Archive for category: Blog

I’ve found several articles that you can’t afford to miss this month.

1. Don’t Be a Dewey Dozen: Use This Checklist to Make Sure Your Firm Isn’t Dewey.

Although this article is ostensibly written for AmLaw 250 firms, most of the points have validity for firms of any size. Your firm must be liquid, it must have compensation packages that make sense, and it must understand what’s important to its clients. That’s just the tip of the iceberg, though. Read this article.

2. Survey Says Post-Recession Shifts Are Here to Stay.

Still waiting for business to get “back to normal”? Quit. In fact, brace for more changes. While some of this may look like bad news for lawyers on the surface, if you dig a bit deeper and think creatively, you’ll begin to see opportunity.

3. The Haiku of What You Do

How you introduce yourself has a lot to do with whether you’ll get referrals (or direct business) and how you’re perceived. I offer five styles of introduction in The Reluctant Rainmaker, and modified haiku is a sixth. Suggested by Matt Homann of the [non]billable hour, try crafting an introduction by answering:

• Who do I help? (Answer in Five Words)
• What do I do for them? (Answer in Seven Words)
• Why do they need me? (Answer in Five Words)

Read the full article for samples and more about the approach. And a hint: if you can’t answer the questions in the specified number of words, you’re making it too complicated. (Hat tip to Gyi Taskalakis for this one.)

4. The need for change

There’s a good chance that there’s something you’d like to change in your practice or in your life. If you’re in the estimated 62-75% of lawyers who are unhappy (there’s a sobering statistic), you must read Chris Guilleabeau’s article. Others should read it as well, with a view to whatever change you might feel necessary.

5. 7 Tips on How to Make Your Conference Panel Rock

Sitting on (or moderating) a panel at a conference is always an interesting experience. Scott Stratten, author of UnMarketing, has some terrific suggestions on how to put together a speaker’s panel that’s a “think tank” rather than 4 or 5 mini-presentations.

An excerpt from The Reluctant Rainmaker:  A Guide for Lawyers Who Hate Selling

Take note of the attitude you bring when you engage in client development activities. Do you dread them?  If so, identify specifically what you dislike and find a way around it or a way to make the prospect more palatable.

For example, John, a self-identified “nice but introverted guy,” detested the idea of business development because he felt like a fish out of water.  When we began to explore the reasons for those feelings, John recognized that he believed that the goal of business development activities is to target people and use connections to get business, and he was uncomfortable with that approach.

He wanted to be thoughtful to those with whom he came into contact and could not see a way to engage in rainmaking activity while meeting that objective.  When we discussed what he did for clients and the appreciation he sometimes received (as well as the satisfaction he felt in a job well done, even when it went unacknowledged by the client), John recognized that he was not using anyone and that providing legal services was in fact helping his clients. Moreover, he came to see that withholding his skill from someone who needed it would be destructive, not thoughtful.

Instead of viewing potential clients and referral sources as a “target” that, if “bagged,” would generate extra income and other benefits for him, John began to view them as individuals who have or know others who have legal needs that he could meet. This recognition, while it might appear elementary, was a significant shift for John.  It changed the attitude with which he approached client development activity from an uncomfortable “what can I get” to a thoughtful “what can I give” attitude.

John even altered the methods he used for business development to focus more on education and resource provision, in essence marketing his services by giving a taste for them. He felt aligned with this content-focused approach, which in turn made him feel more comfortable, which in turn made others feel more comfortable with him, and in the period of a few months John began to view rainmaking through an entirely different lens.

John continued to struggle with some activities, such as networking among strangers when he felt a pressure to uncover their needs, so he focused on activities that were a better fit for him. When I last spoke with John, he had developed a reputation as a client service provider par excellence and had brought in several new matters from and through existing clients.

What attitude are you bringing into your business development efforts? If it’s a positive one, terrific!  If not, take a few minutes to examine your attitude, see where it comes from, and how you might shift it.  While attitude alone won’t ensure success (or failure), it may well impact both what you do and how you do it, which will impact your success.  (For more on mindset and sales success, check this article from Inc. magazine.)

We often discuss leadership as if it is a state or quality that either exists or doesn’t.  But the truth is that whether one seeks to become a leader or whether one is already serving in that capacity, leadership develops over time.

A leader’s development tends to proceed through three stages. The first stage is self-management.  The second is individual achievement.  The third is leading others.  Although these three stages are distinct from one another, they may coexist and a leader may move back and forth through these stages at various times.

Today’s discussion focuses on the first stage:  self-management or leadership of oneself. Executive coach Sharon Keys Seal, founder of Coaching Concepts Inc., refers to this stage as “leader in the mirror”.  John Maxwell has written, “[h]e who thinks he leads, but has no followers, is only taking a walk.”

One of the quickest ways to walk alone is to neglect the importance of self-management.  In contrast, leaders who have a solid grounding in self-leadership tend to inspire confidence in those whom they seek to lead.

We all have the opportunity to be the “leader in the mirror,” and those who seek to excel individually or to lead others must manage that first leadership challenge. Self-management underlies individual achievement as well as leadership of others because the two later stages can’t exist (at least not in a mature, lasting form) without some measure of self-leadership.

Think about a talented but undisciplined athlete.  Raw talent and some measure of discipline often allows him to succeed to a point, perhaps through high school or college.  But at some point, the athlete goes down in flames despite his talent and despite a coach or manager or family urging him to do better, thanks to involvement in crime or violence or immature stupidity.  Some of those athletes reform their behavior through self-management, and others become the stereotypical “has been” who revels in past glory but never achieves what he might have.  The road an athlete walks depends not only on his physical talent, but also on the self-discipline he musters when he’s no longer subject to the control of a parent or coach.

Is the same true for lawyers and other professionals whose talent lies in intellectual capacity?  You bet.

One who has mastered self-management has developed a strong capacity to manage his or her beneficial and destructive tendencies. Self-discipline refers to the ability and willingness to buckle down and do what must be done even (perhaps especially) when one would prefer to do something else.  Self-management is a similar attribute, though it also calls for recognition of what must be done in a variety of contexts.

Self-management prompts a professional to recognize that he or she will be more effective if well-rested, properly nourished, and revitalized with physical activity even though he or she might prefer to eat junk food and watch bad TV to “relax” after work.  Self-discipline is what prompts that lawyer to eat a balanced dinner and to go to bed early enough to get adequate rest, and then to get up early enough to take a walk.

A lawyer who knows what research must be done for a client and who completes that research meticulously exhibits self-management. One who relies on doing just enough or on doing it at the 11th hour has room to grow.

Self-leadership also impacts your clients and business development. Some lawyers routinely fail to get work product to clients with enough time for their review and input.  That’s a failure in self-management.  It’s also a leadership failure, because it subtly undermines a client’s confidence in the lawyer’s professionalism and abilities.

The fruit of self-management lies in creating the freedom to achieve to the extent of natural and developed ability, not being held back by a self-sabotaging tendency to cut corners, delay, or burn out.

Must a lawyer exhibit flawless self-management to be an effective leader?  No.  The more developed a leader’s capacity for self-management and self-discipline, the more effective a leader is likely to be. However, each individual is likely to be better in managing certain areas than others.  A leader may be strong in self-management in the use of working hours, but be deficient in setting aside time for his or her own renewal.

How does your self-management rate this week? (What would those whom you seek to lead say?)  What can you do to improve it, thereby improving your productivity and practice?

There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, “Morning, boys, how’s the water?”  And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, “What the hell is water?”

I read that little anecdote in a Wall Street Journal adaptation of the commencement speech David Foster Wallace made at Kenyon College. It struck me as amusing at first, but then it struck me as a great teaching story.
Are you living in an environment that you’re not really aware of, just because you don’t know anything could be different? Environment is critical to success, whether it’s success in business or in life.  Want to lose weight?  You’ll have better odds if your pantry is packed with water and oatmeal than if it’s jammed with sugary sodas and potato chips.  Want to know what’s going on in politics?  You might prefer to hang around others who care about politics and read the Wall Street Journal than to spend your time watching E! and talking about Snookie.

When it comes to business development, environment is often an unappreciated factor for success. Let’s look at three examples.

1. How do your systems support business development activity? Those systems might include where you put business cards you’ve been handed by new contacts — can you find them so that you can follow up?  Do you have a system in place for following up, or is it catch-as-catch can, sometimes great and sometimes nonexistent?  Do you have a system for tracking your business development activity, both so you can see whether you’re keeping the commitments you’ve made and also so that you can track the outcome of your actions?Systems create your personal operating environment. If your systems aren’t strong, you need to realize that and correct it.

   Example: I noticed recently that I’d been swallowed whole by paper at my desk now that I’m managing my own business and personal life along with three other businesses.  I’d always had fairly good systems, but the influx of paper and the associated tasks had overwhelmed those systems.  My office looked as if the post office had thrown up on it, and finding anything in less than ten minutes was unlikely.  And between the busy-ness and the renovations I’ve been doing, my home didn’t look much better.  So I hired a concierge service (for those of you in Atlanta, check out Luxe Arrangements) and a home and office organization specialist (Atlanta folks, see Barbara Mays).  The difference in my physical and mental space is enormous.

2. How does your leadership support business development activity? What you say and do about business development can have far greater impact than you might realize.What do you do and say about business development? Do your actions reflect what you’d like those you lead to do — especially yourself?  I once worked with a lawyer who encouraged every person he led to take on a variety of business development activities, but he didn’t like to network, was too busy to meet people one-on-one on a regular basis, didn’t consider himself to be a great writer or speaker, and — in short — didn’t do anything he encouraged his team to do.  Guess how their business development worked out?
3. How does the way you spend money support business development activity? You can certainly build a solid book of business without spending a lot of money, but if you think you can do so without spending any money, you’re kidding yourself.  It’s important to make smart investments in growing your business, whether that means joining appropriate groups, getting subscriptions to key publications, getting marketing training, or retaining a coach or consultant to help you see how to address your obstacles and to build opportunities.  If you’re unwilling to invest in growing your business, you’ll stunt any opportunity that comes your way rather than being able to take advantage of it.

Check yourself on these examples of environment and see what you notice about the environment you’ve created. What do you notice?  And, even more importantly, who serves as your “older fish” to point out the environment that you can’t see?

The Power of Habit:  Why We Do What We Do In Life and Business
by Charles Duhigg

Every single one of my clients faces the need to build new habits at some point. Whether it’s replacing an unhelpful old habit or building a new one from scratch, the process of illuminating automatic behavior and changing it can be quite difficult.  At the same time, building a habit that operates without conscious thought and that supports desired outcomes is a marker for success.

You have to have the right habits.

Especially when it comes to business development, I’m a proponent of building strong habits. Why?
Because habits build a structure that takes over in the face of challenges.  Habits are behaviors that we perform without thoughts.  They just happen.  And when they don’t, we feel so uncomfortable that, for better or worse, we usually revert to the habit.  There’s a lot of power in a habit.

But it isn’t easy to establish a new habit, and it’s often even harder to break an old one. We’ve all heard the “do it for 28 days and you’ll have a habit” advice.  That doesn’t match my experience, though, and too often it doesn’t match my clients’ experience.

Several recently published books explore habit, but Duhigg’s The Power of Habit captured my attention. In an Amazon Q&A, Duhigg shares what sparked his interest in habit:

What sparked your interest in habits?

I first became interested in the science of habits eight years ago, as a newspaper reporter in Baghdad, when I heard about an army major conducting an experiment in a small town named Kufa.

The major had analyzed videotapes of riots and had found that violence was often preceded by a crowd of Iraqis gathering in a plaza and, over the course of hours, growing in size.  Food vendors would show up, as well as spectators.  Then, someone would throw a rock or a bottle.

When the major met with Kufa’s mayor, he made an odd request:  Could they keep the food vendors out of the plazas?  Sure, the mayor said.  A few weeks later, a small crowd gathered near the Great Mosque of Kufa.  It grew in size.  Some people started chanting angry slogans.  At dusk, the crowd started getting restless and hungry.  People looked for the kebab sellers normally filling the plaza, but there were none to be found.  The spectators left.  The chanters became dispirited.  By 8 PM, everyone was gone.

I asked the major how he had figured out that removing food vendors would change peoples’ behavior.

The U.S. military, he told me, is one of the biggest habit-formation experiments in history.  “Understanding habits is the most important thing I’ve learned in the army,” he said.  By the time I got back to the U.S., I was hooked on the topic.

Duhigg’s book is divided into three parts:  The Habits of Individuals, which explores how habit works and how to create and change them, The Habit of Successful Organizations, which describes how various businesses use (and perhaps abuse) habit formation, and The Habit of Societies, which investigates societal habits and related ethical questions. Filled with stories, anecdotes, and tweetable insights, the book is a quick read that seems to be well-grounded in research and experience.

I was surprised to learn that, according to cited Duke University research, more than 40% of actions are habits rather than action motivated by conscious decision. Duhigg defines habits as “the choices that all of us deliberately make at some point, and then stop thinking about but continue doing, often every day.”  That’s when I began to pay close attention to the book.

Habits are based on a three-step process:  a cue that triggers the action, the action itself, and the reward. Using examples such as the habit of checking email (routine) in response to a message waiting alert (cue) to relieve boredom (reward), Duhigg explains why habits are so difficult to change.  When a cue triggers us, we crave a reward, and the habit occurs automatically.

To change a habit, Duhigg teaches, choose a cue and a reward, then focus on the reward until you crave it, and preferably join a group composed of others who believe that change is possible. It sounds easy enough, and Duhigg offers plenty of examples, but he also acknowledges that habits become deeply and often unconsciously engrained, making change difficult.

I was particularly intrigued by Duhigg’s recitation of research that demonstrates the success of those who make specific plans for action well in advance and know how they’ll work around obstacles. We’ve all watched carefully cultivated habits fall apart when work gets unusually busy or a child gets sick, and Duhigg’s recitation of finding after finding serves as a strong prompt to anticipate obstacles.

What’s in it for lawyers?

The Power of Habit offers both conceptual and concrete tips on how to make habit-building more conscious and more successful. As noted above, every single client I’ve worked with in the last six years has bumped into habits at some point.  Bad habits (such as returning to the office with intentions to follow up with a new prospect only to watch days slip by without any movement) have to go, and new ones take their place.  Implementing Duhigg’s suggestions will help.

I wish The Power of Habit had offered more discussion around identifying harmful habits that are not obvious, such as the realization that Iraqi riots wouldn’t occur without food vendors’ presence.  It’s one thing to know what habits are getting in the way, and it’s another entirely to see a pattern of blockages without being able to identify the linchpin that’s creating problems.  (Very often, an outside observer is the best way to spot that habit.)  Once you’ve identified the deleterious habit, Duhigg can help you to change it.

I’m studying The Power of Habit to help my clients find more effective ways to build automatic behaviors. If time is limited, I’d strongly recommend that you read at least the first four chapters.  You’ll get a good grounding in how to create and change habits, and you’ll likely find yourself at least skimming the rest of the book.

In the meantime, ask yourself:  what do I do with little or no thought that’s getting in my way? What reward am I craving?  How can I get that reward without the harmful behavior?  What should I substitute?  Even if your study of habit remains on that relatively surface level, you and your practice will benefit.