So Fast Company (which is up for sale if you want a once great publication) is chatting about Tom Peters whom I mentioned recently… look at this sidebar as a teaser and then check out the full article…

Sidebar: The Peters Principles

A sampling of some of the most important themes covered in Tom Peters’s new book, Re-imagine!

Destroy to Create

Forget about Built to Last. All companies, Peters says, are doomed to failure. Better to completely destroy your own company from the inside and remake it in a new, bold and creative way than fight old battles with old ideas — and eventually fade away into irrelevance.

Women Roar

They are the most important group in our economy. They spend and make most of the money. They make the key financial decisions. And yet they are talked down to, never designed for, not consulted, fundamentally ignored. The New Economy runs on the principles that women are used to — collaboration rather than command and control, for one — and until men realize that and change their approach, they are doomed to failure.

It’s an XF (Cross-functional) World

Nothing works without honest and open communication between decision makers. So you can be as idealistic and as big picture as you like, but you won’t get anywhere without the human element. Peters says it’s best to embrace the politics and demolish the red tape. Only then can you move on to the greater objectives of changing your company.

Power Dreaming
Successful companies such as Harley-Davidson and Starbucks work because they sell a lifestyle or an image rather than simply a product. For Harley, it’s the experience of the rebel; for Starbucks, it’s a place of refuge. Successful companies must offer a “scintillating experience” in order to set themselves apart in an environment where most competitors already provide a decent product.

Think Weird

The only way to effect true transformation in the workplace, says Peters, is to enlist the outliers in your organization to join your cause. Find the weirdos and the freaks, offer support for the projects they’re secretly pursuing, then get them to help you with your own revolutionary change ideas.

Design, the ultimate edge

In the world of Tom Peters, design is so critical that it should be on the agenda (along with a professional designer) of every meeting in every single department. Design, like lifestyle, is one of the few differentiating factors, and companies that ignore the power of elegant and functional design will lose.

Tom Peters wrote In Search of Excellence and changed the way we look at business forever. He has written many other business best sellers since, like “Re-imagine!”. (For a more thorough list, check out some of his other publications at the Wow! Store. Most law firm leaders are too busy to read business books – OK, you can be forgiven… but at least subscribe to Tom Peter’s Blog and get the benefit of some of his awesome thinking (and from a few of the people he respects). Take a look at his blog: The Pinnacle of “Change Management” and see what I mean. Food for Thought: Guard against the reaction that “this stuff” does not apply to law firms – that law firms are different. Instead, ask yourself, “how might this apply – what elements transcend business and apply to professional service firms?” I believe that the prize will go to those who import ideas from outside our profession… and apply them in an imaginative way. Tom Peters can help you do that.

Five Year Plan Every Day

Real law firm clients take me beyond the academic into the practical and real. One of the founding partners of a highly specialized boutique law firm uttered these words in a strategy meeting this weekend “five year plan every day”. This is an extremely vital illustration of dynamic planning.

The default pattern or reasoning for most of us as lawyers is that we should mold that exquisite plan and then sell it to our troops who will enthusiastically execute it. The real world, though, requires sequential plans thus creating over time a dynamic map that updates for changing circumstances. One of the founding partners of my client was thinking exactly this way as he provided an in-depth briefing to his partners on the landscape of the firm’s marketplace. He had identified the clientelle, existing and prospective, their relevant “numbers” (size of their operations; potential fees) and their own place on their respective evolutionary curves.

In a world of consolidation, he provided the evidence that would support rational predictions of which existing and prospective clients would be acquired, by whom, and where the power would then reside, both corporately and geographically.

This partner creates a dash board of intelligence that he constantly updates. Now I ask you, what are the chances that his firm will continue to flourish? Yes, you are right – very high.

The firm is receptive to change and plans for it… unlike so many firms I know who have partners with sandy faces and necks from their ostrich-like behavior, petrified that something might change… appreciating their vulnerability but feeling ill-equipped to do anything about it.

So, do you have a five year plan every day?

This is a quote of Craig Barrett, the chief executive of Intel, in three time Pullitzer Prize winner Thomas L. Friedman’s column in the New York Times yesterday.

Friedman goes on to say that

“[Intel] can now hire the best brain talent “wherever it resides.”

Food for thought: After you read Friedman’s full article, ask yourself why you and I can’t be replaced by someone offshore (except, of course, that I already am offshore). The other serious question is, are we going to keep hiring for our law firms “the way we’ve always done it” or should we perhaps be paying a little closer attention to Andy Havens when he blogs about offshore talent for law firms in his Outsourcing blog.

The operative question is: To what extent can your law firm be totally successful without ever hiring another American (Canadian, British, Australian – you get the idea) lawyer? Should you consider moving in that direction, and if so, to what extent?