve.
- Seventeen Days: My ideal coaching client is a busy professional who is unwilling to make a long-term commitment to a business coach. That’s why I’m limiting the duration of the coaching program to seventeen days. Here’s how it will work:
- For the first three weeks (Monday through Friday), coaching clients will get twice-weekly coaching calls from me, take part in small group discussions, and complete daily creativity and idea-generation exercises as they learn to make innovation a regular part of their business day.
- The last two days (day 16 and 17) will be spent in a LexThink-like collaborative brainstorming retreat where clients and I will get to spend time with one another, build lasting relationships among ourselves, and put our innovative ideas into practice.
- Virtual Assistance: I want to give my clients the gift of time to fully invest in the coaching relationship, so each coaching client will have access to a virtual assistant for the duration of the program, at no extra charge. The clients will be able to offload delegable tasks to their virtual assistants so they can spend more time working on their businesses and not just in them.
- Access to the Experts: Each week, there will be a Saturday School conference call where my coaching clients will have access to a business or productivity superstar for an hour.
- Technology that Works: Each individual coaching telephone call and small-group discussion will be recorded and made available as a podcast for the clients to listen to again. Each coaching client will have their own web-based portal to keep track of their milestones, assignments, upcoming calls, goals, and to-do’s.
- Continuing Collaboration: Every year, I’ll invite all of my coaching clients back for an Idea Retreat where they can meet old friends and make new ones.
- All Inclusive Price: The coaching, conference calls, virtual assistance, and retreat (hotel and food) are all included in the price, which is $3,000. I’m giving a $1,000.00 discount to the first seventeen clients who sign up and agree to be my “Beta Testers.” The first coaching group will start mid-September.
- Satisfaction Guarantee: If you are not completely satisfied with your LexThink Innovation Coaching experience, and feel that you’ve gotten less than a 3 to 1 return on your investment, I’ll gladly refund whatever portion of your fee you feel I haven’t earned.
If you are interested, e-mail me at Matt@LexThink.com.
I can’t do that because it is impossible!
I found this great creativity exercise called The Impossibility Question. Check it out.
Tips to Liven Up Boring Meeting Space
These great tips for making boring conference/meeting space more conducive to creative thought come from Eva Niewiadomski, founder of Catalyst Ranch (an absolutely amazing conference space in Chicago where we hosted our first LexThink!): Eva also suggests a few things to place on the tables: Finally, Eva shared a bunch of “icebreakers” to use to start a meeting. My favorite? A backwards spelling bee: Compile a list of reasonably common words with over 8 letters. Place them each separately on a colored index card. Give a pile to each team. Each team goes one at a time and is allotted 3 minutes in which to correctly spell as many words backwards as they can. One team member is in charge of reading off the words and each team member must take their turn. Of course, no pencils or paper are allowed.
Bring a small boom box and a couple of homemade CDs with an eclectic and exoticly wild mix of music to set the mood for the meeting. Try to pick music that most people are not familiar with, but that is energetic.
Use an unusual noisemaker to get people’s attention or to tell them when to start or finish an exercise (ie. bike horn, rattle, maracas, dinner bell, gong).
Set up a station near the door where participants create their nametags instead of using preprinted or standard issue nametags. Provide them with different colored markers, stickers, mini-stamper markers and tell them to have some fun.
Have the group actually create something during the icebreaker exercise that will give the room some character.
Drape a few feather boas over several of the chairs.
Place various ties, hats and wigs around the room and on the chairs.
Bring small nerf guns and hoola-hoops.
Pipe cleaners in cool containers
Play-Doh
Small etch-a-sketches
Funny rubber noses
Containers of crayons, coloring pencils and colored markers/funky colored pens
Small mazes, puzzles
Bowls of wild mixed candies and chocolates
Yo-Yos
Interesting books and magazines with lots of pictures
Postcards you’ve received over the years
Coloring books
Conference Idea Management
This is one of three announcements from me this week. My friend Ed Poll, legal management guru, is promoting a Speaker’s Conference that takes place in Palm Springs, California. Ed and I had lunch the other day and we started brainstorming a bit on ways to improve the attendees’ experience. I suggested adding on a LexThink-like component of brainstorming, idea collection and sharing on to the conference and Ed thought it was a great idea.
So, after much more thinking about what could work (and what wouldn’t), I’m happy to announce that LexThink! will be providing the Conference Idea Management for the National Speakers Association’s event. Here is what we’ll do:
- Provide a means to capture (in a very analog way, probably with markets and various sized Post-it notes) breakthrough ideas and insights from the attendees before, during, and after each speaker’s program.
- Collect and organize those ideas by posting them in the LexThink! Lounge — sort of an “idea gallery” situated in the conference hotel. Attendees can browse the gallery, add new insights, move notes around, and engage in conversations about the cool ideas they see. We’ll make sure the speakers spend some time there too.
- Set out a place to collect and share all of the “dumb questions” and “stupid ideas” people have, but are afraid to state in public (I’m betting the best ideas from the event will be first found on the “stupid” wall).
- Integrate certain brainstorming and creativity exercises into the conference to get people ready to “Think Big Thoughts.”
- Collect real-time feedback on the efficacy of the conference, and things that could be changed.
- Digitize the ideas and share them with the attendees via e-mail/wiki/blog so they can continue to be energized by the creativity of the group.
Ed has been gracious enough to let us test our concept at his group’s event. If it works as I believe it will, we’ll be doing this more regularly. If you have interest, ideas, or suggestions, let me know.
Fix your back office.
In one of those posts from a comment from a post kind of way comes this: Fix the Employee Cafeteria and You’ll Fix the Customer Relationship. Check it out, you’ll see what I mean.
Blogher Brain Dump
I just returned from Blogher and I had a wonderful time. Though one of only a handful of men, I was made to feel welcome, and learned far more than I’d hoped. I made dozens of new friends and connected in person with some old ones. I’ll expand my thoughts more later, but here are a few of my random notes, ideas and to-do’s, in no particular order (I’ll come back and add links later):
-
Music videos playing on a big screen before conference started — great idea!
-
All name tags had blog address, not hometown or company name.
-
The biggest problem with “technology” conferences? Too much technology. At some round tables every attendee had laptops on while they furiously blogged the event. This seriously hampered the opportunity for face-to-face interaction. I’d wager some people sat across from someone they’d love to meet, but never introduced themselves because they were too busy using their computers. If the best part of conferences is personal interaction, why even allow laptops? They are a barrier to communication — it is almost as if everyone was in their own personal cubicle. Do laptops promote the “cubiclization” of conferences? If everyone is going to be blogging the event the whole time they are there, why not just do a “virtual” conference instead. (NOTE: There were plenty of opportunities for talk at Blogher, so this is more of a general impression about use of computers during conferences then a specific criticism of the Blogher.)
-
Every table had powerstrips under it!
-
Apple laptops were used by at least half of the attendees. Though I went totally analog (Moleskine and pen) and didn’t use my tablet, I don’t think I saw more then two other Tablet PC’s the rest of the event.
-
Is blogging a crutch? Is it a valid substitute for face-to-face conversation? I think blogging should be used as an introduction to people you want to meet in person, because no matter how cool someone is on her blog, she is much more interesting in person.
-
They took away a men’s restroom and gave it to the women. Touche!
-
Some interesting phrases overheard:
-
“Tina Turner the microphone,” which means put it closer to your mouth so your voice is amplified.
-
Yoga “really zenned her out.”
-
“There was a circus going on in his brain.”
-
“Xanga drama.”
-
Speakers, don’t depend upon wi-fi for showing web pages during presentations. Download the pages and be prepared to show a static screen shot. Sure beats the blank screen. This is the third conference in a row where I’ve seen this happen. This tip needs to be in the speaker guidelines for every conference.
-
Adancedtools.blogspot.com has tips and tricks from a great presentation.
-
Do men comment on blogs differently than women do? I’d love to see a study that strips (or changes) gender identity from negative blog comments and see if the comment is perceived differently if it came from a woman vs. a man.
-
We need software to mash up API’s from different services. I want to combine maps with flickr with google with delicious with technorati with ta-da lists with whatever else cool comes out tomorrow — and I want it to be as easy as posting to my blog.
-
Women are often described with codewords like “emotional” and “sassy” that never are used to describe men.
-
While anger can be used as a tool, sometimes the person who’s angry is a tool.
-
When more people use RSS to get their blog content, does that marginalize the importance of blog design and use of comments? Put another way, if more and more readers only see your blog via RSS, but don’t visit individual posts to read the continuing dialog in your comments, will the two-way conversational nature of blogs begin to matter less?
-
Myth: If a book has pink on the cover (or stripes or shoes) and is classified as “chicklit” it is not the same quality as a book with an airplane or other weapon on the cover.
-
I think I heard this stat: 90% of bloggers are between the ages of 9 and 29. If so, this will have a tremendous impact on how Generation Y judges the quality and credibility of the people and products they will buy. Lawyers, if you think blogging today is important, think about not having a blog when a huge percentage of your potential customers will use it as a measuring stick of your “with-it-ness”. Just as lawyers felt they had to be included in Martindale Hubbel to be credible 10 years ago, they’ll need to have blogs to be credible 10 years from today.
-
Another teen stat: 9 out of 10 teens are online, with 50% online every day.
-
For teen “identity bloggers” (another great term used to describe bloggers who write about their daily experiences), what impact will living their life online have upon them when they reach adulthood? Is identity blogging like getting a tattoo? Easy to impulsively justify today, but hard to reverse tomorrow?
-
Is reading teen identity blogs engaging in Real Time Anthropology? What should parents and teachers do if they know their children or students blog? Is there an obligation (analogous to mandatory reporting of child abuse) to read these blogs and intervene if child/teen blogs about dangerous behavior. Does every teacher need to subscribe to their students’ RSS feed?
-
Taking the Real Time Anthropology in a different direction: what are businesses doing to capitalize upon this tremendous insight into the minds of their current and future customers?
-
Someone introduced a speaker as someone who “blogs for a non-profit.” I’d argue we all blog for non-profits. ;-)
-
Interesting question from another (female) attendee: Does credibility equate with appearance for women more/less than it does for men? I think that blogs can replace that first impression with a virtual one. If you know someone’s blog and read it, you are likely to have already formed a first impression of them. Their appearance matters less when you later see them in person.
-
Another great line: She looks like her blog.
-
There is a market for RSSperts out there. Heard RSS described as “TiVo for the web.”
-
From an unremembered study cited by a panelist: We trust marketing message more if we have control over the method by which that message is delivered.
-
I want to be able to add a feed to my aggregator from a link in a post that I’m viewing in my aggregator. For example, if I read a post that links to a great blog, I want to be able to add the new blog to my aggregator without having to visit it –– particularly handy if I’m reading off line.
-
In a legal software package, each case needs an RSS feed. Lawyers and clients will then be automatically updated when something happens in their case(s).
-
I also want an RSS feed for stale to-do items so they get delivered to me as reminders. Alternatively, I want to be able to “snooze” a feed in my aggregator so it comes back to me in a defined amount of time.
Amazing stuff. I have so much more swimming in my head, but wanted to dump this on you for now. Check back later today for a cool announcement.
Technorati tag: blogher
A few things I wish I’d known sooner.
Via Lifehacker comes a pointer to Tricks of the Trade, a blog containing “Professional secrets from those in the know.” Some of my favorites that are applicable to other professions (well, at least some of them are):
Police Officer: Here’s an easy way to know if people are lying: they touch their faces. Even if they know not to, most people when under pressure and telling a lie will tug on their ears or scratch their noses.
Residential Developer: Here are some ways to make even the smallest condo seem spacious. Remove all interior doors — no one notices, and hallways and rooms immediately feel bigger and more open. Use custom-built furniture scaled down for the space. Glass and lucite tables ‘disappear,’ and large framed mirrors magnify space. Lastly, print take-away floor plans on huge sheets of quality paper — even a 450 square-foot studio suite looks exciting and big on an attractive 11×17 sheet.
Professor: If you have to give a poor grade to a student you know is going to object, put a lesser grade beside it on the paper and then scribble it out (but not so much that the student can’t make it out). It will make them think that you originally gave them the lesser grade but then raised it after some thought. 99.9% percent of the time this will prevent them harassing you.
Bellboy: When you let guests into their rooms, ask to use their phone, pretend to dial the front desk, and say, “I’m in room 204 with Mr. and Mrs. X, and I just want to make sure that the problems we’ve had with the loud guests in room 304 have been resolved. Because otherwise I’m going to move these people to 233. They checked out today? Excellent, thank you.” Hang up, smile modestly, and get ready for a large tip.
Adult Music Teacher: Life is too short to spend with uninterested students who rarely practice and never make progress. To “fire” these students, just say, “I know you’re very busy and don’t have much time for practicing right now. Tell you what: why don’t you call me when you feel prepared and we’ll schedule a lesson.” Nine times out of ten you’ll never hear from them again.
Painter: Before resealing a can of paint, blow one deep breath into the can and close it quickly. You’ll fill it with carbon dioxide, which will keep the paint from oxidizing prevent it from developing the “skin” that paint gets when it sits a while.
Googlevangelism and the Power of Creating the First “Wow!”
Is Microsoft’s new Virtual Earth better than Google Maps? Does it matter? If you’ve used both, think about the first time you used each. I’ll wager your first reaction to Google’s service was an unrestrained “Wow!” If, like me, you tried Virtual Earth this week, I’ll bet your reaction was much more restrained. Not exactly a “been there, done that” reaction, but the “wow” was missing. At least mine was.
In the past 24 hours, I’ve done three map searches. Used Google Maps each time. As I write this, I’m not sure why I didn’t think about Virtual Earth. I think it has something to do with the “Wow” I first got from Google that I didn’t get from Microsoft. That synaptic connection between “wow” and “maps” forged in my brain means MS won’t get much of my mapping business — at least not until Microsoft can trump Google’s “wow” with their own. And Google is so good at what they do, I’d be surprised if anyone can make an order of magnitude improvement in online mapping again.
So what’s left? Microsoft and Google will continue to make incremental improvements in their mapping services. Each incremental improvement will benefit the users of each service, but won’t draw anyone but the most fickle users from one service to the other. If you use Google Maps today, you will probably be using it six months from now. Same goes for Virtual Earth.
So what’s the lesson? Be first with your “wow.” Even if you know someone else is capable of building a better “wow,” if you get there first you’ve won the most significant battle.
Lawyers, if you fear adopting value billing because you think your competitors in town will just copy your business model while undercutting you on price, don’t fear. Be the first. Be different. Deliver your “Wow” first. Even if the other lawyers in town start doing what you are doing (even doing it better), they won’t be remembered as the first. You created the first “wow,” and will continue to profit from it.
… at least until someone blows you out of the water with an order of magnitude improvement. Just ask Mapquest.
Don’t be a Binary Thinker
From Management By Baseball:
Binary thinking is where the decisionmaker views things as having two opposite possibilities, and no others. Nuance tends to be winnowed out for the binary thinker. What channel shall I distribute through…direct or indirect? Is Jacques Chirac good or evil? Should I plant soybeans or sorghum? Should I expand our markets or look for a buyer? Shall I consumer 950 calories a day or not bother to diet at all?
Binary thinkers are mentally and usually physically uncomfortable in the grey areas (and almost all the best possible decisions are grey areas).
As lawyers, we often think we are masters of the “grey areas,” but I don’t think we are. We spend much of our time advising our clients to stay out of those grey areas and are often afraid to inhabit them ourselves.
Here’s a quick exercise: Take a three pieces of paper, and label one each BLACK, WHITE, and GREY. Take a problem you are facing and write it on the top of each page. On the WHITE page, write all of the “safe” solutions to your problem. On the BLACK page, write all of the dangerous solutions — the ones that would never work and that you’d be absolutely crazy (or criminal) to try. Finally, on the GREY page write some solutions that fall somewhere in between. Try to get at least 7 solutions on each page. Once you are done, spend a bit of time (and if it’s a client problem, go ahead and bill them for it) concentrating on the grey area. You will likely find your best solution there.
Do a Life Dinner
Brad Feld shares his tips for improving work/life balance. The one tip I’m putting into practice right away:
Life Dinner: We have a standing date on the first day of every month that we call life dinner. Occasionally we’ll invite friends; often we have dinner alone. We have a ritual where we give each other a gift ranging in value from nominal / silly (a fart machine) to expensive / romantic (jewelry). We spend the evening talking about the previous month and about the month to come, grounding ourselves in our current reality.
This would be a good practice for a small business as well. Have a “Business Dinner” each month for the folks in the office and their spouses. Invite a few key clients too. Spend the dinner talking about the past, the future, and ways to make your business better.
Buy more advice.
I don’t often link to Seth Godin. Oh, I’m like the rest of the blogosphere and think he’s brilliant and all, but I figure that if you read my blog, you are probably also reading his. However, something he said in a post today struck me, and I wanted to throw it in a post to make sure I could find it again. It’s this:
I think most organizations don’t buy nearly enough advice. They go 97% of the way, do 97% of the work, make all the investments… but then they get too tired and too stuck to actually do the high leverage stuff that works. So yes, buy advice. Buy a lot of it. But most important, understand why the advice is good advice, really understand the dynamic behind it–then you won’t have any trouble selling the idea, because it’s not the advice giver that matters… it’s the advice.
Your next ten hires.
Tom Peters summarizes a new book by Tom Kelley of IDEO, titled the Ten Faces of Innovation. In the book (not yet available), Kelley identifies ten people every organization needs to build an innovative workplace. How many of these folks does your organization have?
The Anthropologist. Master of human behavior … “gets” the user.
The Experimenter. Mr/Ms Fast Prototype.
The Cross-pollinator. Explores odd connections.
The Hurdler. Master remover of B.S. roadblocks.
The Collaborator. Brings intriguing combinations of people together.
The Director. Brings out the creative best from an odd mix of talents.
The Experience Architect. Turns “products” into “performances.”
The Set Designer. Creates fabulous office environments that foster constant innovation.
The Caregiver. Anticipates customer needs like a magician.
The Storyteller. Creates narratives that capture the spirit of the group and its products/services/experiences.
Does this mean solos can’t be innovative? Or do we need to add six or seven “hats” to the ones we already wear?
Before you go to your next conference, take this advice.
Here are some great trade show tips from Gaspedal. I really liked these three:
6> Speakers: How to turn the audience into customers: If you don’t have a handout, you’ve wasted your time. You spent all this time and money to speak, then you give people no way to buy from you. Always print a 1-page flyer, staple it to a printout of your slides, and put it on every single chair before you start. It’s a guaranteed way to get new business.
9> Travel light: Leave the briefcase behind. Take no paper from vendors. Just bring a nice suit and business cards. You’re here to meet people and have conversations. You don’t need any stuff. Spare your back, lighten your load. You’ll be in a better mood and you’ll be more effective.
15> Skip the Sessions, Work the Halls: If you’re looking for customers then never go to a presentation. You can’t network in a dark room during a speech.
Don’t forget the barbed wire.
In what may be my only Martha Stewart related post this year, I had to share this snippet from Worthwhile (quoting a Vanity Fair piece on the Maven of Style):
Martha Stewart’s business precepts, as she tells Vanity Fair’s Matt Tyrnauer, are: 1) People Matter. 2) Invest to get perfection. 3) You have to take risks.
And what does foresee as the future of stylish living? (Hint: It’s exactly the opposite of the ornate tract-mansions featured in most magazines and being built everywhere I look.)
Instead, Martha has been studying Shaker design: “I want to have a new kind of house, a smart house,” she tells Vanity Fair. “No paints on the exterior, stamped-concrete floors, really simple and planned to reduce the maintenance. This is going to be the future.”
And a stainless-steel lavatory and toilet in the corner too? Sounds like she’s describing the place she just left, not the one she’s going to build. Is this the new prison chic? (Also, did she just use the word “invest” to describe one of her business precepts?)
Evaluate your Distractions
Jason Womack shares an interesting productivity idea he received from a client, the Distraction Evaluation:
That’s the process I use to eliminate anything in my field of vision that bothers me in any way and interferes with my ability to proceed with what needs to get done. It could be something as simple as a picture I am tired of looking at, or it could be processing the Inbox earlier in the day than I might otherwise. Whatever interferes with my mind’s eye of where I see I need to be, if that makes sense, gets dealt with during “Distraction evacuation.
I’ve already set aside time to do mine this evening.
I wish those big firms had taken this advice.
Fresh off my post yesterday about all of those AmLaw 100 firms that wouldn’t have hired me out of law school comes this bit of advice from StartupNation I’d wish those hiring partners had embraced:
Whenever you need to add a new person to your team, make the decision easy on yourself: just hire the ones who smile.
. . .
Here’s my point … when you’re making decisions about which humans to select for your team, even if these people will only communicate internally with other team members and not interact with your customer community, you can’t go wrong with smilers! Of course you’ll consider team chemistry/fit (in my opinion, THE most important conventional selection criteria – and I spent 19 years as an executive recruiter helping companies make these choices) and a person’s skill level to do the job at hand, along with lesser important factors as you make hiring decisions. But when it comes down to that ultimate choice differentiator, go with the smile!
At least I’m pretty sure I was smiling at the beginning of the interview.
Hackaday keeps the doldrums at bay.
Could your firm benefit from a hackathon? From Bnoopy:
The idea is that you make a day-long event (at whatever frequency you want) where everyone works on something that is:
- valuable to the company
- but not what they’re “supposed” to be working on and
- that can be taken from idea to working prototype in one day
We started our hackathon at 9:00am and ended at 8:00pm. From 8:00-10:00pm we did presentations where each team member or group showed their work.
We did our first hackathon last Thursday and the results were amazing. It’s unbelievable what you can get done in a day with a focused, motivated and creative team.When you give people the time to do the thing that always seems “just out of reach” people’s creativity cracks wide open. Check out the specific results here.
What was particularly cool was the energy it brought to the team. People felt envigorated and recharged. In fact, one of our engineers was so excited he exclaimed (during the presentations) “Dude, I just want to crawl into my hole [his cube], grow a beard, a build shit!”. I couldn’t have put it any better myself.
Are you truly smart?
Scott Berkun writes essays. Really smart and useful ones. A recent favorite is Essay #40 Why Smart People Defend Bad Ideas. Now I know lawyers are trained to defend bad ideas (or at least advocate for clients with bad ideas), but what really struck me when I read the essay is just how often I’ve seen this behavior in opposing counsel, colleagues, and even myself. Read the entire essay. Here are just a few choice excerpts.
On the problem with smart people:
The problem with smart people is that they like to be right and sometimes will defend ideas to the death rather than admit they’re wrong. This is bad. Worse, if they got away with it when they were young (say, because they were smarter than their parents, their friends, and their parent’s friends) they’ve probably built an ego around being right, and will therefore defend their perfect record of invented righteousness to the death. Smart people often fall into the trap of preferring to be right even if it’s based in delusion, or results in them, or their loved ones, becoming miserable. (Somewhere in your town there is a row of graves at the cemetery, called smartypants lane, filled with people who were buried at poorly attended funerals, whose headstones say “Well, at least I was right.”)
And on setting priorities, intelligence, and wisdom:
At any moment on any project there are an infinite number of levels of problem solving. Part of being a truly smart person is to know which level is the right one at a given time. For example, if you are skidding out of control at 95mph in your broken down Winnebago on an ice covered interstate, when a semi-truck filled with both poorly packaged fireworks and loosely bundled spark plugs slams on its brakes, it’s not the right time to discuss with your passengers where y’all would like to stop for dinner. But as ridiculous as this scenario sounds, it happens all the time. People worry about the wrong thing at the wrong time and apply their intelligence in ways that doesn’t serve the greater good of whatever they’re trying to achieve. Some call this difference in skill wisdom, in that the wise know what to be thinking about, where as the merely intelligent only know how to think. (The de-emphasis of wisdom is an east vs. west dichotomy: eastern philosophy heavily emphasizes deeper wisdom, where as the post enlightenment west, and perhaps particularly America, heavily emphasizes the intellectual flourishes of intelligence).
And this, on communal thinking and why attorneys still bill by the hour (sort of):
Just because everyone in the room is smart doesn’t mean that collectively they will arrive at smart ideas. The power of peer pressure is that it works on our psychology, not our intellect. As social animals we are heavily influenced by how the people around us behave, and the quality of our own internal decision making varies widely depending on the environment we currently are in. (e.g. Try to write a haiku poem while standing in an elevator with 15 opera singers screaming 15 different operas, in 15 different languages, in falsetto, directly at you vs. sitting on a bench in a quiet stretch of open woods).
That said, the more homogeneous a group of people are in their thinking, the narrower the range of ideas that the group will openly consider. The more open minded, creative, and courageous a group is, the wider the pool of ideas they’ll be capable of exploring.
If you break it, it may ultimately pay for itself.
Christopher Carfi shares an interesting Warren Buffett quote in this post titled, In Search of Failure:
“I often felt there might be more to be gained by studying business failures than business successes. In my business, we try to study where people go astray, and why things don’t work…Albert Einstein said ‘Invert, always invert, in mathematics and physics,’ and it’s a very good idea in business, too. Start out with failure, and then engineer its removal.” – Warren Buffett
So, seek out what is broken, figure out why it broke, and go fix it. Excellent advice.
Sock it to me
I’m a big fan of Idea-a-Day and subscribe to their daily e-mail alert. The other day, this one graced my in-box:
Create a sorter in the style of coin sorters, but for socks. It would be able to pair them up, and hold one by until the other sock of the pair was inserted into the machine. It would also dispose of socks with holes in, and throw away the other one when it is inserted. Day 1710 by Becky Walpole
If you want to get a daily dose of cool and quirky ideas, go ahead and subscribe.
Think in Ink
Finally, a blog about working in ink that has nothing to do with the Tablet PC.
The Best Productivity System Ever
Patrick (last name unknown) wrote about his productivity system in a comment to this really great post from Ishbadiddle:
The best system IS the one that works for you. Here’s mine:
1) Get married
2) When something needs to be done ask your spouse to do it
3) Prioritize: If your wife says that she will do it, it is important.
If your wife says that you should do it, it’s kinda important.
If she doesn’t say anything, it’s not very important.
4) Go to the web and read up on all the past episodes of “The Shield”
5) Let a week pass.
6) Ask your wife if she did “those things” she was supposed to do. Look concerned.
7) She will ask you if have done your things. Look exhausted and say you will try.
8) Do this for a couple of months. Every once and while ask her “Isn’t there something we were supposed to do this week?” This will ensure that little things don’t fall between the cracks. It also implies that you care, which believe me fellas, goes a long way.
9) Do one or two things that your wife has reminded you to do three or four times.
10) Go back to step 2.
Single Sentence Procrastination Fix
Overcoming Procrastination Through the Pull Method:
I choose to start on one small imperfect step, knowing that I have plenty of time to enjoy life.
LexThink.com is Now Live
Dennis, Sherry, and I have been working hard on LexThink! 2.0 and we’ll have some news to share next week. For now, take a look at our new web site. It is still in beta, and we will be adding a lot more to it in the next 7 days, including forums, multiple RSS feeds, and more entries in the blog. I created the site using Squarespace, a hosted blogging tool that has tons of cool features, and am pretty pleased with the result. Let me know what you think, and stay tuned for some news on LexThink! Solo: Building the Perfect One Person Enterprise.
Pair up for productivity
In the most recent issue of Steelcase’s 360 e-zine is an article titled The Next Evolution of the Personal Workspace that suggests working in pairs (dyads) offers demonstrable increases in productivity, innovation, and workplace morale.
When pairs collaborate, they build on each other’s thoughts and ideas in a process that psychologists call “laddering.” This process starts when we’re young and is critical to how we learn. Dr. Charles Crook, a British psychologist and researcher, notes that how much people can learn is limited when they work alone, and that learning can be taken farther if people work and learn together. “Collaboration is critical to learning,” he says.
An interesting study, pointed out in the article, looked at travel agents (who often work in pairs with their clients) before and after their workplaces were changed to encourage dyadic work:
When a better workspace was created that allowed side-by-side collaboration and supported multi-connected displays, the results were clear:
-
privacy was increased for the pair
-
customers were more engaged and active customers could more easily track itineraries and costs
-
redundant work was eliminated
-
transaction costs decreased
-
customers reported a better experience and more satisfaction due to the physical set-up
-
transaction time was reduced to 5-10 minutes vs. the typical 30 minutes
Should lawyers and other professionals work more often in pairs? The study seems to suggest a pretty significant improvement in efficiency and customer satisfaction. Sadly, there was no study on how much clients liked being billed at two professionals’ hourly rates instead of just one’s. (sarcasm intended)
Law Students, Don’t Hold Your Breath
Thanks to Rob at BusinessPundit for a pointer to this BusinessWeek article on Rensselaer’s new MBA program:
For starters, the degree is broken down into five “streams of knowledge,” rather than traditional majors or concentrations. Each stream delves into a different aspect of business, such as Creating & Managing an Enterprise, and Networks, Innovation & Value Creation. It’s not that students don’t learn economics, marketing, or strategy. Instead, each of those basics is blended into the larger concepts. A typical class might involve a discussion, led by a finance professor, of a company’s change in value after a corporate merger, followed by a look at the case by a management prof from an operations point of view. Because the teaching is rooted in events in the contemporary marketplace, there are no textbooks per se. “Our textbooks are newspaper and magazine articles,” says Phillip H. Phan, professor of strategic management and entrepreneurship.
Coming soon to a law school near you? Get serious.
It is all about the customer…
Steve Nipper sent me to this site that has a bunch of redone romance novel covers. Even though most are semi-work safe, close your door anyway because they are so funny, everyone will want to see why you are laughing so hard.
(Steve saw it first on BoingBoing.)
Build your business backwards.
As we work to turn LexThink into a sustainable business enterprise, I’ve been thinking a lot about the lessons that came from our first event. One of the best discussions centered around the idea that to build your perfect firm, you must first identify your perfect client. Sean D’Souza must have been a fly on the wall in that conversation, because he hits the nail on the head with this post, which I’m liberally excerpting below:
Which way, you ask? Why not reach out into the mind of someone you know. What is that person’s name? What do they do in their business? What problem do they have? Can you ask them what problem they have? Can you narrow down what’s stopping their profit? What would take that person (whoever that person is) to the next level?
Think of a fictional Natalie. Or a fictional Bruce. What is he doing right now? What is she frustrated with? Where does he want his business to go? Why is she unable to take weekends off? All of these issues are gaps.
Find out where you can fix the gaps. Bruce and Natalie have loads of issues. And you can be a specialist in fixing just a few of those issues. What can you fix?
Think backwards. Start with a target audience. Think about them, sitting at their desk at 7pm on Saturday night. What would change their life? How can you change their life?
You’re a specialist. What do you do best? Think intently. What we have here is more than just an audio logo or a communication issue. What we need to have is a deep understanding. When we think in specifics, the specifics reveal themselves.
Does LexThink Strike Again?
Jeremy Blachman, a LexThink attendee, wants to improve big firm life:
I just feel like there’s some room for thinking here, there’s some room for brainstorming about institutional change, and putting some smart people together to solve this puzzle of why so many people working at these places don’t seem all that happy about it and what some better models might be, or way to fix these models, or maybe even just explain why the current model is actually working quite well. And to get the fresh perspectives of people who are first going into this, and the perspectives of people already there, people who love it, people who don’t, I don’t know — I feel like maybe something good and interesting and fun could emerge.
The World is Flat?
Connie Crosby has some great quotes from an interview with Thomas L. Friedman, author of the book The World is Flat: Where Were You When You Realized the World Is Flat? (Or Have You?). Some really interesting food for thought:
We are led by lawyers who do not understand either technology or balance sheets. I am hoping, though, that many of them have kids, who, when they have a moment to take a break from their iPods, Internet, or Google, will explain to their parents running the country just how the world is being flattened.
Go to Connie’s post for a bunch more quotes, and if you are interested, buy the book. It just made it on to my reading list.
Chickens in your backyard, and other cool trends.
I really love my Trendspotting newsletter. This table of contents for this month’s edition includes:
Urban farming
Cruises for the MASS CLASS
Design or die!
Pleasure Cards
Three innovative t-shirt concepts
TRYVERTISING intermediairies
Check it out by subscribing here.
Take Five and be a Better Boss
Rosa Say has another great tip in her post titled The Daily Five Minutes. She suggests that each day, managers give five minutes of “no-agenda time” to at least one employee. Here are some benefits to the managers:
In the process of developing this habit, they greatly improved their own approachability. They had nurtured a circle of comfort for their employees to step into and talk to them——whenever time presented itself. The Daily Five Minutes itself soon became a more personal thing. Employees started to share their lives with them——what they did over the weekend, how their kids were doing in school, how they felt about a local news story. Managers began to know their employees very well, and their employees began to relate to them more as people and not just as managers. They were practicing the art of ‘Ike loa together.
Managers ceased to judge employee situations prematurely, for they had built up a relationship that demanded all be allowed to speak first——and they wanted to speak with their employees, sure they’d receive more clarity. The Daily Five Minutes became a “safe zone” where employees felt they could talk story with their manager “off the record,” and managers learned to ask, “Are you venting, or asking for help? Do I keep this in confidence, or do you expect me to take action?” It became clearer who was responsible for following up on things. Managers had less and less of those “if only I had known about this sooner” surprises.
Think about doing a Daily Five Minutes with all of your employees. Then extend it to your clients and see what happens!
What Would Vader Do?
Well, Darth Vader has a blog. Here are some great management tips from the guru himself:
Vader on Managing Difficult Employees: …You try to be an effective manager, you weed out the bad apples like the late Admiral Ozzel — only to find that an insidious culture of incompetence has somehow transformed your deadly pan-galactic armada into a fleet of spaceballs.
And this response to a comment: While you may feel at first this approach to be overly broad-handed, have you considered killing people who don’t do your bidding or sing your praises? Try it. It’s cathartic, and it doesn’t take long for others to really get with the programme. Good luck!
Vader on Innovation: Admiral Ozzol took the fleet out of hyperspace too close to Hoth, and the Rebel Alliance were — you guessed it — alerted to our approach. The cornerstone of Ozzel’s arrogance is his insistence that rebel technology is so vastly inferior to Imperial technology that we need broker no caution.
This attitude is typical of a man who could not rephase his own fusion orb if his life depended on it. He cannot fathom what rebel engineers may accomplish out of desperation. People who are good with things, people like me, can appreciate the infinite diversity of possible tools buried in artful combinations of even the humblest technologies. Give me an hour to reconfigure an industrial grade repulsolift and I will give you an ion cannon and enough parts left over to build a droid to run it.
Ozzel just isn’t the creative type.
Vader on Negotiation Strategy: What crystallized the situation for me was something the Duke of Foulbash said, bringing his brown fist down on the table: “Lord Vader, what is at stake here is a millennium of tradition! That is the heart of this matter.”
The Duke was right. I told him so. Then I assassinated the entire royal family, down to the last forgotten bastard.
And do you know what? The Trime System is a leading commercial concern in the sector today. They grieved but they got over it. Once liberated from the yoke of an insoluble, deeply emotional dilemma the people of the Trimean worlds were free to build new bonds, to establish vibrant new institutions, and to create new traditions.
Vader on Client Transparency: “You may ask,” I told him, turning away to the glass. “As an ant may ask the sun why it shines. It is beyond you, Admiral. See to your duty.”
Vader on Dealing with Technology: It can be challenging to maintain your dignity as a dark tyrannical overlord when the circuitry in your left leg constantly misfires, threatening to send you off on a mad pirouette without notice.
Next time you are faced with a management conundrum, just ask Vader! Leave a comment to his latest post. You might just get a response from the Dark Lord himself. Just don’t be a smart ass, in his bio, Darth says he “enjoys fixing things, listening to music, and crushing people’s treacheas with his mind.”
I was robbed!
OK, I didn’t get chosen as one of Legal Affairs Top Twenty Legal Thinkers in America. I demand a recount, because if you Google “Most Influential Legal Thinker” I’m number two!
Become a Client to Become Visionary.
One of the themes that came out of LexThink was that, in order to build the perfect law firm, you first needed to identify your “perfect” client — one you could be passionate about serving — and then ask them what they needed/wanted in a lawyer.
In this post about the development of the first computer spreadsheet program, Tom Evslin argues that VisiCalc would have never been developed if the programmers had asked people what they wanted, because so few people could even visualize “a program which works like a big sheet of accounting paper but, when [a change is made] in one place, the change propagates through all the rows and columns.” Tom continues:
The point of this story is that no survey or focus group will ever tell you what the next great thing is going to be. That kind of idea, that kind of product, comes from visionaries who understand a new technology well enough to dream up an unintended use and who are stubborn and skillful enough to implement what nobody even knew to want.
Perhaps this is the reason we lawyers so rarely have breakthrough insights on how to improve our business model. Computer programmers will regularly use programs created by others and restauranteurs will eat at other establishments. How often can this be said of lawyers? How many legal professionals do you know who are regular consumers of legal services (besides their own)? I’d go so far to say that most businesses with poor reputations for customer service are run by people who don’t frequent their competitors’ establishments.
Exercise: Become a client. Instead of drafting your own will, handling your own real estate transaction, or reviewing your own contract, go to the most well respected lawyer in your area — and the least respected. Don’t tell them you are a lawyer. Before, during, and after your visit, pay particular attention to the client experience. How were you treated? How did you feel? How long did it take to get your phone calls returned?
We’ve all heard the quote, “A lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client.” Perhaps it is more true then we realized. Until lawyers can better understand the needs and wants of our clients, we will not be able to dream up those “unintended” ways to better serve them.
Create Employee Evangelists
My friend Zane Safrit, offers up Zane’s 10 Rules for Creating EMPLOYEE Evangelists. Riffing a bit off of Guy Kawasaki’s 10 Rules for Creating Customer Evangelists, Zane offers these gems (I’d like to rip off all of them here, but go read Zane’s post):
* Niche Your Employee. Find the unique quality, the unique resource each employee brings. Then position them where they can utilize those talents making meaning for their colleagues and your customers. Each employee provides a niche of talent, perspective, wisdom and advice. Discover those resources. Use those resources for the employees’ development, the company’s development and the customers’ satisfying experience.
You can’t create a niche product serving a niche market while you ignore your employees’ niche skills.
* Tell Your Story, Tell Your Whole Story. (“Open up the Kimono”) Open up and share the mission, the path, the successes and failures with the employees. Seek their advice. Seek their solutions. It’s ok to not have all the answers.
I gotta admit that’s a tough one. It has to do with the whole command and control, vulnerability, “am I a strong leader if I’m asking for solutions, ie, help?”
Let’s put it on the positive. The more solutions’ providers you create in your company, from those that provide great big conceptual solutions to those that provide a line of html that’s missing, you’ll have a smarter and more responsive company with a group of people who are excited and engaged in the process of fulfilling its mission providing meaning to their lives and the lives of your customers. And in this economy you need as many solutions sources as you can find, especially the ones who have your best interest at heart.
* Test-drive their ideas. Your employees are asked to test your ideas out every day. And to answer for them. Why not test their ideas?
Everyone contributes to your shared mission. Everyone does whether you recognize it or not. So, you want their full and POSITIVE contribution. Let them contribute. Give them room to try a few of their own ideas. Respect them in the same manner and try theirs.
A few will fail just like with yours. But a few will win. And a few more next month. And next month. Before long you’ve got a buzz going on, a conversation taking place, within your company like you want to take place in the market about your company.
35 Questions
Take a look at Mitch Meyerson’s 35 Questions That Will Change Your Life (pdf).
Hangin’ with the Patent Posse
I spent a bunch of Techshow hangin’ with the Patent Posse(tm) a.k.a. Doug Sorocco, Steve Nipper, and Matt Buchanan. I’ve know the guys virtually for quite some time, and was totally amazed to see them hanging out as if they’d known one another forever. In fact, their first face-to-face meeting was at Techshow.
The guys have started the rethink(ip) blog and are really taking the lead in reinventing IP practice. After they make their first million, I hope they remember me as the guy who introduced them (at least Doug and Steve) on my Think Tank Tuesday call.
And if you see Doug in person, ask him about his tattoo.
I wonder if this will fit in my garage?
That is, if I had a garage. Maybe when my wife and I start building our new home next year, we can make room for this.
In a similar vein, any golfers in L.A. area want to play?
More Ridiculousness – Not Family Friendly
Since I’m on a roll posting a bunch of non-nonbillable hour related stuff, here’s a hilarous conversation answering this question:
How many 5 year-olds could you take on at once?
The specifics:
- You are in an enclosed area, roughly the size of a basketball court. There are no foreign objects.
- You are not allowed to touch a wall.
- When you are knocked unconscious, you lose. When they are all knocked unconscious, they lose. Once a kid is knocked unconscious, that kid is “out.”
- I (or someone else intent on seeing to it you fail) get to choose the kids from a pool that is twice the size of your magic number. The pool will be 50/50 in terms of gender and will have no discernable abnormalities in terms of demographics, other than they are all healthy Americans.
- The kids receive one day of training from hand-to-hand combat experts who will train them specifically to team up to take down one adult. You will receive one hour of “counter-tactics” training.
- There is no protective padding for any combatant other than the standard-issue cup.
* The kids are motivated enough to not get scared, regardless of the bloodshed. Even the very last one will give it his/her best to take you down.
(Link from alltheseideas.com).
Gotta Have More Cowbell!
When life gets you down, and you don’t know where to turn, just get yourself some more cowbell. (Thanks to Emlyn.net for the link). And if the cowbell doesn’t do the trick, maybe a Schweddy Weiner.
Ask Mr. Science
Now, the last thing that I am is a scientist, but I found this article in the NewScientist.com fascinating: 13 Things That Do Not Make Sense.
Dim the lights, put on some music, and make some dough.
Ankesh has these great suggestions at Marketing eYe for retailers:
2 very important small changes that lead to big profits:
Lighting: Change the lighting and you’ll increase your profits. If you have a lot of women shoppers, use non-glaring white lights. Direct lighting makes skin look 5-10 years older. Indirect use of soft non-glaring white light makes women look younger.
Restaurants who have changed their lighting have seen profits increase by as much as 20%! Just like that! Indirect lighting changes the context and makes the food more delicious – magically!
Music: Soft classical music makes customers stay longer and spend more in your store.
Classical music changes the context and makes people believe that your store is an upscale one. And thus they spend more time and don’t hesitate to buy even if your prices are higher than the competitor’s.
What does your office look like? What music is playing?
Thinking Tool
Several months ago, I came across the Oblique Strategies web site. I always wanted to post about it, but was never able to completely describe the point of the “game.” Yesterday, I found this on-line version (requires flash) that makes everything a bit clearer. In short, think of a problem you have or a decision you must make. “Draw” one card at random and use its guidance to help you approach your dilemma from a different direction. A worthwhile look.
Something I think I knew once …
Here is my favorite thing about the web: I can be surfing along, trying to do real work, and run across stuff like this. Fifteen minutes Two hours of wasted time later, I’ve now looked at the entire site, and almost woke up my daughter because I was laughing so hard. Now, I feel compelled to waste some of your time too. Consider yourself warned!
Powerpoint your way to writing success.
Cliff Atkinson (on his Beyond Bullets blog) has some excellent tips for writers. He suggests working through your idea first — taking multiple opportunities to present it to others — before commiting it to writing. He even goes so far to suggest writers prepare a powerpoint presentation before writing a word. Here’s why:
This approach can actually reduce the risk that an idea will be rejected, because it’s been pre-tested in the marketplace of ideas first, and pre-qualified against 3 principles:
1. Your idea grows stronger as it moves from the abstract to the concrete. An idea in your mind doesn’t do anyone else any good until you communicate it to other people. Get your idea out early and find out what the world thinks.
2. Whatever doesn’t kill your idea makes it stronger. Ask people what they think, and appreciate people who disagree — they’re the ones you can give most credit toward strengthening your idea. Get feedback, find out what works, discard what doesn’t, and keep moving forward.
3. Your excitement for your idea is what gets other people excited. As you share your ideas with other people in person, you have the unique opportunity to demonstrate the passion that will help you overcome the forces that will surely work against your idea. Without your passion, no one else will become passionate.
I have been really struggling with my MoreSpace essay. I love my outline and ideas, but I am having a difficult time making it "flow". I’ll give Cliff’s ideas a try and you can be the judge when you read the essay — if Todd doesn’t fire me from the project first because I’m behind.
LexThink Fun
How would this look on a t-shirt?
Fundamental Changes
I am a big fan of Report 103, a weekly newsletter from jpb.com (subscription information can be found at http://www.jpb.com/report103/). In the most recent edition, the author suggests writing down ten of the most fundamental changes you could make to your business without destroying it. Once you’ve completed this task, try to make an objective and convincing argument why you shouldn’t make the change. If there are one or two fundamental changes you can’t make a compelling argument against, give them a try.
Two “Wrongs” can make a “Right”
David Batstone, in the Worthwhile blog, tells us to Make Promises We Can Keep. One of his four tips:
Turn your mistakes into opportunities for invention. That is how Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos keeps his company on a creative edge. Bezos says that he reviews the Amazon site every Saturday and lists the 10 things that are “wrong,” and that sets his agenda for Monday morning. “Perfect people” are boring…and delude themselves about their imperfections.
I really like this idea. Ten "wrong" things are a bit overwhelming for a small organization, but maybe two or three. I think a perfect compliment to Bezos’ method would be to identify three things that are "right" and take the week to make them incrementally better.
Chicago, Blogwalk, and Bloggers as Starving Artists.
I just had an amazing weekend in Chicago. Dennis (the Dennis Kennedy Blog) Kennedy and I drove up together (while holding our combined law firm retreat) and beat the 18 inches of snow by about an hour. The purpose of our trip was to check out in person the Catalyst Ranch space where we are holding LexThink! Chicago and attend BlogWalk Chicago.
As excited as I was about LexThink before traveling to Chicago, after seeing Catalyst Ranch, I am even more enthused. Eva, the Catalyst Ranch owner showed us around, and words can’t describe how perfect the space fits our vision of LexThink.
The best part of the weekend, however, was BlogWalk Chicago. Dennis and I joined these amazing bloggers and visionaries for a day of free-ranging discussions using the same OpenSpace method we will be relying upon for LexThink. Here is the who’s who:
- Jack Vinson
- Lilia Efimova
- Jim McGee
- David Burn
- Steve Dembo
- AKMA
- Denham Grey
- Tom Sherman
- Al Delgado
- Stuart Henshall
- Mark Bernstein
- Shannon Clark
- Martin Geddes
- Phil Wolff
I’m still trying to collect my thoughts for a more detailed post, but one concept that really crystallized for me is that bloggers are the the new starving artists — we allow our passion for producing our product (the information in our blogs) to adversely impact our ability to rationally place a value upon it. In the room in Chicago, I was humbled to be in the company of big-thinking people who really “get” the way blogging can change the world. There must have been 500+ GREAT ideas thrown out by the collective. Many of the ideas could support a small business of ten employees for a year or more. Only a few of us, however, had made any money directly from blogging (and I’m not retiring anytime soon on my first Law.com revenue sharing check). What this means to me is that there is no better time to be a buyer of blogging talent — not for the blog per se, but for the incredible, inventive talented mind behind it (more on this later).
LexThink! Chicago Invites on the Way!
Well, we’ve made our list and checked it twice and the first round of invitations to LexThink Chicago will go out in the next 24 hours. Dennis, Sherry and I have winnowed the list down from almost 200 candidates to the 50 or so who will receive invitations tomorrow morning.
Some important points:
1. There has been an incredible response to LexThink, and we were amazed at the number of people who requested invitations. Though we are not positive at this point, there is a real possibility of another LexThink later in the year.
2. The informal discussions we’ve had with people to gauge their interest have been very, very positive. We already have received preliminary commitments from a number of “A-Listers” from the worlds of technology, customer service, marketing, and law.
3. We will keep the cost for the first LexThink down under $200.00. This first conference is an experiment. We are not trying to profit, only prove that a mixture of incredibly smart and motivated people from varied backrounds can come together to build a better professional services firm.
4. We will ask everyone who gets an invitation to respond quickly with a “yes” or “no” so we can send invitations to people on the waiting list as soon as possible.
5. If you don’t get an invitation, even though you asked for one, don’t despair. We are going to include you in the LexThink community in a number of ways — including giving you access to the LexThink Blog/Wiki (now in development) and giving you a priority invitation to the next LexThink.
6. We are finalizing the “agenda” for the first LexThink, but are seriously considering using OpenSpace Technology as a framework for running the collaborative brainstorming sessions. There will be no long speeches, no boring presentations, and no PowerPoint!
Continue to watch this space for future information. See you in Chicago in April!
More Space
In my Nice Things post, I hinted at an essay I was working on. Now, its official. I’m one of nine (soon to be ten) contributors to the More Space project. For my part, I’m contributing a 10,000 word essay on customer service and innovation in professional services firms. Here are the others involved:
Evelyn Rodriguez from Crossroad Dispatches
Rob May from Businesspundit
Johnnie Moore from johnniemoore.com
Curt Rosengren from Occupational Adventure
Jeremy Wright from Ensight.org
Andrea Learned from Learned on Women
Lisa Haneberg from Management Craft
Todd Sattersten from A Penny For…
Todd Sattersten is putting this all together. There will be a book, as well as on-line access to all of the essays. For more info, check out the blog. I’ll have more on my progress when I start making some.
Vote Early, Vote Often
My write-in candidacy for Legal Affairs Magazine‘s ”Top Twenty Legal Thinkers in America” award is picking up steam. I have a campaign manager on board and Evan has agreed to be my speech writer and to advise me on matters of tort reform. I’ve chosen Dennis to serve as my chief of staff. Heck, I’ve even got my head of the patent office on board.
I’d really like your vote. Vote for a practicing lawyer. Vote Homann!
LexThink! Update
The response to our LexThink! Chicago announcement has been overwhelming. Dennis, Sherry, and I will be sending out our formal invites by the end of the week. The feedback I have received (in person and by e-mail) has been incredibly positive, and everyone (and I mean every single person) I’ve talked to about the conference has expressed interest in attending. We were even Scobelized.
If you’ve e-mailed me and haven’t heard anything yet, just wait a few more days. I’ll be in touch before the end of the week to everyone who expressed interest.
Savvy Bloggers Panel
My friend Bruce MacEwen (Adam Smith, Esq.) asked me to join some amazing bloggers on his Savvy Bloggers Panel. He asked us, “Looking out five to ten years, what will the single most significant change be in terms of how sophisticated law firms (think AmLaw 200) are managed, on the ‘business side’?” All of the responses are here. This is what I wrote:
A: I have spent all but two years of my legal career as a solo practitioner or as a member of a two-lawyer firm. Because I’ve never worked for a “sophisticated” AmLaw 200 (or even AmLaw 20,000) firm, I’m afraid I can’t give a meaningful answer to Bruce’s question. Instead, I’ll answer a different question: What is the single most significant change small firm lawyers hope AmLaw 200 firms don’t implement in the next ten years?
The single greatest competitive advantage small firm lawyers have over their big firm counterparts is the ability to quickly adopt and implement innovative practice methods. Though many small firm lawyers have fallen into the billing-by-the-hour business model practiced by most large firms, I would suggest that a significant amount of the alternative pricing of — and value billing for — legal services comes from the small firm lawyers in this country. In my firm, for example, we have completely abandoned the billable hour and have moved to a service-pricing model that gives our business and transactional clients a range of services (including “free” telephone calls) for a monthly fee or a flat per-project cost. In doing so, we’ve managed to make our clients happier, increased our margins, and decreased the time we spend in the office. My greatest fear is that AmLaw 200 firms will adopt and embrace a similar business model.
In contrast to small firms, large firms have an unbelievable amount of institutional knowledge. For any given legal project, large firms have likely completed a similar (or the exact same) task hundreds of times. Their “inventory” of documents, memos, briefs, complaints, and opinion letters dwarfs the resources available to small firm lawyers. My fear is that if a large firm decides to couple that “huge selection” with “everyday low prices,” the WalMartization of the legal business will begin.
In short, if large firms were to apply the “Big Box” retail concept to the delivery of professional services, small firm lawyers would disappear like Main Street retailers when Wal Mart comes to town. Just think, the complex, expensive legal work most big firms seek is only a very small tip of a very large iceberg. Most business and transactional work is of the garden variety. There is no reason a large firm couldn’t set aside a team of associates and partners to do that kind of work for hundreds or thousands of small businesses for a low monthly or annual fee.
Doing quality work is just a small part of the equation. The big firms would have to deliver an improved customer-service experience as well. Instead of locking young associates away in the library for years, have them be the first point of contact for small business customers (even better, hire retired lawyers as “greeters” for new clients). Train these lawyers to answer the basic legal questions on the fly, perhaps by consulting a firm-developed knowledge base, and promise an answer to more complicated questions within a day or so. Guarantee telephone calls returned within 60 minutes – or that month’s service is free. Designate a chief client-service officer, and make that executive’s compensation dependent upon customer satisfaction levels. In short, take a look at what non-legal companies that excel at customer service are doing, and improve upon it.
Finally, to make this model a sustainable one, firms must hire the best and brightest students. Instead of focusing on the top five percent, recruit and hire law students based upon their capacity for creative and innovative thinking, people skills and business acumen. If law firms concentrated on hiring the best lawyers (instead of the best law students) schools may be forced to actually prepare students to practice law, instead of giving them the esoteric theory-based education most law students get now.
Do I think that most big firms will take these suggestions to heart? Not really. And for that I am thankful.
Huge Anouncement: LexThink! Chicago
LexThink! Chicago: Building the Perfect Firm.
What do you get when you bring together a select group of innovative, big-thinking people from the worlds of law, business, technology, marketing, and consulting for a full day and ask them to design the perfect professional service firm?
We call it LexThink! Chicago.
Innovate. On April 3, 2005, we will turn the Catalyst Ranch space in downtown Chicago into laboratory space for a group of innovators and thought leaders. We’ll create and test ideas for transforming the delivery of professional services, to better match the needs of professionals and their clients alike. With a full day of targeted presentations, small group discussions, collaborative brainstorming and other exercises, we will will mix innovative business practices with proven client service strategies and promising technology applications to create the formula for the perfect professional services firm. The focus of every conversation will be on turning talk into action, and bold ideas into realities
Motivate. Attendees will take away dozens of practice-changing ideas while making many new friends. LexThink! Chicago will be a chance to meet in person bloggers, authors and speakers that have motivated and challenged us over the years. Spending a day with this group will generate renewed energy and enthusiasm and give you a new action list for making the changes you want in your practice, your business and your life.
Activate. In too many cases, the surge of enthusiasm from an inspirational conference drains away steadily as you return to the real world. LexThink! Chicago is designed to create extended relationships, with opportunities for structured feedback and continuing discussions, social support, and ongoing motivation to transform your practice. The collaborative experience will continue with ongoing discussion groups, monthly conference calls and other ways to connect with LexThink! alumni.
LexThink! Chicago is the brainchild of well-known lawyer bloggers Matthew Homann, Dennis Kennedy and Scheherazade Fowler, who have been thinking (and blogging) about ways to make meaningful changes in their professional practices. LexThink! Chicago grew out of one of their brainstorming sessions and their own “what if” questions.
To permit meaningful participation, to generate the best conversations, and to work within the limitations of the creative space we’ve reserved, participation in the first LexThink! Chicago will be by invitation-only. We’re limiting it to a select group of professional service providers—lawyers, accountants, consultants, strategists, coaches, technologists, marketers and entrepreneurs. If you are interested — or know someone who might be — get in touch with us soon by e-mailing Matt Homann at homann@gmail.com. We will send out the invitations before the end of December, so make sure you let us know about your interest as soon as you can. We are seeking sponsors for LexThink! Chicago and expect to set the registration fee at less than $200 per attendee.
Many people always ask “Why?” There are also some who ask “Why not?” We’re the second kind. How about you?
The Magic of Recurring Payments
Here is a great post from another of my favorite new blogs, PsychoTactics.
This year for the first time ever, the yoga teacher has been able to take a break.
Not for a week, or two weeks, but for a whole month. And all the while there is a steady flow of income coming through the door, despite the class being shut. That’s changed from last year?
The answer is: Recurring Payments.
You may not think it’s a big deal but there’s some part of your business, if not a major part of your business that could be continuously fed by a recurring system.
Lawn mowing services do the recurring thingy.
Fancy membership clubs do the recurring thingy.
And so do a lot of businesses.Of course the yoga teacher is going to replace the one month away by giving goodies away to his class. But in essence, for the first time ever, that yoga teacher is getting a break. Some time to breathe. And all because he’s put a recurring system in place.
You should too. Right away.
Law Professor Evaluations
I teach a law school class (Pre-Trial Practice and Procedure) at Washington University Law School. I generally enjoy the experience and have almost always had great students. This year was no exception.
Near the end of every semester, the teacher is asked to leave the room and the students fill out course evaluations. I don’t know how many other professors read them, but I do. In fact, I’ve learned quite a bit from reading the students’ comments and have changed my teaching style based upon some of the criticisms I’ve received. As helpful as the current evaluations are, I’d really like to read the responses to these questions from Jeremy’s Revised Course Evaluation Form:
Section I. Please rate the following on a scale from one (virtually none) to five (really quite high).
1. Odds you’re getting called on in any given class.
2. Odds you’ve done the reading
3. Chance the professor actually thinks he/she’s lecturing to a bunch of colleagues, who already know as much as he/she does about the subject.
4. Chance the professor actually wrote his/her most recent book.
5. Ease of online shopping while still catching enough of what the professor is saying so as to not feel completely lost.
6. Probability you’d be seeking emancipation if you found out the professor was your parent / grandparent
7. Amount of audiovisual equipment used.
8. Amount of food provided throughout the course of the semester.
9. Unpleasant professor odor.
10. Chance you’d take the class again, knowing everything you know now, except the material itself, because if you knew that, then taking the class again would be pretty silly, wouldn’t it?Section II. Please answer with a percentage estimate between 0 and 100.
1. Percent of classes you have attended.
2. Percent of classes you wish you’d attended
3. Percent of students, on average, who return after the 5-minute break in the middle, if applicable.
4. Percent of students, on average, who fall asleep during any given session, with 10 extra percentage points added if there is regularly snoring heard throughout the room.
5. Percent of time you believe the professor has prepared for class.
6. Percent of time you believe that if the professor has in fact prepared for class, the professor needs some help in the “preparing for class” department.
7. Percent of time spent basically reading from the assigned materials.
8. Percent of time spent basically reading from unassigned materials.
9. Percent of time spent reading from the Bible.
10. Percent of your total net worth you would pay to have all memory of this class erased from your mind.Section III. Open-ended questions. Please print neatly.
1. Is the professor funny? Give examples.
2. Do gunners seem to gravitate toward this class? Name them. We’ll get them.
3. Draw your best imitation of the professor’s blackboard penmanship, with an emphasis on illustrating the degree of legibility.
4. Would you recommend this class to your friends?
5. Would you recommend this class to your enemies?
6. Would you recommend this class be exported to Yale?Section IV. Bizarre and Unrelated Logic Game.
John has Con Law on Monday and Tuesday. Katie has Corps on Wednesday and Thursday. Bill has Tax, but he can’t remember what days, since he never even bought the book. Susan signed up for a seminar, but wishes she didn’t since there’s so much reading. Classes that meet on Wednesday never conflict with The West Wing. Which class has the hardest exam?
Now, if any of my students are reading this and thinking about answering these questions for my class, remember, I haven’t turned in your grades yet!
Vote for Me as one of America’s Top 20 Legal Thinkers
Legal Affairs Magazine is looking for the country’s twenty most influential and important legal thinkers. I would have nominated Dennis Kennedy, but he doesn’t think much of the list, so instead, I’m nominating myself.
Today, I proudly announce my candidacy for the position of Influential and Important Legal Thinker. Though the nominations have closed, there is a place on the ballot for a write-in candidate (remember, my name is spelled “HOMANN”).
So vote early, vote often, and vote Homann!
One more thing, I’m going to need a campaign manager. Rick, are you free?
Oh, and if you want to support me, I’ve got this great button you can put on your site.
On a semi-serious note, bloggers have accomplished some pretty amazing things. Wouldn’t it be cool to have one of our own (even if it is me) named as a more influential legal thinker than Clarance Thomas?
P.S. I can’t afford a nanny, so I think I’m pretty safe there.
Baseball’s Lessons for Lawyers
Great post by Jeff Angus over at Management by Baseball about how the Minnesota Twins have incorporated a new innovative way to price their season tickets by using flexible vouchers. In short, Twins fans can buy vouchers for game tickets (each priced $2.00 less than normal ticket price). If a fan buys the minimum of 40 vouchers, they can go alone to 40 games, take a friend to 20, three others to 10, etc. Each time the vouchers can be used for different seats, on an “as available” basis.
When I first read about the Twins’ plan, I started to think about how lawyers could use a similar voucher plan in their offices. We are talking to a few of our clients about offering estate-planning vouchers they can pass on as gifts to adult children, friends, parents, employees, etc. Each voucher is good for two wills, and powers of attorney for health care and property. We’ll offer the vouchers at a slightly lower cost than our normal flat rate for the services. In the event a person needs more significant estate planning, we’ll apply the value of the voucher towards our normal fee for that service. If this year’s trial run goes well, we will offer all of our clients the vouchers beginning next year.
At the end of his post, Jeff sounds like he is speaking directly to lawyers, when he shares some of his own experience with “out of the box” thinking:
It’s amazing sometimes how rigidly a seller will adhere to a delivery scheme through inertia, even when the model has always been broken.
I worked for a swell software company where one of the highest-margin products it had was a product that could not be used by a single user. The fewest people this networked program could use was two. The buying of a single unit would only be for an upgrade (where an existing set of users needed to add another user). Dozens of times every week, technical support received phone calls from people who had just bought one unit and couldn’t do anything with it (imagine instant messaging where you’re the only person who has it).
Resistance to change was overwhelming. They had always sold 1-packs. It didn’t matter that a 2-pack required only another registration key (a slip of paper with another number on it), and would therefore cost about 15 cents more to make while nearly doubling the asking price, never mind it would cut down on angry or confused (or both) customers and those customers’ wrath directed at clueless resellers and our own technical support. And this was software, not something hard to package like a power-drill or a workbench or a piece of furniture — it was a book, a pamphlet, a card with a number on it and a disc. No-one needed to design new packaging.
It took over a year to even get the idea discussed. Ugly, but not unusual.
Decisions as to what to put in the box usually stem from earlier wisdom that was actually wise. The wisdom then loses some of its value over time, but systems and the people who run them fall into patterns they don’t want to change.
The Twins woke up and tried something different from what teams have been doing since their executives started working in baseball.
Shouldn’t you?
Indeed.
The Dream Firm
Jessamyn West at librarian.net has this post about her dream library. Two of her suggestions:
- We’d be open when people wanted to use the library, not just when librarians wanted to work. How would we know? We’d ask them. [some surveys: here, here, here and here]
- In my library, we’d fix your computer for you. We’d work the information booth at your event. We’d answer your questions any time and any place, not just when you come to us and wait at the reference desk for us to be free. We’d save your time, even if it sometimes meant sacrificing our own.
I’ve been thinking about how the dream law office (or any professional services firm) would look and operate — if it were designed by clients. Any ideas?
Clutter is Never Free
Knowledge@Wharton has this great article with a conversation with one of the authors of Conquering Complexity in Your Business. Some excerpts:
Complexity is a systemic effect that accumulates over time. So while you may have a perfect portfolio today, your customers’ tastes are changing—what’s good today is probably not good tomorrow. Many businesses respond by expanding their portfolio and placing more goods or services on the market. Each innovation may represent a source of customer value and profits at the time that it is introduced, but unless you have some mechanism for rebalancing that portfolio, complexity will creep into your processes, tax internal systems, and drive up costs. Even worse, you might strangle growth in the name of pursuing customer value.
Also, it consumes resources and can impede growth. If you have a portfolio of 4,000 products, you’re spreading your marketing resources across all those products, when you should be concentrating on core brands. We also find in our work that companies with a complex product or service line have a significant gap in their understanding of what truly drives their profitability. What’s important is that companies understand the relationships between complexity, cost, efficiency and growth, which we captured in a concept called the Complexity Equation. Management can then make rational decisions with these relationships being explicit, instead of implicit or unknown.
As a general practitioner, this article hits a bit close to home.
Budgeting for High Risk Ideas
I’ve written before about how much I like the Report 103 Newsletter from the JPB Group. Today’s issue (check here in few days for the archived version) suggested implementing a High Risk Idea Budget:
Some radical new ideas are so obviously brilliant that you can implement them and watch the money roll in. But these ideas are few and far between. Most radical ideas are highly risky. If they work, they might put your company way ahead of the competition and establish your firm as a market leader; or they might slash 25% off your operational costs; or they might cost your company an arm and a leg. Unfortunately, a lot of companies do not implement their hottest ideas precisely for this risk factor. Although everyone in the company loves the idea, the CFO reviews the numbers and says it is just too risky to contemplate.
Clearly, of course, no company should put the entire enterprise at risk. However, every company can and should establish a high risk budget for implementing radical ideas. This might represent five percent of the operational budget or 25%. It depends on the company and the market.
By defining a part of the budget for risky projects, you give your company an opportunity to implement the most exciting ideas. Many will fail. But a few will work. And a small number will be real winners that will repay your high risk ideas budget many times over.
Moreover, granting an employee – or a team of employees – a portion of your high risk idea budget can be a powerful reward (see previous story on rewarding innovation).
The primary point of resistance many firms seem to have to dumping the billable hour is that it may turn out to be unprofitable. Why not set aside a certain number of clients (or an attorney or two) to implement some alternative billing strategies?
The History of Ideas
I talk a lot about ideas here, and even sold quite a few at my garage sale a few weeks back. I wonder what I would have gotten for this, the Dictionary of the History of Ideas. Set aside a few hours and peruse this unbelievable digital version of Philip P. Wiener’s book from the early 70′s, ”The Dictionary of the History of Ideas: Studies of Selected Pivotal Ideas.” Really great reading.
The Law Office Experience
Innovation.net points to a best practices study by The Product Development & Management Association (PDMA) comparing performance and practices of over 400 companies and industries. According to the study (as reported by Innovation.net)
Not surprisingly from the 2004 study,”the best” performers generate 49% of their profits from new products — more than twice as much as “the rest”. Top performers recognize the incremental value that successful new products provide to customers and therefore to the bottom line.
How many new “products” have most professional service providers come up with in the last year? The last decade?
The Chinese Advantage
From the Canadian Globe and Mail comes this article: From Cells to Bells, 10 Things the Chinese Do Far Better Than We Do. Some great food for thought. Some highlights:
2. Informative stop lights
In Tianjin, a city of 13 million people, traffic lights display red or green signals in a rectangle that rhythmically shrinks down as the time remaining evaporates. In Beijing, some traffic lights offer a countdown clock for both green and red signals.
During a red light, you know whether you have time to check that map; on a green light, you know whether to start braking a block away — or to stomp on the accelerator, as though you were a Toronto or Montreal driver. (That’s probably why Montreal has a few lights with countdown seconds for pedestrians.)
4. Adult playgrounds
Hate paying those gym club bills? Loathe huffing and puffing around buff bodies in spandex? Beijing provides free outdoor exercise equipment in neighbourhoods throughout the city: walking machines, ab flexers, weight machines and rowing machines in bright reds, blues, yellows and greens.
Adult playgrounds get everyone out in the fresh air, especially seniors who might stay shut in at home. Teens like to hang out there, too. And it sends a not-so-subtle propaganda message about the benefits of healthy living.
6. Daily banking
We feel so lucky when a bank branch in Canada opens for a few hours on Saturday mornings. (Notice the long, long lines?) But Chinese banks are now open 9 to 5, seven days a week. Even on New Year’s Day and other national holidays, at least some branches will open for business. The ones that are closed post helpful notices directing you to the closest open branch. And, yes, they do have a full network of ATMs.
7. Wireless service bells
Trying to flag down your waiter for a glass of water? Just press a made-in-China gizmo at your table. Your table number lights up on a panel inside the kitchen and your server is soon hovering by your side. The bell also eliminates that annoying waiterly interruption: “Is everything all right?”
The same gizmo in spas alerts masseuses when you’re demurely under the sheet and ready for their attention.
10. Free hemming
This doesn’t count as cheap labour because only three people service an entire department store. In Canada, hemming a new pair of trousers adds at least $10 to the cost, plus two trips to the tailor. And you have to try them on again while you get measured.
At the No. 1 Department Store in Shanghai, the salesclerk measures you while you are trying on the pants, asking: “Will you be wearing these with high heels or flats?” If you decide to buy them, she scribbles the length on your receipt. You head to what looks like a gift-wrapping station where a man measures and chalks the pants, scissors off the surplus and flings them to two women behind him. One hems the raw edge on a machine and tosses it to the other, who stitches the final hem on another machine and presses them.
Even with two customers ahead of me, I swear it took under three minutes in all to get two pairs back.
When I tell the woman ahead of me that stores in Canada don’t do this, she’s astonished. “Really?” she says. “How inconvenient.”
The Creativity Conundrum
Why aren’t lawyers more creative? Not creative about solving client problems, but creative about being lawyers. Here is an exercise: Walk down any aisle of any new grocery store and notice how many products are there that didn’t even exist ten years ago. Heck, just look around at the store itself and see how different the shopping experience has become in just the last decade. Now, look at the legal profession. Any new products? Do our offices look different? Have we changed in any meaningful way how we provide our services or interact with clients (apart from e-mail) in the last ten years? Name another industry or business that has so systematically avoided innovation and shown such a disdain for new ideas.
I had a meeting on Saturday morning with another attorney and we were talking about our respective practices. He does nothing but personal injury and I’ve sent him quite a few cases. I shared with him some of the things I was implementing in my practice and he remarked how “creative” I was. I responded that every lawyer I know is pretty creative when solving client problems, but that creativity (or ability to think differently) doesn’t translate into high-level thinking about changing the way they approach the business of law.
The discussion reminded me about an article from Psychology Today titled “The Art of Creativity.“ There is a lot of great stuff on creativity in the article, but the part that caught my eye was the list of ways to discourage creativity in children:
Surveillance: hovering over kids, making them feel that they’re constantly being watched while they’re working.
Evaluation: making kids worry about how others judge what they are doing. Kids should be concerned primarily with how satisfied they-and not others-are with their accomplishments.
Competition: putting kids in a win/lose situation, where only one person can come out on top. A child should be allowed to progress at his own rate.
Overcontrol: telling kids exactly how to do things. This leaves children feeling that any exploration is a waste of time.
Pressure: establishing grandiose expectations for a child’s performance. Training regimes can easily backfire and end up instilling an aversion for the subject being taught.
The article also fingers a bit more subtle culprit: time.
Children more naturally than adults enter that ultimate state of creativity called flow. In flow, time does not matter; there is only the timeless moment at hand. It is a state that is more comfortable for children than adults, who are more conscious of the passage of time.
“One ingredient of creativity is open-ended time,” says Ann Lewan, a director of the Capital Children’s Museum in Washington, D.C. “Children have the capacity to get lost in whatever they’re doing in a way that is much harder for an adult. They need the opportunity to follow their natural inclinations, their own particular talents, to go wherever their proclivities lead them.”
Now, how many of these “creativity killers” are applicable to lawyers? Can you name any law firm associate that doesn’t experience all of them nearly every day? Is the answer to the question that started this post that our prevalent business model wrings all the creativity out of our lawyers in their first few years of practice? If so, what can we do to stop it?
I’ve got some ideas, and I’m going to be posting a lot more on the legal creativity conundrum in the next few weeks.
Why has ketchup stayed the same?
Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point and the upcoming Blink (which I can’t wait to read), wrote an article titled The Ketchup Conundrum for the September issue of The New Yorker. In the piece, he discusses how Grey Poupon paved the way for the hundreds of varieties of mustard we see in our supermarkets today, and suggests that ketchup may be next.
However, my favorite part of the article is Gladwell’s explanation of how Prego (the spaghetti sauce) developed their extra-chunky sauce:
Standard practice in the food industry would have been to convene a focus group and ask spaghetti eaters what they wanted. But Moskowitz does not believe that consumers–even spaghetti lovers–know what they desire if what they desire does not yet exist. “The mind,” as Moskowitz is fond of saying, “knows not what the tongue wants.” Instead, working with the Campbell’s kitchens, he came up with forty-five varieties of spaghetti sauce. These were designed to differ in every conceivable way: spiciness, sweetness, tartness, saltiness, thickness, aroma, mouth feel, cost of ingredients, and so forth. He had a trained panel of food tasters analyze each of those varieties in depth. Then he took the prototypes on the road–to New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Jacksonville–and asked people in groups of twenty-five to eat between eight and ten small bowls of different spaghetti sauces over two hours and rate them on a scale of one to a hundred. When Moskowitz charted the results, he saw that everyone had a slightly different definition of what a perfect spaghetti sauce tasted like. If you sifted carefully through the data, though, you could find patterns, and Moskowitz learned that most people’s preferences fell into one of three broad groups: plain, spicy, and extra-chunky, and of those three the last was the most important. Why? Because at the time there was no extra-chunky spaghetti sauce in the supermarket. Over the next decade, that new category proved to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars to Prego. “We all said, ‘Wow!’ ” Monica Wood, who was then the head of market research for Campbell’s, recalls. “Here there was this third segment–people who liked their spaghetti sauce with lots of stuff in it–and it was completely untapped. So in about 1989-90 we launched Prego extra-chunky. It was extraordinarily successful.”
What untapped market is there for your services? Can you find the unserved segment and be its “extra-chunky” Prego?
Life Laundry for Law Offices
I don’t get BBC America at home, but have heard about the show Life Laundry, and thought it had an interesting premise:
In Life Laundry, storage expert Dawna Walter helps people streamline their internal and external lives by cleaning out their clutter and offering advice, insight and top tips – while antique dealer Mark Franks help turn junk into hard cash – all in 48 hours.
But this is more than just a home makeover show. For some it’s an incredibly emotional experience as they struggle to come to terms with the past.
Faced with rooms too full of junk for their owners to use, to broken computers and washing machines that have sat idle for years, Dawna and Mark take drastic action, emptying the offending rooms on to the closest outside space.
Step-by-step they take the homeowners through their belongings sifting, sorting, and slinging out the clutter that has taken over their homes – and in some cases their lives.
From people who have allowed their possessions to take over as a result of trauma, to sentimental hoarders, over-zealous collectors and people and families whose relationships are under strain from the amount of junk cluttering their homes – the Life Laundry experts are on hand to help.
What would the Life Laundry experts find in your office? Old computers, printers that don’t work, dozens (hundreds, thousands) of books that you don’t use anymore? Piles of trade publications and legal magazines that you’ve set aside to read someday? Get rid of all of that stuff and be amazed at how little you really needed any of it.
Ergonomics for Everyone
I’m pretty happy with my actual working environment. I alternate between my Aeron and Leap chairs, have a cord-less keyboard and mouse, and use two monitors. Though the ergonomics of my situation could be improved slightly (maybe by throwing in some feng shui ), I feel comfortable when I work.
It seems that work comfort was on the mind of New Zealand’s Occupation Safety and Health Service when they passed these ergonomic guidelines for the workers in the nation’s now-legal sex trade:
- Beds and workstations should support the worker’s back and allow for services to be performed without strain or discomfort.
- Beds and massage tables should be adjustable to allow employees to use them without strain.
- Employees should be trained for safe use of equipment and techniques.
- Workers’ clothing should be comfortable and should not affect the employee’s posture.
- Workers should take breaks between shifts and clients to avoid stress and fatigue.
- Workers should alternate between repetitive and non-repetitive activities.
Certainly some good tips here for all us workers in the “service” business.
Innovation for Lawyers
I’ve been talking to some really smart people lately, and have been running an idea past them that I’ve blogged about before – a conference on innovation for lawyers. The goal would be to provide attendees with both the ideas and the tools to incorporate innovation into their practices, and to give them specific things to implement when they get back to the office.
Now for the agenda:
In the morning, I want several interesting people (preferably non-lawyers) to talk about innovation in their fields. I’d like to see authors, marketing gurus, creativity consultants, entrepreneurs, and even CEO’s of small companies tell the audience about the newest and coolest ways they are changing how they do business. In the afternoon, we’d brainstorm about specific ways the “big picture” ideas could translate to the attendees’ individual practices.
If this seems really cool to you, let me know if you’d like to attend. Also, if there is anything you’d like to see, drop me a line as well. Time and place are Chicago the Sunday after Techshow (April 3, 2005). If the interest is there, I’ll follow up with more information.
Can blogs make you an expert on everything?
I received this e-mail yesterday:
Matt,
I hope this email finds you doing well. Are you currently available for
a 6 month++ contract opportunity? We have a Client located in Downtown
Chicago, IL seeking an experienced MS SharePoint Specialist.You will perform analysis, design and development of the firm’s newly
implemented MS SharePoint Portal. You will be doing front and back end
development using Windows SharePoint Services version1 and version2.
You will also perform on-going technical research to identify solutions
for system requirements that arise through the use of the SharePoint
systems firm wide.They are looking to start this position as soon as they possible/as soon
as they find the right fit.I noticed your background on the web and thought we should talk. If this
basic description sounds interesting (obviously here is much more to the
project) and you are available please reply with your most recent resume as
a Word document.If not feel free to forward my contact information to anyone you see fit.
I’m not even sure what Microsoft SharePoint Portal is, but my wife is from Chicago and it might be fun to go for awhile — until they find out I’m totally incompetent.
Warmer Workers = Better Workers
Via FastCompany Now comes a link to this study that shows that warmer workers are better workers. According to the article:
When the office temperature in a month-long study increased from 68 to 77 degrees Fahrenheit, typing errors fell by 44 percent and typing output jumped 150 percent. Hedge’s study was exploring the link between changes in the physical environment and work performance.
“The results of our study also suggest raising the temperature to a more comfortable thermal zone saves employers about $2 per worker, per hour,” says Hedge, who presented his findings this summer at the 2004 Eastern Ergonomics Conference and Exposition in New York City.
Now excuse me while I crank up the thermostat.
Think Tank Tuesday
Several months ago, I first posted about Think Tank Tuesday, but have been pretty silent since. Yesterday, we had our second telephone and web conference (compliments of Zane at Conference Calls Unlimited), and I am far more excited about the concept (and the group) now than when I first started putting the idea together. We’ve even started our own private blog to facilitate conversations and share ideas in-between our bi-weekly telephone calls.
Our “TTT” group:
Once we have our third “meeting,” I’ll post more about how we are using TTT to help us incubate new ideas and grow our businesses. If anyone would like some help starting a similar group, let me know.
Take a Clarity Retreat
Evelyn Rodriguez has a great post titled Accelerating Elusive Aha! Moments in which she talks about taking a “clarity retreat” to help her solve problems. Evelyn is kind enough to share the creative process she uses on her retreats. Her tips:
1. Stay Open. Ask the questions, but let go of the answers. You might think you have a solution in mind, but don’t cling to it. You’ll be surprised at how much more brilliant your breakthrough will be if you just let go of your fixation that you won’t come up with anything better than your so-so, blah(yawn) solution that’s your back-up plan. Kill the back-up plan.
2. No-Hassle Beauty. Go somewhere simple that doesn’t require a lot of pre-planning. No hassle = low-stress. This is not the time to go on a worldwind tour of Europe. Guy Kawasaki gave away a great retreat location if you live in the Bay Area in his new book, The Art of the Start. (I’m not telling in a public forum, though you can email me.) Ideally stay close to home to avoid air travel; somewhere quiet, typically in nature; and somewhere you’d enjoy being. Ideas can range from day hiking from a base camp/lodge; kayaking along a gentle river or sheltered bay; cross-country skiing hut-to-hut; soaking the gentle sunbeams on the beach as you watch the tide come in; or chilling out on the veranda sipping wine in Napa Valley. Twice I’ve gone on backpacking trips – but this may require too much preparation if you don’t regularly backpack.
3. Treat yourself. Re-treat yourself over and over. Make sure you are eating well (if you’re packing and making your own food, make it as simple to prepare as possible so it doesn’t feel like an ordeal…unless you adore cooking…) and sleeping well.4. Bring a journal. Only journal if you don’t have to force the words on paper – only when and if you’re a conduit to your heart without filtering it through your head. Carry the journal wherever possible. You never know when you might want to sketch or write a poem or something seems important to jot down – leave the option open. Don’t worry if you never even crack it open. That may just be what’s needed especially if you do journal alot now. On one multi-day backpack trip to Grand Canyon, I didn’t write a single word. I thought I had “wasted” the retreat time. Nope, it turned out I needed a break from journaling as well. I was overwhelmed with ideas when I returned back home including the entire outline for a book.
5. Avoid email, cellphone and even blogging. Really retreat. Don’t listen to news, radio, or pick up the paper. If you are weak (as I am), you may need to go somewhere where it is impossible to stay in touch – you’d be surprised, even in Bay Area you can drive two miles outside of I-280 and be out of cellphone range and in the beauty of nature.6. Go alone. With practice you can go with others that are also seeking time to be more contemplative, but the tendency is to be drawn to go sight-see, chat, and otherwise be distracted.
7. Focus on Being Present. I used to be pretty restless and extremely prone to boredom. If you don’t want to “do nothing” that’s fine. Fully engage with what you are doing. Anything that captures your attention fully – whether that’s because you enjoy it intensely or to let your mind wander would be deadly (whitewater-kayaking comes to mind for me). Limit your time reading – and when you do, make it inspirational instead of intellectual. The entire idea is to rest your mind. So whatever you are doing, really do it and nothing else. Be nowhere else that moment. See the glint of the water splashing on the stone, feel the caress of the wind playing through the aspen trees, note the firmness and the give as the autumn leaves crunch under your footfall, gaze at the crystal moon lying on your back against the meadow grass, admire the depth of the sheer vertical vermillion canyon walls echoing your call.
Evelyn’s blog Crossroads Dispatches continually has great posts like this one. I’m going to schedule a clarity retreat for three days next week. I’ll let you know how it goes.
Idea Garage Sale — Follow Up
I’ve pretty much cleaned out my "idea closet" with my garage sale and I hope that everyone found something worth taking. Reader (and friend) Yvonne Divita added this comment to one of the garage sale posts:
This ‘idea garage sale’ is a winner. It deserves a blog of its own…with several authors…with encouragement for input…I see some marvelous things coming out of it. Your cookbook reference to generating ideas is another great way to get the mind thinking "out of the box"…let’s find a way to start thinking "out of the book" because we too often rely on books to instruct us on how to do business. (as a writer it pains me to say that, but it’s true.) So, what kind of "out of the book" ideas can we come up with? I’ll start…first, get comfortable in your own space. You can’t begin a business if you’re still struggling to fit yourself into the space society tries to assign you. Create your own space, and fill it with your energy and your expectations. Watch how fast it fills up with useful ‘stuff.’
Any interest out there?
Idea Garage Sale – Cookbooks
I love cookbooks, though I’m only a fair cook. The best things about cookbooks is they give you some great ideas of what to make for dinner — leaving the execution of the recipe to you. Here are some of my "Idea Cookbooks" I’ve accumulated. I hope they help you cook up some tasty ideas of your own.
Idea Garage Sale – Building Materials for Building the Perfect Firm
Here are some "building materials" I’ve accumulated as I’ve worked on building my perfect firm. Some are extras, some were the wrong size and didn’t fit, and some are just taking up extra space in my garage. I’d love to sell the whole truckload at once, but will consider any fair offer. Just one thing — you have to come here and pick them up.
The Office
The Staff
Outsourcing
The Business
The Advertising
Idea Garage Sale – Unattributed Leftovers
Here are a bunch of ideas I’ve had lying around. I’m sure I’ve bought them from somewhere, but I can’t remember where. If I’ve taken them (or stolen them) from you, I apologize for not giving you credit.
Weekly Free Time — Give employees an hour of "quiet time" every week — when the phones aren’t answered and meetings aren’t scheduled — to think, read a book, or just relax.
Incorporate Design – Hire a graphic design artist (with no legal portfolio) to review the format and design of every piece of mail and every type of document that goes out to customers. Also, find the best interior designer in your town and ask them for one hour of time to give you tips on making your office more inviting and less intimidating. Go to the most expensive and most popular stores and restaurants in your neighborhood. Look at how they are designed. Look at the people in them. These people are comfortable in those environments. If you want those types of people to be your clients, make your environment similar.
Commit to Clients, Send a Report Card– Prepare a list of client commitments and stick to them. Include returning phone calls within a specified period of time. Send the commitments to clients with every bill. Offer discounts if you don’t live up to any of your commitments. Give clients a small discount if they send back a "Report Card" with their payment. Make it look like the ones kids got in the fifties. Follow up with them on any grade they give below an "A."
The Monthly Status – Get a boilerplate monthly status report saved in every client’s file with their address, etc. Send it every month and tell them what happened on their case that month.
Find Spaces to Collaborate, Not Just to Meet — Look for space in your office where you can have a comfortable conversation with a client, partner, or staff member. Having a white board or other brainstorming tool would be a big plus. Make it a fun place to think.
Create a Firm Master To-Do List — This list isn’t for client matters, but for firm matters. Make marketing and firm development high priorities. Make sure everyone has access to the list and place at least one item on the calendar each week to make sure it gets done.
Fund a Local "Genius Grant" — Find the biggest problem in your community and have a competition to solve it. Involve the schools and retirement homes. Give a prize for the best solution. Make sure everyone knows your firm sponsored the competition. Set aside another part of the prize money to go toward funding the solution.
Start an Exclusive Client Club — Come up with an unprecedented level of service and benefits (at a premium price) and offer it only to your best three customers. Tell them they can invite others to join the club, but they must "vouch" for the new prospect. Wait ten years, then retire.
Rewrite all of your Firm Documents — Every week, pick one of your "standard" forms (like retainer agreement) and give it to a sixth grader. Ask them if they understand it. Then rewrite it from scratch.
Offer Gift Certificates — Find some kind of work you do and prepare gift certificates. Send a notice to your clients telling them the certificates are available for the holidays. In an estate planning practice, encourage clients to give the certificates to young couples who’ve just married or had children and might need a simple will. The certificate could be for a will, or even a "free" consultation.
Open Ended Billing – Send a bill with no amount on the bottom. Make sure you communicate all you’ve done for the client, then let them decide how much it was worth.
Open All Night — Find employees who want to work second and third shifts and experiment with one or two days a month where the firm never closes. Advertise these days, and find out how many people who’ve never had time to meet with a lawyer come calling!
Find the Smartest People — Ask everyone you know for the names of the smartest people they know. Invite those people to an exclusive dinner and offer to pay them for one hour each month of their advice — on anything.
Give Books — Go to your local school or library and donate several books on a topic that complements one of your primary practice area. For instance, if you do divorce work, give the school several books about how children can best deal with divorce; or give the local library several volumes on divorce for adults. Get your name in the front of each book and get your picture in the paper.
Garage Sale – GMail
Reader Steve Nipper offered up a G-Mail invite in the comments to a previous post. I’ve got a few setting around too. First five people to leave comments get ‘em.
Idea Garage Sale – Day 1
For day one of my garage sale, I’ve collected some blog posts. Twenty-five cents each, or five for a dollar. If you want to buy them all, the price is negotiable.
The "Whole Enchilada" — Marketing to Hispanics.
Colorful Details make copy more believable.
Five tips for effective growth.
A dozen habits of successful professionals.
Where are you most productive?
Is this how you listen to your clients?
That’s it for today. Come back tomorrow for some more great deals!
Idea Garage Sale – Used Bookmarks, Cheap!
Bookmarks for sale. These bookmarks are gently used and are in fine working condition. I’ve grouped them as best I can. Make your best offer!
Billable Hour Remainders
ABA Commission on Billable Hours Report
The New Law Firm Economy — Billable Hours and Professional Responsibility
Looking Beyond the Billable Hour
Step Away from the Billable Hour
The short, unhappy history of how lawyers bill their clients.
The Billable Hour: Putting a Wedge Between Client and Counsel
Toys for the Kids
Used Sports Equipment
Cool Things Defying Catagorization
Non-Legal Sites with Interesting Ideas for Lawyers
Technology Extras
Web Design Stuff
Training and Seminars
Cuban’s Rules for Success
Mark Cuban writes about the twelve factors of success in his blog. Read the post for all twelve. My favorite is:
11. Pigs Get Fat, Hogs Get Slaughtered. This is one I got from my partner Todd Wagner. He is right on. Sometimes you have to go for the jugular, but more often than not, the biggest mistake people make are getting too greedy. Every good deal has a win win solution. There is nothing I hate more than someone who tries to squeeze every last penny out of the deal. They often raise the aggrevation level to the point where it’s not worth doing the deal. They also raise the dislike level to the point where even if a deal gets done, you look for ways to never do business with that person or company again.Business happens over years and years. Value is measured in the total upside of a business relationship, not by how much you squeezed out in any one deal.
If you are a lawyer reading this post, think about Cuban’s advice in the context of your relationships with your clients. Do you really need to turn your copy machine into a profit center? Does every single minute of time spent thinking about a client’s case need to show up on the bill? Several days ago a client complained to me about her previous attorney. She said that she would call the attorney to find out when the project he was working for her on would be done (it was already several weeks overdue), and she would get billed for the phone call! The $37.50 per call did not matter to the client financially, but she became so aggravated she not only switched lawyers, but tells everyone she knows about her experience.
Think Tank Tuesdays – Details
Think Tank Tuesday Participants: The roster is now closed. I’ll be e-mailing everyone about the details, but if I’ve missed someone, let me know. Think Tank participant Zane Safrit at Conference Calls Unlimited is providing us a free toll-free number for the meeting along with his web-conferencing service.
I’ve tentatively scheduled the first telephone conference for Tuesday, September 14. We’ll work out timing next week.
I’m new at this, but here are some of my ideas on how this whole thing will work. For the first meeting, when we’re all on the line, everyone will have thirty seconds to give your elevator speech introducing yourself and telling us what you do. This is more of a creativity exercise than a draconian measure to keep the meeting moving.
We will have one big question every month, and each of you should be prepared to discuss the question as it pertains to you or your business. We’ll take turns answering the month’s “big question” and getting input from the others in the group. I’d like to allocate a given amount of time to each person’s question, so nobody gets short-changed on their input from this fabulous group.
The first big question is: What one thing could I do to completely transform my business?
I’ll send out a lot more details in the next week, but wanted to get everyone excited about the Think Tank. Some other issues I am still working on:
Recording the conference call so others could listen in if they missed it.
Scheduling more than one per month if the idea is as successful as I think it will be.
Inviting a “celebrity” guest to join us once in a while.
Starting an “invitation only” blog with multiple posting privileges to facilitate group communication between calls.
As you can tell, I’m really enthusiastic about this idea, and welcome your comments (public or private) about what you’d like to see. If you’ve missed out on the first roster for the Think Tank, e-mail me anyway and I’ll do my best to squeeze you in or set up another one.
Think Tank Tuesdays
I’ve previously posted about my Innovation Tuesdays. I’ve renamed the group “Think Tank Tuesdays” and only have three more spots open for participants. We’ll do a conference call at least one Tuesday per month, and I’m shooting for the first Tuedsay in September for the kick off. Some of the non-lawyer participants are Don the Idea Guy, Lori “Sales Process Diva” Richardson, and Evelyn Rodriquez. Get me an e-mail as soon as possible if you are interested.
Another Cool Idea
Not really sure how to make this work in the law biz, but here is an interesting idea from Kevin Salwen at Worthwhile:
There’s a Brazilian steakhouse I like that could teach some serious lessons in as-needed customer service. When you sit down, you get a card (it looks like a coaster) on which one side is green and the other is red. When you want the waiters to bring more food, you leave the green side up. It says you are interested in interacting with them. When you’re done — read that, leave me alone please — the red side faces up. If every restaurant had that, wouldn’t meals be much more pleasant?
Responsible Innovation
Adrian Burstein has some thoughtful ideas on the human cost of innovation in a weblog article he has written on the Cheskin Fresh Perspectives blog. Though writing about the postal system, his thoughts ring true for the legal industry as well:
If I go to the counter in a post office and hand in a letter, they will rush me and stamp on it whatever the standard is. The result is a missed opportunity to be relevant beyond efficiency, and a negated privileged role in providing customers with a meaningful experience through imparting and promoting a culture of knowledge.But that’s not all. At a second layer, we need to understand that users aren’t only those who buy stamps or mail packages. The postal employees themselves are users of the postal system. They are the face of a system that has lost its charm. They are participants of an experience that nobody looks forward to, much less appreciate or see the value of spending an extra couple of minutes on it. This creates a vicious cycle that impoverishes the overall user experience for everyone.
This sounds so much like our business it is scary.
Barriers to Innovation
Thanks to Mike Docherty at Innovation.net for pointing me to this study (must sign up to read the whole thing) by Strategos measuring barriers to innovation across a wide variety of industries. The top five barriers to innovation:
Short term focus/ focus on operations (63%)
Lack of time, resources or staff (52%)
Lack of systematic innovation process (33%)
Leadership expects payoff sooner than is expected (31%)
Management incentives not structured to reward innovation (31%)
Does this sound familiar lawyers?
You can’t innovate if you don’t take time to focus on the future as well as the present. This is a problem I’ve been having myself. I have been so torn between completing our new business model and serving existing clients that I am running on fumes. I’ve just finished “The Now Habit” and am planning a week of “French Hours” beginning Saturday. I have several posts I’ll get up before then, but then this blog will go silent for seven days. Promise me you won’t forget me while I’m gone.
Rules for Entrepreneurs
Boy, I wish I’d asked Dave Pollard to contribute to my Five by Five – Entrepreneur Edition. On his How to Save the World Blog, Dave has this great post titled, “Entrepreneurialism and the New Economy.” The long post is worth ten minutes of your time, but what I found most valuable were his rules for entrepreneurs to succeed in the “New Economy:”
1. Don’t try to play in the big guys’ sandbox. You may have a great idea for a new pre-moistened window-cleaning, eyeglass-cleaning wipe, but do you really think Proctor & Gamble will let you make any money at it? You have to find a need that the big guys, for whatever reason, can’t fill. Take advantage of their lack of agility, their focus, their disinterest in niches and specialization, their inability to customize, their physical distance, to find needs that they wouldn’t even think of trying to satisfy.2. Don’t borrow money or give up equity. When the economic recession hits, or interest rates spike, those in debt, or with expensive equity, will fall like flies. Of course organically financed businesses are harder to get started, and they grow more slowly. But financial leverage is a double-edged sword. In bad times, it can kill you.
3. Avoid lawyers, and the need for lawyers. If you get into a legal fight to defend your intellectual property from a bigger guy, or because a bigger guy has sued you over your alleged infringement, you’re going to lose. It may not be fair, but in court the most expensive team of lawyers almost always wins.
4. Be careful lying down with elephants. Many entrepreneurs find that the Business-to-Business niche is more lucrative, easier, or better suited to their competencies than a Business-to-Consumer business. Often that means your customers are much bigger than you. If you’re careful, attentive, provide something unique and make a healthy margin with these customers, that can be a formula for great entrepreneurial success. But watch out if the elephant rolls over — if it gets sold, or decides to change suppliers, or decides to squeeze suppliers, you could be squashed.
5. Do what you know. And know what you’re doing. When times get tough, or new, disruptive innovations start creating waves in an industry, experts survice and dilettantes flounder. You must always be the best at what you’re doing. If the idea of being in a particular business intrigues you but it’s not in your area of competency, go work for someone else who is competent in it first. Then when you’re an expert, go on your own.
6. Follow the money. The four big-opportunity industries noted above are going to explode because they are aligned with the needs of baby-boomers, who (by sheer numbers) have much of the disposable income in our society. Read books like Boom, Bust & Echo to find out who has the money, and then follow it — find out what they’re spending it on and why, and what they’ll need next. This is especially true in a fragile economy, because the rich are the last to stop buying and the first to re-start.
7. Know your customer. Next to running out of cash, and making bad management decisions, not knowing your customer — what they need and why they buy — and not investing social capital in relationships with customers, is the biggest cause of entrepreneurial failure. The reasons why customers buy what they do, and don’t buy what they don’t, aren’t always logical or even informed. You can’t understand this from a distance — surveys and studies of buying patterns won’t tell you. You have to spend time with customers (real and prospective) and get inside their hearts and minds. These relationships also help recession-proof you, and, if you use them properly, they will provide most of the fodder you need for continuous innovation (rule #9 below).
8. Network with other entrepreneurs. The big guys network constantly with their suppliers, other corporate executives and even competitors. They leverage their contacts and, without the need for a LinkedIn or a Ryze, they know who to call for information and advice on anything that can happen that affects their business. They don’t need to have all their expertise on staff or on retainer. Entrepreneurs, for some reason, seem to do this less (probably they’re too busy trying to do everything themselves). Most entrepreneurs need to do it more, especially one-on-one.
9. Innovate. The big guys don’t want to innovate (they think it’s expensive and risky), they don’t have to innovate (in today’s economy it’s easier for them to litigate, pre-emptively patent and buy out innovators than to develop anything radically new themselves), and they’re no good at innovating (they’re too big, too inflexible, and too risk-averse and cost-conscious). That’s your competitive advantage as an entrepreneur. And innovation isn’t just about products and services, and about pre-start-up activity, it’s about every aspect of the business — products, services, processes, distribution channels, technologies, organization, structure, strategy, everything — and it must be continuous. There’s a simple, intuitive process for doing it:
Now, I don’t completely agree with number 3, but I think the rest is pretty sound advice for anyone running a business — lawyers included.
How to be creative.
Hugh Macleod has an unbelievable post at his Gaping Void weblog, titled “How to be Creative.” Hugh has 12 well-reasoned and perfectly explained rules for becoming (and staying) creative. This is a must read for anyone interested in creativity. The first rule is my favorite:
1. Ignore everybody.The more original your idea is, the less good advice other people will be able to give you. When I first started with the biz card format, people thought I was nuts. Why wasn’t I trying to do something more easy for markets to digest i.e. cutey-pie greeting cards or whatever?
You don’t know if your idea is any good the moment it’s created. Neither does anyone else. The most you can hope for is a strong gut feeling that it is. And trusting your feelings is not as easy as the optimists say it is. There’s a reason why feelings scare us.
And asking close friends never works quite as well as you hope, either. It’s not that they deliberately want to be unhelpful. It’s just they don’t know your world one millionth as well as you know your world, no matter how hard they try, no matter how hard you try to explain.
Plus a big idea will change you. Your friends may love you, but they don’t want you to change. If you change, then their dynamic with you also changes. They like things the way they are, that’s how they love you- the way you are, not the way you may become.
Ergo, they have no incentive to see you change. And they will be resistant to anything that catalyzes it. That’s human nature. And you would do the same, if the shoe was on the other foot.
With business colleagues it’s even worse. They’re used to dealing with you in a certain way. They’re used to having a certain level of control over the relationship. And they want whatever makes them more prosperous. Sure, they might prefer it if you prosper as well, but that’s not their top priority.
If your idea is so good that it changes your dynamic enough to where you need them less, or God forbid, THE MARKET needs them less, then they’re going to resist your idea every chance they can.
Again, that’s human nature.
GOOD IDEAS ALTER THE POWER BALANCE IN RELATIONSHIPS, THAT IS WHY GOOD IDEAS ARE ALWAYS INITIALLY RESISTED.
Good ideas come with a heavy burden. Which is why so few people have them. So few people can handle it.
Each of the other eleven ideas is as good as — or better than — this one. Absoutely fantastic stuff.
Innovation Conference
I’ll have some more specific news soon, but I’m working on a brainstorming and innovation conference in Chicago on April 3 — the Sunday following Techshow. Attendance will be limited to around 30. If you have any interest, let me know. I’ll post more details in the next few weeks.
Innovation Tuesdays
Lori Richardson a/k/a Sales Process Diva has this great idea she calls “Power Wednesdays” where she teams with other professionals to keep her focused on marketing her business.
Form a group of a few people to champion each other – here’s how it works:
In the morning, your group all calls into a telephone bridge line and you do a quick “check-in” on how many calls you plan to make, what type of calls, and any other activity goals.
Mid-day, you all call back in and do another check-in to see how it is going; and have some virtual “championing” which will naturally fire everyone up – enthusiasm and success are contagious!
End of day – final check-in. How did your day go? Everyone says what they accomplished, what they learned, and what they will do next.
I like this idea so much, I’m going to start “Innovation Tuesdays.” One Tuesday a month, I’ll set up a conference call for readers of this blog to call in and share cool marketing and practice ideas. I’d like to limit the number of participants to ten or so, but if the demand is high enough, we can do multiple groups. We’ll shoot for a Tuesday in August for the first one. Any interest????
Open All Night
Another great article I found on the HOW Design site. This one profiles a “Create-a-Thon” hosted by a design agency to help pro-bono clients. According to the RIGGS website:
CreateAThon® is an innovative way of handling your agency’s pro-bono work and an outstanding way to make a positive impact on your community. It is a 24-hour blitz of creative energy focused on benefiting local non-profit organizations. Here is a brief summary of how CreateAThon® works:
* Your agency solicits applications from local 501(c)3 organizations.
* You select a group of projects based on recommended criteria.
* The number of projects accepted is based on the capabilities of the individual agency.
* These projects are then completed start to finish during a 24-hour period.
Here’s the story from the ad agency that hosted one for the the Philadelphia/South Jersey area:
So on September 11, 2003, Hypno led CreateAThon with an elite crew of guest art directors, copywriters, account execs and lunatic friends helping needy organizations with $165,500 worth of pro-bono services. We used the article to recruit other like-minded creatives and businesses; photographers, printers and paper manufacturers all answered the call of duty.When word spread that Hypno was hosting CreateAThon, I started getting emails from people I’d never heard of volunteering to work with us. There was no shortage of talent, although there was a run on available desk space. And Hypno was flooded with requests from needy organizations that heard about the event through the nonprofit grapevine. Nonprofits had been hit hard by the economic slump and many desperately needed creative services.
Within 72 hours of the start of the event—from the first scribbled notes during client meetings to the final products—we saw fully realized posters, brochures, newspaper ads, flyers, postcards, logos, videos, Web sites and billboards. The work was fantastic, and clients were tearfully happy, not only because the creative work, printing and materials were free, but because the projects’ quality was top-notch. An excellent printer, Chapel2000, donated printing and materials.
I’m trying to get my mind around a way this concept would work in the legal business. If you have any ideas, let me know.
Finding your Niche
Tom Asacker points to an article from the August 2004 issue of Inc. Magazine by Norm Brodsky:
Brodsky writes: “There are three myths about niches that can get in the way of building a successful business. First and foremost is the myth that you have to choose your niche before you start your company. Granted, it’s sometimes possible to identify a niche in advance, but often you can’t see it until you’ve actually gone out into the market and begun to sell.” Having been there I can assure you that this is wise counsel from a street-wise entrepreneur. And it applies to an existing business as well. Don’t assume – like Polaroid, Xerox, Kodak, et al – that your niche is niche-proof. Everyone is looking to grab a slice of your pie with innovative new products and services. So be smart. Stay tuned in to your audience’s dreams, wants and pains and preempt your competition with your own bold, new offerings that improve people’s lives.
Great advice. Have you looked at your niche lately?
Ergonomics for Lawyers
Saw this interesting survey in an article in my Ergonomics Today newsletter:
Want to know what makes an office worker more, or less, productive? According to a recent survey by Microsoft Hardware, 90 percent of workers believe their productivity is directly linked to their workstation design, and most would choose ergonomic tools to increase their efficiency over company-wide morale-building programs.
What struck me about it is just how little attention most lawyers pay to their own computer set up, much less that of their staffs. As my partner and I design our new offices (we are looking at new space soon), we are going to have small primary work offices with multiple meeting rooms to meet with clients. Because the attorney’s actual office doesn’t need to be a show place, we could do something like this or this instead.
Stop Start Continue
Barbara Payne at Blog for Business has this great brainstorming tip she found in the Winning at Work newsletter:
Next, get three pieces of flip chart paper and label them “Stop” “Start” “Continue” — then ask your staff to work in groups of 3. First group brainstorms answers to the question: “In order to (raise revenue by XX dollars, solve this issue, etc.), what do we need to stop doing?”Second group does it with “In order to (raise revenue by XX dollars, solve this issue, or whatever), what do we need to start doing?
Third group brainstorms this one: “To (raise revenue, cut costs, solve this issue, or whatever) what do we need to continue doing? Hint: Brainstorm about what’s working really well.
Then rotate everybody around so that everyone gets a chance to give each question their best shot. Now you summarize all the points, assign a financial impact to each point that’s been raised, make it all into a report that says exactly what you will do (lay someone off? cut a program?) if your stuff doesn’t work.
I love the “stop – start – continue” method. What would your firm’s three questions be?
Good News for Small Firms
Thanks to Arnold Kling at EconBlog, I found this paper from William J. Baumol that explores why independent inventors and entrepreneurs contribute disproportionately to breakthrough inventions. This is good news for small firms and solo lawyers. Pull out the study whenever you are competing against a large firm for business:
The evidence shows that there is a rather sharp differentiation between the contributions to the economy’s technological innovation that are provided by entrepreneurs and those that are offered by the large internal R&D laboratories of established businesses. Large business firms, which account for nearly three-quarters of U.S. expenditure on R&D, have tended to follow relatively routine goals, slanted toward incremental improvements rather than revolutionary ideas. Greater user-friendliness, increased reliability, marginal additions to application, expansions of capacity, flexibility in design—these and many other types of improvement have come out of the industrial R&D facilities, with impressive consistency, year after year, and often pre-announced and pre-advertised. In contrast, the independent innovator and the independent entrepreneur have tended to account for most of the true, fundamentally novel innovations. . . . It is a plausible observation, then, that perhaps most of the revolutionary new ideas of the past two centuries have been, and are likely to continue to be, provided more often by these independent innovators who, essentially, operate small business enterprises.
What are your revolutionary ideas? Come on, small firm lawyers, we’ve clearly got the advantage here, so use it!
Coming Soon – Five by Five
One of the ideas from my innovation weekend is a weekly forum I’ll call “Five by Five.” In weekly posts, I’ll ask five people — who are experts in their fields — to give me five ideas on a given topic. Every week, the five people will come from a different (usually non-legal) discipline, but the topic will always focus upon the innovative marketing, pricing, and delivery of legal services.
I’m already working on my list of invitees and welcome any suggestions. All participants in the Five by Five will get their choice (and I’m completely serious here) of an official “the [non]billable hour” hat or t-shirt.
As a compliment to the weekly series, I’ve set up a kind of a [non]billablehour extranet/wiki for all my readers to participate in and contribute to the discussion. I’ll unveil more details tomorrow.
-
-
Brian Cox - Everything is Connected to Everything (by babyfacefister)
More details soon!
ABCinema (by Evan Seitz)
In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s mind there are few.
Shunryu Suzuki, a Sōtō Zen roshi (Zen Master) who popularized Zen Buddhism in the United States.
