Making the Most of your Legal Content
“The painter has to wrestle with colour, canvas and brushes, the sculptor with stone and chisel … yet, the creative act, their ‘vision’ of what they are going to create, transcends time. It…
Is your career on Stop?
> Career (or personal) development in law firms gets scant attention. You join, having endured a contrived process of elimination, with high expectations. Your head is full of principled ideas of how the…
‘Own label’ Legal Services
Retailers are masters at persuading you to buy. Pile them high sell them (not so) cheap. Brands. Super brands. Food. And non-food. We got this (a long time ago now). And then came…
The Full Service Law Firm – or Is It?
How many times have I heard the words “full service” mentioned? What does it (actually) mean? Full service of what? Law? Legal advice? Commercial advice? Commonsense advice? Or, all the services, of whatever…
Fix the Workplace not the People
How many times do you find yourself locked in mortal combat with someone trying to change you? It’s as if n-o-t-h-i-n-g is good enough. Those cryptic comments premised on the idea of ‘feedback’…
R.I.P. up the ‘Business Development’ Script
What does Business Development (BD) mean to you? Branding? Networking? LinkedIn? Social Media? Blogging? Sales? Marketing? Innovation? Change? Thinking the i-m-p-o-s-s-i-b-l-e? Imagine being offered a blank sheet of paper and asked to write…
Partnership
The early model worked.
You qualified, made partner, had your name above the door, worked on your business, served a small(ish) clientele, cared passionately about super-pleasing and the business provided, in most cases, a sustainable living.
And now?
Too many people chasing too few spots, and their principal motivation is money.
The Changing Role of the Rainmaker
“Toss “lousy colleagues” [bad teammates] out on their derrieres (asses). We will not tolerate less than class-A supportiveness; we will toss out top “rainmakers” who do not subscribe to our teamwork ethic.”
I wish I had the chutzpah of Tom Peters to lay this at your door, but, even with my sometimes ill-tempered rants, I don’t think I am ready (yet) to besmirch the whole of the rainmaker cadre. That said, they are a breed apart: aloof, arrogant, selfish, opinionated and high-and-mighty in their outlook.
Begin with the End in Mind … Today
This is a short riff on the oft quoted habit #2 of Stephen Covey from his seminal book The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People. It perhaps would be more apposite to describe it as a mash up with Michael E Gerber’s book The E-Myth Revisted.
There is a common theme.
In the E-Myth Revisited Michael Gerber describes the mindset of the owner with an entrepreneurial viewpoint. He prays in aid the thinking of Tom Watson the founder of IBM. The point is quite simple: Tom Watson had a picture of how a great business would operate and he then set out each and every day to operate as if he were a great business, and where there was (in his mind) a descrepancy, he would close the gap.
Think Big ~ Your Success Manifesto
Reserved, cautious, status quo: The touchstone of (professional) practice.
To think anything other than now, or, in a lot of cases, casting your net back to the halcyon days of practice, is in flagrant disregard to the ‘hold on’ mentality that has inculcated its way into the way you do business.
Absent legislative change, would you really look to embrace innovation, change or difference?
Imagine if you were starting out in business right now. Are you (seriously) suggesting that you would approach the market in the same, nervous way?
