In Search of Perfect Client Service

Is it here?  To be sure, predicting any storm, let alone the Perfect Storm, is a perilous undertaking.  But the stars sure look to be lining up like never before.  So take a pinch of salt, throw it over your left shoulder, sit back and let me explain.

Remember back in August when Gerry Riskin predicted bad times were ahead for the profession?  His words were "doom and gloom."  If you look at the specific factors he listed as the underpinning for his conclusion, he looks like an awfully good soothsayer.  Add some recent data to the mix.  This past week, I participated in a Managing Partners Summit and listened to Dan DiPietro, head of Citibank's Law Firm Group, share his data on 2007 and predictions for 2008.  Two days later, I was a panel with Dan at Hildebrandt's Marketing Partner Forum, so I have heard his data twice in a short period.  It sank in the first time.  It sent chills down my spine the second.  Short story--2008 is not likely to be a year lawyers look back at fondly.

There's more from my last week that fits in here.  I was fortunate enough to have lunch with Susan Hackett, the General Counsel of Association of Corporate Counsel.  She spoke to me about how angry her members are with outside counsel.  Angry!  Not shockingly, the things giving rise to the anger are the things you would guess--rising salaries for starting associates and the ripple effect, the impact of those salary increases on their fees, and law firms more focused on their business than that of their clients.  (To this latter point, I believe that it is not wrong for a Managing Partner to be more focused on his or her firm's business than that of the firm's clients.  It's just a mistake to let your clients believe that to be true.)

If law firms heard all of this and were lining up to abandon billable hours, provide far greater service and generate more value for the clients, the storm would pass with some positive results and little damage.  But what I heard this week is that large and mid-size firms seem to think this is "just another minor meteorlogical event."  They could be right--these law firm leaders are, after all, really smart people.  But the wild card here is the economy--back to Gerry Riskin's prediction.  And its not just how the economic downturn will hurt firms.  Its how the economic downturn will hurt the firm's clients with (and this is where Dan DiPietro's data comes in) not many more things to do to drive up productivity without increasing legal spend.  But the client's won't have the economic option to increase legal spend--to the contrary, many clients will face CEO demands to dramatically lower legal spend.  And too many firms are not ready to respond in a meaningful way.

You know the old saying that firms are never fired, they just aren't hired for new matters?  If the Perfect Storm develops, 2008 could turn out to be the year that the old saying was put to rest and firings became prevalent.

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Mistakes.  Everyone hates them, but everyone makes them.  The thing that separates great client service from lawyers looking for new clients is how you deal with them.  Some time ago, I provided a prescription for dealing with mistakes in my post, After The Mistake.  Noted blogger Jim Calloway picked up on my post here, which was special for me given Jim's stature in the blogging community. 

Given the importance of dealing with mistakes, I read with great interest Charles Green's post, Apologies, Forgiving and Forgiveness, in his Trust Matters blog.  Charles obviously is the real deal, so his writing is worthy of your attention.  He picks up on an article by Martha Beck, Always Apologize, Always Explain, in Oprah magazine.  Green's post picks up on an important issue--the expectation of forgiveness that frequently accompanies an apology, and how that expectation actually undermines the apology.  He writes:

It’s instructive that the ninth step of the Twelve Step program literature (you know, the one that pops up in Seinfeld and other sitcoms—the one about making amends), also doesn’t allude to forgiveness. In fact, none of the 12 steps do.

I think this is because Beck, and the 12-Step program, recognize that life is a messy business. To forgive, one has to have a very clean heart in the first place.  And we—I’ll be clean here and just say I—rarely do.

If I’m in a rush to forgive people, I most likely am still judging them for some harm they did to me.  If I’m consternated about being forgiven, well, that’s all about me; and apologies don’t come from a good place if they’re all about me.

Apologies should not be tainted by forgiving, or by seeking forgiveness.  Those have their place, but it’s elsewhere. 

A good apology tries to set aright something that you set awry by impinging on another’s will.  It’s only appropriate that the apology itself refrain from further imposition of will. Hence the separation from forgiving or forgiveness.

Thinking about this has made me wonder about whether law firms ever really discuss handling mistakes or, better yet, provide training to their lawyers.  Mistakes are such a taboo topic that most firms seem to operate on the premise that they only happen to other firms.  Yet every day we read about one firm or another being sued on account of matters that certainly appear like ones that could have been worked out.  Time to rethink the issue.

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My friend, Phil Harris from Jenner & Block, has authored an article, Confronting Race, that every lawyer in America should read.  Twice.  And leaders in major law firms should read it three times.  The article appears in the July 2007 issue of Chicago Lawyer (not related to American Lawyer; not available online).

The article begins with this thesis:

    "Most of us understand that disturbing attitudes about race and equality continue to plague our profession.  Statistics demonstrate the seriousness of the problem.  According to the Chicago Lawyer's annual surveys, in 1992 only 0.9% of the partners in large firms were black.  In the 2007 survey, that number had risen to only 1.8%.

Something is very wrong, and as leaders in our firms and good citizens, we need to address the problem in a direct, open, and honest way.  The disturbing attitudes and behavior we see in our law firms are exacerbated by the discomfort that we feel when discussing race.

                * * *
The problem is not that a hegemonic ideology of anti-racism discourages honest conversation about race.  Rather, it is a refusal by most members of the legal community to recognize that our practices, language, and institutional structures maintain and perpetuate racial boundaries.  We are not necessarily any worse than other professions in this regard.  But we can, and must, do better."

    While written by a Chicago attorney, a partner in a Chicago law firm, using statistics about partners in Chicago, the article is not about Chicago.  The issue is a national one, perhaps even a global one given a recent statistic I saw about the number of minority partners in top UK firms.  The issues Phil discusses transcend geography.  I believe they also transcend our profession, but that discussion is for another day, another forum.

Phil discusses the efforts many firms have made--making financial contributions to organizations that promote diversity; funding scholarships for minority law students; retaining diversity consultants; using creative approaches to identify and recruit black and other minority law students; and for some, discussing diversity with their clients.  Still, that 1.8% figure is rather stark, and while acknowledging the value of these steps, the article indicts our profession for maintaining "deeply embedded attitudes and behaviors" that result in two steps back for every two steps forward.

In my view, Phil breaks new ground when he says that the discussion he proposes must be premised on agreement that the end must result in black lawyers "exercising the same intellectual, cultural and institutional clout as their white peers."  In the preceding paragraph, I suggest that the article is in some respects an "indictment" of the profession.  I don't think Phil would necessarily agree with my use of that word--its not a terribly constructive word and his goal is a constructive one.  But the profession must be candid with itself--black lawyers, by and large, are not viewed as intellectually equal to white lawyers.  The evidence?  The article is filled with it.  For example, minority lawyers are expected to be rainmakers: there are virtually none in the ranks of the service partners at most firms.  Why?  Only the "smart" non-rainmakers get to stay as service partners.  I won't try to characterize all of the evidence that appears in the article, but I hope that many of us will be honest enough to accept the real possibility of our shortcomings.

The real issue is what do we do about it?  I hope the candid discussion Phil seeks happens:  if it does, some meaningful progress might result.  But the progress will require big firm leaders in particular to admit some painful truths.  What with all the focus these days on profits per partner, the leadership necessary to move forward on this issue seems to be in short supply.  My be is the article will be met with stultifying silence.

This issue is a critical one.  The Chicago Lawyer is a publication of limited circulation and limited geographic interest.  But since the issue is one of universal importance, please take the time to help circulate the article to law firm leaders, friends, and anyone else who might broaden the number of people who read this outstanding article.  Thanks.

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I received an email from Inside Counsel today announcing the July edition (which I received and wrote about yesterday).  I don't know if I missed this when I read the magazine, but the email contained this great quote:

          “When I talk to law firms, I have one hand on my wallet,”       
says William B. Solomon Jr., general counsel of GMAC. “With the pressure on firms to increase revenues, they don’t care very much about cost effectiveness.”

In my own hometown, Winston, Mayer Brown and Jenner all have announced outright dismissals or de-equitization of scores of partners.  Is there anyone who debates that this reflects an extraordinary amount of  pressure to increase revenues?  But the truth may be wholly irrelevant.  So long as clients believe it to be true, they will act as if it is.
   
    We know that great pressure can create things of great value, however.   Much has been written of late of the growing opportunities for what my friend Dan Hull refers to as "muscle boutiques."  But the fact is that these same difficult times create heroic opportunities for any big firm bold enough to adapt to the changed times.  But, alas, there is no evidence yet of any large firm having so bold a vision.

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The July 2007 edition of Inside Counsel just arrived.  This is the edition that has the results of the survey of General Counsel.  Fascinating reading.

First, the Lake Wobegon effect continues to be alive and well.  (I've covered the issue here, here and here.)  Only 19% of outside lawyers give their outside firms an "A" for overall performance (down from 21% last year and 22% in 2005).  Over 60% of the law firms give themselves an "A".   Almost 40% of surveyed in-house counsel believe law firms pad their bills.  Only 10% of outside lawyers share that belief.  Seventy percent of inside counsel disagree with the notion that law firms are actively seeking ways to reduce the cost of their services, while 56% of the outside lawyers believe firms are seeking to do so.  Almost 40% of the inside lawyers feel law firms make too much money; only 9% of the outside lawyers share that belief.  Just under 30% of inside counsel respondents believe the level of service provided by their law firms has improved over the past five years, while almost 70% of the firms agree that service has improved.

Some of the quotes in the survey report are instructive:

"Law firms can't say they are actively seeking ways to reduce costs and then pay incoming associates $160,000 per year."
                                                            Christine Helwick, GC,
                                                            California State University

"I always ask if we can have arrangements other than the hourly fee, but law firms shy away and offer reasons why it won't work."
                                                            Christian Na, GC,
                                                            Mitel Networks

"I hold my thumb on my outside firms.  It's very labor intensive on my side to prevent a runaway budget."
                                                       Paul Risner, General Counsel,
                                                       Boca Raton Community Hospital

There is little in this report that should help managing partners sleep well at night.  Save for one thing.  It appears that despite the increasing volume of complaints about matters of great importance, there is no epidemic of firms being fired.  But some day, inside counsel may realize that theirs is a buyers market.

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I have written many times about the central role culture plays in achieving, well, anything of consequence.  (See here, here, here, here, and here.)  Darci Riesenhuber,  a Transformation Architect with tompeters!company, has written a terrific article in the July Tom Peters Times about the importance of culture.  Here is a highlight:

"... employees will behave in accordance with their values, regardless of your business strategy. Hence, the reason culture must be aligned with strategy. If, for example, your aggressive, high growth business strategy creates an unstable environment that requires individuals to take risks, an individual valuing stability, security and consistency will feel anxious and begin to seek ways to remedy their discomfort. In some cases, they are able to adapt and learn the behaviors necessary to succeed. In others, the personal transformation is simply not possible and they fail. The best way to avoid this is to determine "fit" during the selection process. However, just as your strategy changes throughout the life of your business, so must your culture. Changing your culture is not impossible, as many would believe. You just have to carefully evaluate and adjust the factors that influence culture, such as your systems (reward, IT), structure (reporting, physical), policies, HR practices (selection, training), communication, leadership-style, etc ... As Tom says, "Culture change, that elusive goal, can be achieved one project at a time."

There is an old saying about the boat moving fastest when everyone is pulling their oar in the same direction.  If there is not cultural alignment within a firm, it is hard to see how it can operate at its best.

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Line from Bob Dylan:

"Don't be afraid not to follow the herd - because where the herd's gone, the food is already eaten."

Thanks to the folks at the Brand Builder  for their great post, Bob Dylan On Fresh Ideas & Innovation.

When you think about, it is important to be thankful for the herd.  Without the herd, there would only be individuals.  And when you sell yourself as someone special, you need the herd.

You need to decide who you are and what your firm is. 

If you're part of the herd, you don't need to worry about your navigational skills.

If you wonder about whether you have what it takes to leave the herd, take heed to this from the Brand Builder post:

"If you aren't already finding your own lush pastures, maybe it's time you stopped settling for someone else's scraps. Do something different. Take chances every once in a while. Innovate. Put original ideas into action. Try something new. Do something.

Get there first - or at least be among the first.

Life is too short - and green pastures are in far too short supply - for anyone, you included, to waste your time following the herd. It might seem like the safe thing to do, but trust me: It's a hard living, fighting over someone else's scraps, and in the long term, there's absolutely no future in it.

None.

Unless you like going hungry."

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"Put most bluntly, the most fundamental misalignment of interests is between clients who are driven to manage expenses, and law firms which are compensated by the hour."

So says Cisco General Counsel Mark Chandler in a recent speech, which is posted here. 

From the same speech:

My answer to this question is therefore simple: first, winners will be those who are able to standardize services to meet clients’ cost management and predictability needs where very good is good enough. Second, those who can differentiate themselves by providing the top notch of customized services, where that is needed, will also win. In some cases, one firm may be able to do both. But my bet is that despite the consolidation trend we’re seeing today, top quality boutiques will thrive while the cost structures of larger centralized firms will put them at risk.

This is a must read.  I'd love to have 20 minutes of Mark Chandler's time to discuss it.

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I have been spending considerable time trying to identify the character traits firms must have to succeed.  Here's my top ten list.  Feel free to add to it.

Discipline
Execution
Passion
An ability to be dispassionate
Commitment
Creativity
Excellence
Customer-focus
Comfort with Change and willingness to experiment
Maniacal effort to improve

I know that being both passionate and dispassionate appears paradoxical.  But I think not.  A firm must be passionate about something--that is what will distinguish it from its peers.  But in evaluating performance and making business decisions, it cannot drink its own Kool-Aid.  In areas where self-critical analysis is required, a firm must be dispassionate.

In any event, I hope to hear from you on the traits you agree are essential and those you don't, as well as traits not on the list you feel should be.

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Mike Dillon is the General Counsel Counsel of Sun Microsystems.  He also blogs at The Legal Thing.  Because he is an inhouse lawyer, I want to know what he thinks, so I am a regular reader of his blog.  His post from Tuesday captured my attention.  The Way Of The Mastadon reflects Mike's views on the future of BigLaw--giant law firms trying to match their clients in size.  It is a must read.

Mike defines the real role of large firms:

My view is that law firms serve primarily as aggregators of specialized legal expertise. The premise has been that by combining multiple legal disciplines you can provide “one stop shopping” for current and prospective clients. This structure previously made sense. If you were an individual or business with a legal problem, it wasn't efficient nor effective to try to identify an individual attorney with the technical skills that you required. So, you would turn to a law firm and rely on them to direct you to the appropriate attorney within their firm to solve your issue.

Mike then identifies the core problem:

The problem is that this model relies on growth (the need to add additional attorneys) to maintain profitability rather than focusing on efficiency gains. In this respect, it is at odds with what I need as a client and General Counsel.

After discussing the ease of moving the "aggregation" function inhouse, Mike reaches this conclusion:

My point is that the epoch of the current law firm model - which derives its profitability from growing scale and raising hourly rates - will soon be over. The firms that will survive and thrive are those that recognize this change and focus on how to maintain margins by focusing on efficiency.

Oh how I hope you are right.  The movement seems slow, but at least there is movement.

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During a conference several months ago, I found myself doodling.  Pretty soon, the doodle turned into a note to myself.  "Who is the voice of the client?"  I put the note on my desk, and I find myself staring at every day.  In a law firm, who is the voice of the client?  Is the answer as simple as "I am?"  It can't be.  No lawyer can speak for the client day in and day out.  There are days when I am tired.  Distracted.  Not in the office.  There are many reasons why any one lawyer cannot be the sole voice of the client in a law firm.

Is the answer, then, that all lawyers must be the voice of the client?  I think not.  Too many lawyers, particularly younger ones, are looking out for their own careers.  Bill more hours and do better work and make partner, or speak for the client and risk the golden ring.

As I stare at my doodled note, I've come to the conclusion that we cannot rely on ourselves to speak our clients in a law firm environment.  The answer, it seems, lies in systems, not solely in people.  Law firms must design systems so that the client's interests, the client's voice, are spoken--loudly--internally as the firm conducts its business.

To be clear, I believe that the answer to the title question is not just systems, but that systems must supplement those individuals who truly are committed to clients.  I welcome reaction to this conclusion.  But in any event, I will be writing more later about the kinds of systems I believe are necessary.

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The Managing Partner of Morrison & Foerster, Keith Wetmore, is a fraternity brother.  Wettinger, as he was known at Northwestern in the the late 1970s, was a stellar President of the fraternity.  Because of our fraternal brotherhood, articles in which Keith is mentioned or quoted always catch my eye.  One gave me pause to think beyond the past, however.  Anyone following the profession knows starting salaries in major markets have climbed to $160,000.  Given the upward ripple, the bottom line hit for firms of any size is measured in the millions.  And I have written repeatedly that clients will pay the price for the increase, either in higher hourly rates or the sudden and mysterious need to spend more hours on the same matters.

So check this New York Lawyer article out (sub. req.).  In it, my friend Keith takes on the "who pays" issue directly.  From the article:

Morrison & Foerster Chairman Keith Wetmore said the costs of the $160,000 scale will be born internally — even if it comes from partners' profits.

"We will make a little less money this year," Wetmore said.

He also said his firm won't hike hours requirements or billing rates.

Its not that I don't believe Keith.  Its just that I can't fathom how he can pull it off--at least over the long run.  Given the pressures to report high earnings per partner for competitive reasons, the need to pay marketable partners at the market rate, and similar pressures, how can a partnership put itself in the position where it starts off several million dollars in the whole vis its competitors?  It wasn't as though Keith was infallible as President of the fraternity.  Maybe he just got it wrong here.  But if he can pull it off, more power to him.  I'll be watching--along with MoFo's clients.

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So I am flying to Houston, quietly reading the April/May issue of Law Practice magazine (see my next post).  I stop at 'FrontLines" to examine their survey.  The question--How do law firms arrive at their partner compensation decisions?--is pulled from an Altman Weil survey.  I just started laughing.  On a 4 point scale, with 1 being no importance and 4 being very important, personal fees collected and business origination (new clients) get the top marks of 2.5 each, with business origination (increase in volume) and business origination (new business/existing clients) arriving just behind at 2.25 (2 is of little importance and 3 is somewhat important).  Years in practice is ranked less than 1.  Hours recorded (apparently distinguished from hours actually worked) receives a rank of less than 2--less than "little importance."   Yeah, right.

Judging from the survey, there are no factors that are very important or even somewhat important.  Strikes me that the survey respondents were delusional.

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The announcement of increases in starting salaries for associates in large California law firms (up to $160,000) led to this law.com headline today:  Corporate Clients Take Note as More Firms Announce Associate Raises.  The mind just reels, doesn't it?

Here's the quote from the article that really caught my eye:

The rash of raises has some big-firm clients worried.

"There seems to be no end in sight," said James Hall, director of intellectual property at Silicon Valley's Quantum Corp. "At some point I think it has to impact how much I'll pay in legal services ... That money has to come from somewhere."

I don't know Mr. Hall.  I don't know his background.  But if he has any doubt that every plug nickel of those raises will be recovered from him and thus "impact" how much he pays in legal services, he doesn't have the fist damn clue how big law firms operate.  Big law firms are billion dollar businesses or billion-dollar wanna-be businesses.  Their first rule of business--PARTNERS DON'T PAY FOR ASSOCIATE  SALARY INCREASES.  If the money isn't coming from the partners, that only leaves the clients.  One way or another, Mr. Hall, you'll be paying.

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I'm a big fan of Jim Collins' book, Good To Great.  Look here, here, here and here for some posts that discuss the book.  In a twist on Good To Great, David Maister asks whether marketing consultants can help firms that have decided to eschew greatness and remain satisfied with Good.  His post is "Good To Good,"

I found the comments to be especially interesting, since most implicitly assume the desire to be great exists in every firm.  I firmly believe the contrary is so, though not all firms would admit that they have decided that good is good enough.  Certainly, some have.  But perhaps the greater number are the ones that pay lip service to greatness but refuse to take the steps necessary to be great.  I am not for an instant castigating firms for following this road--most are small firm where personal relationships trump other issues that may be roadblocks to greatness.  But the fact remains that there are precious few great firms in the world, far less than would be expected is those who claim to seek greatness actually did.

This made me wonder whether clients played a role in this issue.  I think they must.  If clients actually demanded greatness, there would be more movement to firms that actually achieved it, and thus far more pressure on firms to actually become great rather than merely talking about doing so.  But most clients don't leave their "go-to" firms even though few of them qualify as "great."  Why?  I think there are a mixture of reasons.  Personal relationships, to start.  The next is that good frequently is good enough.   And lastly, I believe clients are reluctant to rock the boat, in large measure because it is impossible to rock your boat without also rocking their own.  So the great middling of law firms continue to exist without real pressure to achieve greatness.

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Seth Godin got me thinking.  He does that to people.  He is, as he describes himself, an "agent of change."  And I like nothing better than change, so maybe that's why I am such a fan.  His recent post, Thrill seekers, divides people into two categories--thrill seekers and fear avoiders.  I can't better his description of the people in these categories, so let me just use his words:

Thrill seekers love growth. They most enjoy a day where they try something that was difficult, or--even better--said to be impossible, and then pull it off. Thrill seekers are great salespeople because they view every encounter as a chance to break some sort of record or have an interaction that is memorable.

Fear avoiders hate change. They want the world to stay just the way it is. They're happy being mediocre, because being mediocre means less threat/fear/change. They resent being pushed into the unknown, because the unknown is a scary place.

Seth than asks why not call them risk seekers and risk avoiders?  Good question. His answer?

So why not call them risk seekers and risk avoiders? Well, it used to be true. Seeking thrills was risky. But no longer. Now, of course, safe is risky. The horrible irony is that the fear avoiders are setting themselves up for big changes because they're confused. The safest thing they can do now, it turns out, is become a thrill seeker.

"Now, of course, safe is risky."  What a powerful insight.  Think about a child standing next to a merry-go-round.  Because its safe.  After all, centrifugal force will not cause you to fly off the merry-go-round if you aren't on it.  But now the merry-go-round is picking up speed and you have to get it on it or you won't survive the taunts of your friends.  The safe spot is now risky.  As the world changes and our business changes, safe is risky.  If fear paralyzes you because you are a fear avoider, you just stay the same in a world moving by at a faster and faster pace.  Safe, but ultimately sorry.

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Does anyone else think that clients are getting lost in all the discussion about the impact of the latest increases in associate salaries?

Uber-blogger Bruce MacEwen has a terrific post addressing the economics of the issue from the standpoint of the large firm.  So the debate rages about whether there are good, or at least sane, reasons for the increase.  One proffered reason is the desire to retain talented mid and senior associates, but Bruce offers an approach that would better accomplish that objective.

Bruce's post, and other pieces I've read (several of which are linked through his post), present the issue from the law firm's perspective, but I haven't seen anyone focus on this issue from the client's perspective.  More interestingly, I haven't seen anyone from any law firm that has suggested that their clients believe that salary increases are right way to solve the firm's business problem.  I wonder what firms would do if they had in-depth discussions with their clients about the issue.  My strong suspicion is that clients would urge the firms to try non-economic approaches.  I mean, after all, haven't some of the storied CEOs built immense employee goodwill and loyalty by steps other than mere salary increases?

By the way, don't the accounting and consulting industries face the same issue--growing demand and a static labor supply?  How are those industries responding?  I don't hear about the same salary issues in those industries.

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I recently wrote about the critical role firm culture plays in the success or failure of marketing initiatives.   In that same vein, I want to draw your attention to a recent post on  Tom Peters' blog on the same topic.  Juli Ann Reynolds (President and CEO of the Tom Peters Company) writes that:

 A beautifully crafted strategy can fail when the employees in various divisions within an organization clash. Logically, we think that strategy should drive behavior, but, in reality, it's the culture—underlying norms, values, belief systems—that dictates how effectively people work together.

The comments made to his post re-enforce the notion that culture is key.   Juli Ann ends her thoughtful post with this question:

How do you change this and bring culture into alignment with strategy?

In my view, the issue is more acute in the professional services field where the "herding cats"/"you're not the boss of me" mentality causes people to live in silos and feel free to change or not as they see fit.  So the question is there for all of us:

How can we cause the culture of our firms to change in a manner to allow our marketing programs to succeed on a grand scale?

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Seminars.  Blogs.  Creative people.  Great ideas.  Detailed plans.  If marketing was easy, everyone would be good at it.  But the disturbing sameness of law firm marketing and its disturbing ineffectiveness lead to all sorts of questions.  In the world of business, there are memorable marketing campaigns to play an instrumental role in the success of a product.  But one would be hard pressed to find a law firm marketing campaign that really launched a firm's success.  Have you ever wondered why?  I know I have.

I think I may have found an answer--culture.  A firm's culture manifests itself in behaviors, and those behaviors in the results that marketing plans are designed to change.  It follows that if you can change the identified behaviors, the results will change too.  But changing behavior is not an easy thing to do, and marketing plans, no matter how well thought through, are not able to change the behaviors at issue.  What causes behaviors?  Beliefs--mindsets.   Substantial research establishes the simple relationship between beliefs, which cause behaviors, which yield results.  So to change results, you have to start with the beliefs basic to the behaviors that need to change.

How do you change beliefs?  One obvious conclusion is that firm management must be strongly supportive of and involved with and significant plan.  But there has to be more.  Beliefs don't change by decree.  They change by virtue of modeled behavior, rewards (financial and otherwise), encouragement and follow through.  There are experts who help accomplish cultural change.  Professional assistance is always useful.  Without incredible commitment and follow through, though, one lesson is that trying something and failing may be worse than not trying at all.  Such failures only reenforce the futility of change.  Without open minds (not exactly a strength of lawyers), real change is unlikely.

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On August 30, 2006, the Wall Street Journal reported (pg. B1) that Holland & Knight was involved in a billing dispute with a client.  The article was reprinted in the September 4, 2006 issue of the Chicago Sun-Times: it is the firm's Chicago office that is embroiled in the dispute.  The details of the dispute are not of great moment, and in the interest of full disclosure, two of my partners (former Holland & Knight partners) are quoted in the article.  But while the details of this situation are not of moment, the article does beg the question of how a firm should handle a major billing issue with its client.

Let's assume one of the facts in the Holland & Knight story--a young partner claims that the billing partner, not involved in a piece of litigation--has dramatically overbilled the client for that matter.  From that, let's go to a place the Holland & Knight story does not go--that the young partner is threatening to make his complaint known to the client.  What should the firm do?

I have written previously about how to handle mistakes.   But that post involved errors in judgment, while this example involves an allegation of fraud.  Even if not true, the allegation itself can threaten the client relationship, with even the most loyal client wondering why the young partner made the allegations, and why.  It seems to me that simply denying the allegation is an incomplete response, potentially fatally so since it does not address the underlying questions that most certainly exist.

At the same time, simply offering to make an adjustment to the bill almost seems to validate the charge by the young partner, so that approach is not the preferred one either.  While potentially expensive, the response I propose is based on the notion that our integrity and credibility are traits that can never have an associated price tag.  With that as the premise, someone from the firm must be in the client's office as swiftly as humanly possible.  The issue must be identified candidly and the obvious distress to the firm and the client must be recognized.  The client must be assured that its confidence in the law firm and its lawyers is the firm's paramount objective, and to that end, the firm is prepared to refund the entirety of the fee paid by the client if, after investigation, there is any doubt on either side about the integrity of the bills and the billing process.  The firm should then volunteer to submit the entirety of its bill to examination by a neutral party agreeable to the client, with the firm to bear the entire expense.

There may perhaps be other ideas on how to retain the client's trust without putting the entirety of the fee at risk.  Perhaps the client herself will be the source of ideas, and most certainly the query should be made.

There remains the obvious personnel issue.  While retaining the whistleblower may be distasteful, terminating him sends a powerful and negative message.  To the extent there is merit to the claimed breach of trust, the person responsible to the lapse may need to leave, but at a minimum cannot be left in a position where the firm's integrity can again be compromised. 

To the extent the matter has become public, as in the Holland & Knight story, it seems to me that the matter must be addressed publicly and that the firm's clients need to be individually reassured that such behavior is an aberration and is not tolerated at the firm.  Toward this end, actions will always speak louder than words.

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Gerry Riskin just recommended that we all read "legendary Merrilyn Astin Tarlton's new blog."  Merrilyn's blog is named Blank Piece Of Paper and a box of crayons. Gerry's recommendation is all I need, so I immediately took a look.  Blank Piece of Paper is very impressive.  I just smiled when I read Merrilyn's entry "How DARE he?" in which she writes about some research presented by innovation expert Eric Mankin.  After much research, Mankin has concluded that "law firms may be some of the least innovative organizations in the US economy."  There's a shocker.

After looking (with tongue firmly planted in her cheek) at some claimed innovations by law firms, Tarlton writes:

No, Mankin's right.  Innovation is hard to do in a law firm. . . .or a bar association. . . or a legal department.  Virtually anywhere that lawyers hang out in numbers.  It doesn't make them bad.  Just hard to move.

Just as David Maister's (of ALL people!!) remarks about law firms being impossible to manage stirred discussion and stress, so will Mankin's thoughts - hopefully - serve as food for thought and fuel for change.  Regardless of how long it takes to make it happen.

What do you think?  Is it possible to "think differently" in a law firm?

I'd like to think so, but I'm one of those creatures who likes to have some evidence to support my conclusions.  And frankly, that evidence is hard to come by.

Having said that, I don't believe that the past must be prologue to the future.  I think the business case for "thinking differently" and really innovating is getting stronger by the day.  Read books like The World Is Flat and it is impossible to conclude that the world as we know it is changing daily and leaps and bounds (if not more) and that innovation and creativity will be necessary simply to survive in this new, ever changing world.  Tom Peters has a favorite slide in which he quotes General Eric Shinseki, former Chief of Staff of the US Army: "If you don't like change, you'll like irrelevance even less."  Amen, General.

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This just in from law.com--Big Firm Associate Pay Soars By $10K in 2006.  I actually made up the part about clients dancing in the streets.  Weeping at their desks is probably more like it.  I've written before about how these massive costs are passed along to clients with no corresponding increase in value provided, so I won't repeat myself.

Why did I include this in the "Leadership and Management" category?  Because of a quote that appears on the article--"It can be ironically self-defeating, " said Ward Bower, a principal at Altman Weil.  His point--salaries compress so the incentive to stay diminishes over time.  Combine that increased incentive with the already troubling statistics on attrition--78% turnover--and its little wonder that associate satisfaction has rocketed to the top of the list of management challenges.  Knee-jerk salary increases appear not to be the answer.

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Tony and Jim know greatness.  Tony knows that out of all the cereals in the cereal aisle at the grocery store, only one is "Greeeaaaattt!"  And Jim learned through rigorous study that of the scores of companies in the study group, a mere 11 qualified for the Good To Great moniker.  Greatness is rare, and that's as it should be.

Rare achievements are, almost by definition, ones borne of extraordinary effort combined with a measure of good fortune.  Lance Armstrong's seven Tour de France victories.  Roger Clemens 341 wins (and counting).  Michael Jordan's six NBA championships.  Accomplishments borne of extraordinary effort, single-minded focus and a measure of luck. Each of us has the ability to control the level of commitment.  And there certainly is a measure of truth to a comment made by Thomas Jefferson--"I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it."

There is a wonderful statement by Jim Collins, found on the back of his monograph "Good To Great And The Social Sectors:  "Greatness is not a function of circumstance.  Greatness, it turn out, is largely a matter of conscious choice, and discipline."

The relevance of this to great client service?  Conscious choice, and discipline.  It's not just the bus.  Its not just leadership.  Its the brutal confrontation of facts, using technology right, exercising rigor in decision-making and having the discipline to execute.  Focusing on one part of the recipe with indifference to the others is like ordering a steak with sides and having a meal of mashed potatoes and mushrooms.  If you miss the meat, the meal suffers.

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  On July 27, I posted some comments about the "Bus Metaphor" from Jim Collins' outstanding book, Good To Great.  My post inspired Michelle Golden to post a comment.   Michelle's original post questioned the applicability of the bus metaphor to professional service firms given their differences from the businesses studied in Jim's seminal work.   Utterly serendipitously, I was in the book store at O'Hare and picked up a copy of Jim Collins' monograph "Good To Great And The Social Sectors."

While there are differences between professional service firms and the social sectors, the problems confronted by the latter certainly are closely related to those confronted by the former.  I will not try to distill Jim Collins' monograph to a sentence or two, but at 35 pages, it is a quick and compelling read.  But the moral of the story is that Collins' research leads him to conclude that the G2G principles are applicable outside the business context.  And from that, I maintain my belief that the principles are fully applicable to professional service firms.

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Harry Beckwith's Invisible Ink column for July had some interesting thoughts worthy of consideration.  First, Harry noted that 80% of surveyed companies said they delivered a "superior experience" to their customer.  The customers, on the other hand, said 8% of companies delivered a superior experience.  This gap, which Harry (and others) label The Lake Wobegon Effect, exists with the delivery of legal services too.  Survey after survey confirms a similar gap in perception between lawyer and client.

Harry defines The Lake Wobegon Effect thusly:

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I was cruising through my Bloglines feeds and stopped at Golden Practices (nicely redesigned).  Michelle Golden is one of my favorite bloggers.  That's why I was so surprised by how much I disagreed with her post on The 'Good To Great' Bus Metaphor.  For those of you who have been on vacation for the last five years, Good to Great, authored by Jim Collins, has overtaken In Search of Excellence as the all-time best-selling business book.  In G2G, Jim Collins studies 11 companies that were transformed from ordinary performers (vs. the market) over a 15 year period to companies that outperformed the market by at least a factor of 3 over a later 15 year period.  Collins and his team studied those turn-arounds, including comparing each company to a well-known and regarded direct comparison company.  Collins identified a small number of factors that the data establish as instrumental in the change from good to great.

One of the factors is "First Who ... Then What."  In Collins' words:  "We expected that good-to-great leaders would begin by setting a new vision and strategy.  We found instead that they first got the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats--and then figured out where to drive it.  The old adage "People are your most important asset" turns out to be wrong.  People are not your most important asset.  The right people are."

Michelle had run across a post by Phil Gott that appears to take issue with the merit of Collins' conclusions as applied to professional service firms.  Following Gott's lead, Michelle concludes her post with this point:

'Tis true that, as Gott shows us, firms are built a bit backwards. Accountants would say we've "backed into" our passenger list and varied routes. My Grandpa used to say, "Do your feet smell and does your nose run? Then you're built backwards!"

Can we at least agree that we need our long term strategy first (destination and routes) before we determine if we have the infrastructure (fleet and drivers) to get there?

Maybe more people will come along for the ride (passengers) when we've established those first four things. Could this be a clue how to resolve the growing problems in recruiting and retention?

Unless I am misreading this, I see Michelle as asking if we can agree that Collins' finding isn't really applicable to professional service firms, that unlike his good-to-great firms, professional service firms can set vision and strategy before getting the right people on the bus.  I feel compelled to respond.

First, Collins' discussion of "right people" is about the executive core, not production workers, middle management and maintenance crews.  Its the leaders, not the followers. So I don't see this finding being at all relevant to recruiting and retention.  Those people don't yet have seats on Collins' bus.   Second, I would need to see data from professional service firms that have gone from good to great that shows Collins' findings don't apply for me to jump to that conclusion.  The fact that there are so few and that it is so hard to do is perfectly consistent with the fact that out of a universe of more than 1000 companies (all companies that were ever part of the Fortune 500 during the period 1965 to 1995), only 11 made the move from good to great!  The same difficulty will be experienced by professional service firms!

In a number of things I've read, I've seen people argue that because Collins' findings are counter-intuitive or because they are so hard to apply (where do we sign up for Level 5 leadership classes?), they just can't be true.  Me?  I look at the findings just the other way:  Because moving from good to great is so hard (as evidenced by the discovery of just 11 businesses that did so), it is a certainty that most firms will fail to make the move.  But its their failure not that Collins is wrong that explains why most firms don't make the move.

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As I noted in a post a couple of days ago, I had taken a respite from blogging for a few weeks.  As I read posts that interested me, I saved them, thinking I would be able to go back and use them as fodder for future posts.  One unexpected but interesting byproduct of this practice is linking certain posts together even though the author wrote them many days or weeks apart.  Michelle Golden has two such posts that struck a chord with me.

Just two days ago, Michelle wrote "Fly On The Wall #3: 'We Don't Have The Right People.'"  Michelle writes that "it's funny but smaller firms tend to find themselves in a cycle of hiring multiple people with similar personality types--whatever it is the hiring persons are most drawn to. And seldom do people in CPA firms seem to hire or retain those who are more aggressive, assertive, confident, whatever... than they are. (I think this is not as prevalent in law or larger firms.)"

The same phenomenon occurs in law firms.  While lawyers (at least litigators) are paid professional advocates, they (and this is true for most lawyers) are resistant to change.  That's actually an understatement.  Experimentation is not in their vocabulary.  Any change that does occur can only happen (i) if it is so incremental as to be inconsequential; and (ii) only after the idea has been analyzed to death.

But read this in conjunction with Michelle's "Fear The 'Known' -Dissolve Complacency" post.  Michelle writes here that "complacency is something firm leaders despise in their businesses, but it's something that needs much more than short-term plans to correct. Strategic plans, compensation systems, and an annual retreat are helpful tools, but they are not the foundation."

Actually, complacency is something that firm leaders should  fear, but most don't--because they are not the right people for that position.  Firm leaders in most firms come from the same type of people Michelle writes about in her We Don't Have The Right People post. 

In his seminal work Good To Great, Jim Collins writes the importance of  having the right people on board the bus, but also about having the right people in the right seats on the bus.  It is unlikely a firm populated by partners adverse to change will produce a dissolve-complacency-style leader.  Whatever the reason proffered, the fear of change, of the unknown, usually will prevail.  Sometimes the stars align for meaningful change, but "once in a month of Sundays" aptly describes the frequency.

This isn't to say that every change is the answer.  Some experiments fail.  Some change-oriented leaders fail.  And some change-oriented people aren't real leaders.  But there is certain truth in the apt saying 'nothing ventured, nothing gained.'  It is certainty that a good firm will never become great simply by letting time pass.

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The post is here.  My only comment--"Amen."

The solution? Perhaps found in Gerry Riskin's "The Seven Immutable Laws Of Change Management." See my post on Gerry's remarkable work here.

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I had no more than blinked after finishing my post on Tom Friedman's book when I ran across this post by Rob Millard, author of The Adventure of Strategy.  Rob highlighted the findings of Accenture in an article called Making The Trend Your Friend.   Among the key findings:

3. The Accelerating Pace of Globalization

The pace of globalization and its effects have increased dramatically because of ubiquitous information connectivity. When major business functions, from production to sales, can be performed almost anywhere, it presents companies with unprecedented opportunities for both cost optimization and brand extension.

5. An Increasingly Complex and Fragile Business Environment

As business solutions and services become more elegant and complex, they also become more fragile and susceptible to business failure and security risks. With ever-larger infrastructures with more components, more things can go wrong. High mobility and extended customer reach increase the possible points of attack for those seeking to breach both information and physical security.

9. A Growing Public Demand for More Corporate Transparency and Better Governance and Accountability

Calls for stricter accounting and reporting standards and more transparency are coming not just from regulators but from employees and shareholders as well. Shareholders are also now routinely pressing companies about their environmental records, hiring and firing practices, fair trade policies and charitable contributions. A number of online business practices have come under public scrutiny as well. Even companies less vulnerable to these possible actions will face an increasing need to conduct themselves in accordance with emerging national and global standards.

But number 1, in my view, is this finding:

6. Shorter Time Frames for Decision Making

The increasing pace and complexity of business today means managing almost moment to moment, with an eye on both cost optimization and the quality of business performance. But many managers find themselves either unable to access the data needed to inform their decisions fast enough through their legacy IT systems, or overwhelmed by the amount of data available to them.

Those who respond to these forces will succeed.  Those who don't . . .

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If you haven't read The World Is Flat by Thomas Friedman, run--don't walk--to the nearest bookstore to get a copy.  Friedman is a multiple winner of the Pulitzer Prize for his work columnist for the New York Times,  and is immensely respected.  This book focuses on the globalization of our economy and the impact this force is having on virtually every business.  We've seen some of this in the legal profession--outsourcing document reviews, for example, but if this book doesn't stimulate your imagination, nothing will.

The world is changing.  Rapidly.  And if  law firms doesn't change with it, those law firms will soon be only memories.

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  Gerry Riskin is brilliant.  He is a gifted thinker, but even more significantly, he has the uncanny ability to express important and bold thoughts with such clarity that even the most skeptical find themselves moving to precisely the conclusion Gerry has reached.  I have seen him accomplish this with large audiences.  I have seen him do this with small groups.  I have been fortunate enough to see him do this with an audience of one (me) over a wonderful dinner, aided by a terrific bottle of wine.  And those that have read this blog before know that I routinely tout posts that Gerry makes in his great blog, Amazing Firms, Amazing Practices. 

So what's new?  Gerry has published, in separate entries, "The Seven Immutable Laws Of Change Management."  These are must read entries, and they are worthy of being incorporated into your thinking and acting.  Another exceptional contribution from my friend Gerry.  Here are the links:

Law 1, Law 2, Law 3, Law 4, Law 5, Law 6, Law 7

I hope you get as much from them as I did.

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And 8,784 in leap years. (If my math isn't clear, its 24 hours per day, 365 days per year, plus another day every four years.)

After reading Gerry Riskin's post "The Wall Street Journal Blasts Law Firms Salaries Arms Race" and Bruce MacEwen's post "Associate Salaries: The Great Debate," I couldn't resist weighing in on the topic.  There are, of course, many angles from which to view this subject.  From the standpoint of the elite law firms, they look at salary as a principal means of competing for their share of the pool of "top talent"--that is, law review students from the top law schools.  The pool is not growing, but the competition for those students is.  Hence, rising salaries.

If one begins with the proposition that partners at large law firms want each new class of associates to generate profit, or at least not operate at a loss, and if we further accept the proposition that there is some limit on the hourly rate a client will pay for people who have no experience and add little to the value the client receives, then we must accept the proposition that there are practical limits to salary competition.  Not that we're there yet.  But since revenue generation in firms is a matter of rate times hours, the practical reality is that increasing salaries will increase the number of hours associates are expected to work.  No, there will not be an announce increase in the number of expected hours.  That would be bad PR.  Hours will simply be "managed up."

From the client's standpoint, this means more work done on the same matters or more hours billed doing the same work.  Neither result is positive.

From my standpoint, this form of competition has a trade-off for clients. Sure, the top law firms can better compete for top talent.  But top law school talent is a lot like the draft of athletes in professional sports.  The highest draft spots do not always produce the top talent.  Start with Tom Brady and then continue with the scores of other examples.  The same is true in the legal world.  Big New York firms use the demand for top talent to perpetuate the myth that they have the corner on talent, and that PR works to a significant albeit eroding degree, but savvy consumers are now looking to those firms as useful only for exceptional matters, where the Board wants name comfort. 

Aside from that PR value, I believe that better training, reduced turnover and greater investments in associates will produce better results for smart firms.  And in the meantime, chalk about another strike against an economic system based on time rather than value.

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I was just reading the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin.  Seems that Mayer Brown, DLA Piper and Latham are joining the growing tide of firms raising the starting salaries of their first year associates to $135,000.  Mark Jungers of Major Lindsey & Africa, a prominent recruiting firm, predicted that Kirkland, Sidley, Winston and McDermott will quickly follow suit.  I would be surprised if any of the top 10 or so Chicago firms hold the line.  The expectation is that there will be $10,000 bumps (in some cases "only" $5,000) to the salaries (or at least annual compensation) of all associates in the firm.

What do these salary increases mean for firms and their clients?  Simple math will tell you that these "bumps" are multi-million dollar hits to the firms bottom lines.  There are, at the end of the day, only two choices.  Do the partners make less (while the associates are making more), or do clients pay more for the same work?  It does not require an advanced degree to know that the partners will not make less.

It is at times like this that the pressure to increase total hours is at its most intense.  Some firms may be forthright and acknowledge that hourly requirements will go up.  Others will do what what I have heard referred to a "manage hours up."  Other firms will increase rates.  But however it is accomplished, firms will capture this revenue from their clients.  All for the same work.

Has the value to the client increased?  Of course not. 

There has been so much negative buzz lately about value received, hourly rates, paying for associate training, and so forth.  This salary increase will do nothing but increase the economic pressures that drive wedges between clients and some of their lawyers.  Perhaps this will be the event that marks the death knell of the hourly rate.

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Larry Bodine summarized Dr. Larry Richard's presentation at the 2006 Marketing Partner Forum here.  Dr. Richard is the head of Hildebrandt's  Leadership & Organization Development Practice Group, which helps law firms and legal departments on people issues.  Since the early 1980's, he has pioneered the application of psychology and other behavioral sciences to the improvement of leadership and management practices in the legal profession. Based on studies of numerous personality traits in lawyers as well as the general population, Dr. Richard has concluded that only 20% of lawyers are natural rainmakers.  As Larry Bodines summarizes, " an additional 55% of lawyers can learn to be rainmakers.  'They will make efforts to do marketing; so your goal should be to reduce their discomforts,' [Richard] said.  The remaining 25% are hopeless at marketing and should be ignored.  'The trick is to figure out who they are and not to waste time on them,' [Richard] said."

Dan Hull picked up on Larry Bodine's post here.  Dan takes issue with Dr. Richard's conclusions, writing:

My own sense (not a Hildebrandt study, of course) is that less than 20% of us--10% at most--can really put it together to be rainmakers. But I think that the remaining 90% can be taught to be marketing-oriented in very effective ways for both repeat and new business. Each lawyer can help and no lawyer should be given a pass. The discipline of getting everyone in the firm to be part of your marketing culture and making it stick is the hard part. Very few professional firms I know of have a client-focused or marketing culture. Even when they want it, they won't do "the work".

 

I was at Dr. Richard's presentation, and I have heard him present his data previously.  I also have had a chance to speak with him about it.  I agree with Dan's sentiment about "the remaining 90%" but have to say, respectfully of course, that I believe that he and Dr. Richard are speaking about slightly different things.  I suspect that when Dan refers to teaching lawyers to be "marketing-oriented", I suspect he is speaking about activities that go beyond what Larry Richard considers to be marketing.   For example, see this post from Marketing Catalyst discussing the difference between sales and marketing.  Dan's comments strike me as a discussion of marketing while Larry Richards appears more focused on sales.   Moreover, while I agree with Dan that no lawyer should be given a pass in creating a "client-focused" culture, there is a difference between having a client-focused culture and marketing that culture to prospects.

I encourage Dan and everyone else to find a chance to listen to Larry Richard speak.  He presents a huge volume of data in a very humorous way, but at the same time in a way that is compelling.  I, for one, find the data persuasive. 

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There seems to be a spate of examples of leadership failures and successes.  Having provided an example of bad leadership and one of good leadership, here is another example of bad leadership.  Thanks to Larry Bodine for this recent example in Larry Bodine's Legal Marketing Blog.  I left Larry a note--I would love to know which firm the story is about--we could start an over/under pool on how long the firm will survive before becoming merger fodder.  It continues to astound me that firms devote substantial resources to hiring top marketing officers and then do everything possible to emasculate them.  Michelle Golden kindly picked up on an earlier comment I had made and elaborated on it quite effectively in her Golden Practices.

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I've been writing more about leadership and execution lately because they are essential factors for success.  Bruce MacEwen at Adam Smith, Esq. has a good post about Clifford Chance's Peter Cornell that talks about these factors.

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Tom Peters regularly speaks and writes about the importance of talent.  In his book Sixty, Tom writes in point 24 that "he/she who has the . . . best roster . . . rules."  A year ago, Tom told this story:

Some people's eyes have an engaging, infectious "sparkle." Some don't. Hire [only?] those who "have it"?

I was lecturing on "talent selection"-and the use of unconventional measures for so doing. At a break I made the following comment to a youthful Participant: "Suppose you & I were opening the restaurant of our dreams. We'd both put in $75,000 ... effectively our life's savings. We were 'betting the farm.' We had a great idea, a very good location, a terrific chef. Now the time had come to hire waiters & waitresses. Numerous applicants had satisfactory+ 'restaurant experience,' but several didn't. One young woman [man] in particular was a rank amateur-but had the most compelling 'sparkle' in her/his eye. How would that 'sparkle' rank in your hire-no hire consideration?" No great surprise, we both agreed, despite a 30-year experience differential, that the "sparkle" pretty much ruled. (Or some like measures-e.g., hustle, enthusiasm.)

At the same time, I was reading Larry Bossidy's book Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done.  Bossidy spends considerable time talking about the investment in interviewing he made as CEO of Honeywell.  Bossidy, himself, would make many of the calls to the candidate's references.  He writes:

Many CEOs have told me that my reference calls were different from most because I focused so much on the candidate's energy, implementation and accomplishments.  I ask, "How does he set priorities?  What qualities is he known for?  Does he include people in decision making?  What is his work ethic and his energy level?"  Those types of questions get at the person's real potential.

One question that I determined to ask candidates that I am interviewing--what makes you a good hire for us?  Candidates that talk about themselves without talking about the firm are missing the boat.  Great people help make great teams.

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I'll admit it:  I was a high school and college debater.  Those were formative years and many lessons I learned have stayed with me.  Perhaps the most important is the value of vigorous debate.  Looking for ways to defeat your colleagues' arguments.  We believed that if an argument could survive our practice, it had an excellent chance to survive in the tournaments when rounds were won and lost for real.  The arguments about arguments were loud, raucous and at times vicious.  But never personal.  After arguing like crazy, we were still best friends.

I was reminded of this lesson as I continue to read Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done.  Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan make the point that as a leader, "you're trying to promote the ability to intellectually debate important points.  It doesn't matter who wins and who loses.  The fact that the debate happened and resolution occurred is good in itself."

I think that is going too far.  Debate points by themselves don't count for anything in the real world.  But the ability of crisp intellectual critique of an idea is bound to expose weaknesses in the idea, lead to a better idea or generate confidence in the new idea.  Each of these is an inherently valuable outcome.

Blogging serves this purpose outside law firms.  But inside firms, I don't hear much about vigorous debate about firm matters.  Shouldn't there be?

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I read every post Gerry Riskin makes.  When I saw a post that began . . .

It's their funeral...

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On January 2nd, I wrote about the importance of execution, juxtaposing the notion against the many posts talking about New Year's resolutions.  In my post, I recommended reading Execution: The Discipline Of Getting Things Done, noting that Tom Peters had recommended the book on his blog.  Tom has now posted about his favorite "biz book" for 2005.  Here is what he had to say:

" My choice as my favorite Biz Book of 2005 is Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done, by Larry Bossidy (& Ram Charan). Fact is, it's a 2002 book, but I just read it word-by-word this year as I prepared to do a gig with Bossidy. Amazingly it is, as I see it, the 1st & only book wholly devoted to "getting things done," and the 1st and only book that suggests the there is a describable, "systematic" "discipline" (and "culture") of getting things done. I'm doing a seminar on change in a few weeks, and when the Client asked me for a pre-reading assignment I bypassed my books and recommended Bossidy/Execution."

If you click now, you can be reading this book by Monday.  It's worth paying for expedited delivery.  All the great ideas in the world don't amount to a hill of beans if the rubber doesn't hit the road.  (I think we should have a contest to see who can mix the most metaphors in a single sentence.)  Seriously, if Tom Peters says its so, its at least worth reading.

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