Suzanne Lowe of The Expertise Marketplace Blog belongs to a group of which Superhero Trainer Adam Marx is a member.  In her blog post today, "Become a real live Superhero!", Suzanne opines that "[Adam’s] points have tremendous relevance for the leadership of professional services marketing".

But my mind went to another topic – the plethora of recent press about gender diversity in our profession (or, to be more accurate, the shameful lack thereof).

Track with me here.  My mind then went to that delightful Dolly Parton comedy (or was it a comedy) called Nine to Five. 

(Does your mind ever just take you somewhere whether you’ve decided you want to go there or not?) 

The next thing I was imagining was a young (mild mannered by day) female lawyer in the office of a middle-aged-white-male managing partner and she’s asking about the firm’s part time and family leave policies and he is describing the arcane and the anachronistic gems that were passed down to him from the son of the founder a generation ago.

OK – here’s where I completely lose control – It’s a daydream, you can’t censor my daydream!

The young lawyer pops out into the client phone booth (you know, the one just off the reception area) and twirls around at blurring speed and then stops suddenly revealing her tights and her logo.

Now, remember what Dolly Parton, Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda did to Dabney Coleman (Parton’s boss) in the Nine to Five movie?   (Hint:  a lasso and some rope were involved.)  I imagine Supergirl could look after the situation without any assistance at all (barring the presence of kryptonite).

OK, that’s where I was when my wife, Bethany, walked in on me and asked what the heck I was doing looking at a picture of Supergirl. Thanks to Suzanne Lowe, I had a bulletproof excuse.  (if you haven’t already, check out Suzanne’s post.)

Thank you for the overwhelming response to my article, The Seven Immutable Laws of Change Management

It is now downloadable as a pdf as it appears in our latest Edge International Review Magazine.  Please feel free to download it and distribute as many copies among your management team as you like.
 Continue Reading The Seven Immutable Laws of Change Management – Downloadable PDF



Bruce Marcus makes a compelling case for his view that the legal profession is approaching "the tipping point".    Have a look at his evidence in his post today, called:

ARE WE NEAR THE TIPPING POINT IN PROFESSIONAL FIRM MANAGEMENT AND STRUCTURE?

Note:  I posted about Bruce’s thinking on the Tipping Point before he put pen to paper so when you see that he references one of my articles, don’t you be thinking this is simply reciprocation – Bruce is a mighty intellect and while I am honoured that he has referenced me, I would be directing you to his scholarly prose in any event, cross my heart.

So first let’s define eggplants in terms of your law practice.  According to marketing guru, Seth Godin, "Most people are afraid of eggplant. They won’t buy it. They need to be sold it."  In your law practice, eggplant may be preventative services that will keep board members of your corporate clients out of jail or in a private client practice it may be ensuring that a proper estate plan was in place before an unexpected death.

Many great lawyers I have practiced with or consulted to love to sing this old refrain: "if I had wanted to be a salesman, I would have been a salesman".

But just a cotton-pickin’ minute:  Don’t we cherish the doctor who "sold" a loved one on the idea of quitting smoking or exercising to lower blood pressure?

I believe that clients love being sold what is genuinely beneficial to them, provided with integrity and offered for a fee that represents good value.

OK – now I think you are ready to assimilate Seth Godin’s message in his blog today titled: Hard sell at the farmer’s market.

If you are a managing partner I hope that you will help your lawyers see that Seth’s punchline applies to them:  

Salespeople who sell properly sell stuff people wish they would have bought in the first place. It’s a huge service… I’m pretty sure we need more good salespeople, not less.

Perhaps there are other lessons for lawyers at the farmer’s market.

Yesterday my wife, Bethany, and I visited the wisdom of Bruce Marcus (and his brilliant wife, Mana) at their lovely Connecticut home – those bricks you see behind us are the Marcus fireplace so I guess you could describe it as a "fireside chat".  (He is the author of no less than 15 books, including his fabulous Clients at the Core.)

I was privileged to listen to some of Bruce’s latest ideas about the legal profession.  For example, he believes that our profession is reaching a "tipping point" – if you follow either The Marcus Letter or his blog, The Marcus Perspective,  (I recommend both), you will soon be reading about his latest provocative thoughts.

Some consultants focus on the very practical but Bruce is more demanding for us – he is a visionary who knows what is possible and therefore has little patience for excessive compromise.

If you are not familiar with Bruce’s offerings, check him out – I think you will be richly rewarded.

Seven.jpg “Law Seven” and conclusion from my article: “The Seven Immutable Laws of Change Management 7)Turn a spotlight on your initiative and leave it on Many firms have fabulous meetings, sometimes in retreat venues where everyone participates in the creation of the master plan that will make the firm the “be all and end all”. All participants leave the process feeling a sense of pride and excitement that is palpable. It is only after the passage of a few months and the absence of any visible accomplishments that the disillusionment sets in. The cynics and skeptics have a field day — they might as well all buy red tee shirts with yellow words emblazoned across their chests “I told you so”. Well, Managing Partner, you must not allow this outcome. It is lethal and you cannot recover from it. Instead you need the lights that were on at the retreat to remain on. This is accomplished by not allowing the insects to crawl back under the rocks — (out of sight, out of mind). Instead you need to design processes that keep your people (not insects at all) in plain view. You can decide for yourself what might work best for you, but here are some of the techniques I have observed or recommended: a) Monday Morning Memos (as referenced earlier) giving weekly status reports to showing everyone’s progress on the distinct steps (actions) that have been agreed upon. This creates healthy peer pressure and allows no-one to hide. b) MBWA (Managing by Walking Around) coined by Tom Peters and Bob Waterman in their business classic In Search of Excellence — this means frequently dropping in, unannounced, to ask the right questions and to offer help — “How is that list coming… I see you are struggling to get this done in light of your particularly heavy case load at the moment… let’s explore some options… to whom could you delegate some aspects of this… I need you to make progress because others know you have an exceptionally heavy work load and if they see you getting your tasks done you will have effectively removed their excuses — I need you to do that… I will do anything to help short of doing your task for you…” c) Convene follow up meetings that exchange “learnings” that individuals have gleaned from their respective tasks, for example, how they worked with difficult people internally or how they overcame client resistance. This should not be a meeting where everyone reports progress — progress meetings become meaningless exercises in seeing who can offer the most creative excuses for failing to deliver. This is a peer level training meeting where the objective is to become ever more effective at accomplishing quality non-billable tasks. Conclusion: Fostering change in a law firm seems impossible because most Managing Partners treat the activities associated with such change as if they were component pieces of a legal transaction. Partners are so reliable when it comes to their substantive legal work that it seems unthinkable that they could not complete mundane simple tasks associated with management initiatives. Well, the real world is that the non-billable activities are not even on the same psychological map as the billable ones. Billable work means everything to a lawyer from income to professional satisfaction to garnering the respect of peers (internally and externally) to being respected in social circles. Non-billable work, no matter how important, and regardless of the value to our futures, will always take second place to billable work unless you, Managing Partner, manage for a different outcome. The score in many firms is billable work “100” and quality non-billable work “0”. By following these seven immutable laws of managing change, you will change the latter score from zero and even if you only to “99 to 1”, you and your firm will be the beneficiaries of the infinite improvement from “0” to “1”. Further, in the legal profession, those who make continuous slight progress win the race, because most competitors are still tied to that pier. Law #1 Law #2 Law #3 Law #4 Law #5 Law #6 (…thanks to Cameron Cooper of the Australian Law Journal where my article first appeared)

Six.jpg “Law Six” from my article: “The Seven Immutable Laws of Change Management 6)Tell the world Do you know why betrothed people say their vows in front of friends and family — to cement their commitment. It is the same reason a banker friend told me the bank does television commercials: “not just for our customers but for our own staff so that they can see the service promise we make to our customers and as a result they are more likely to live up to that promise”. Tell the world what you are shooting for, whatever that may be – in fact, you can say it before it is so: “striving to be the firm of choice for the wholesale industry”. I am not advocating misleading or untrue advertising but I am saying it’s OK to declare what you are striving for. Your current and prospective clients will hold you accountable but that’s OK because it helps define the standard for your people and gives clarity to their target and therefore their everyday performance. (Law 7 and conclusion) Law #1 Law #2 Law #3 Law #4 Law #5 (…thanks to Cameron Cooper of the Australian Law Journal where my article first appeared)