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.
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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.
Technology does not equal productivity.
Here’s a must-read article from Wired, that shows how technology has made us less productive. Some quotes from the story:
Workers completed two-thirds of their work in an average day last year, down from about three-quarters in a 1994 study, according to research conducted for Day-Timers, an East Texas, Pennsylvania-based maker of organizational products.
The biggest culprit is the technology that was supposed to make work quicker and easier, experts say.
"Technology has sped everything up and, by speeding everything up, it's slowed everything down, paradoxically," said John Challenger, chief executive of Chicago-based outplacement consultants Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
"We never concentrate on one task anymore," Challenger said. "You take a little chip out of it, and then you're on to the next thing. It's harder to feel like you're accomplishing something."
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.
Having a nice time, wish you were here
I'm back in St. Louis for a few days, trying to sort out some living arrangements when my time in California comes to an end. I'm also closing some open loops on a few projects I'm working on. I'll be back blogging with a vengeance on Friday.
links for 2006-03-04
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Imagine a label for each client matter, with all people with an interest in the file subscribed to that label's feed.
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Are you a Mac user and want some of that MindManager goodness? Sign up for to beta test Mac version.
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."
Is the Bottom Line the Bottom Line?
Russell Beattie reminds us to focus on the bottom line:
But say you do have something cool, and your new innovation has that 10x improvement that a new service needs to really take off. Not that there’s a lot of this out there, but still. You can create a new website, fill it with all the goodness in the world, be good to your users, and be a good netizen and use every open standard there is while you’re at it, if at the end of the day your users didn’t put money into your bank account, it’s a useless waste of time for everyone involved. I mean, hey, if you want to create the next non-profit service like Wikipedia, all the more power too you. But if you want to get VC cash, an office in downtown Palo Alto, do a bunch of development, attract lots of users and pretend you’re a business? Then act like one, create something of real value and make some real money from it.
LexThink Lounge Invites
If you haven’t got your invitation for LexThink! Lounge yet, don’t worry. Nobody has. We are putting together our list, checking it twice, and plan on sending invitations out next week. Still didn’t get one, let us know you’d like to come. E-mail me at Matt@LexThink.com and we’ll see what we can do. We only have room for 100, but may be able to open up the event at 9:00 pm or so for one heck of an after party.
Midwesterners, Unite!
I’m still laughing at this video. Not entirely work safe. Hilarious.
TheirSpace - Understanding How Children Use the Internet
If you want to understand how children today use the web (primarily MySpace), and the implications for professional service providers (or just for parents), read Danah Boyd’s paper, titled Identity Production in a Networked Culture: Why Youth Heart MySpace.
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
How to Geek Out with your Technology Clients
Lawyers could learn a thing or two about communicating with clients from this explanation on the Stake Ventures blog: Why the LLC is the Ruby on Rails of legal entities.
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