Above and Beyond KM

For the average worker, it might seem like a dream come true. However, I suspect that some information technology folks consider it a nightmare. What’s the issue? The advent of the consumerization of IT; something Scott Finnie calls “CoIT.” Dion Hinchcliffe describes the elements of  CoIT in the following way:

1) businesses taking more local control for IT, 2) workers using their own preferred computing devices and apps, and … 3) manageable processes for rapid uptake of enterprise apps, mashups, and devices matched with IT support processes that scale to match.

While this may not seem an ideal scenario for the traditional IT department, it most likely is within the limits of what can be tolerated.  However, what happens when the business gets “carried away” and starts driving IT initiatives? Here’s Dion Hinchcliffe’s explanation:

The overall trend towards ad hoc adoption of personal and cloud technology at work seems to be inexorable. More and more IT is moving out from under the CIOs budget, just over 30% by some estimates. Perhaps most disruptive of all, however, is the sudden appearance of extremely stiff competition for IT services. While the move to self-service IT in general has been a steady trend for a decade — and which is starting to be called CoIT — it’s the outright diversion of business budgets directly to external IT providers, whether they are the newer SaaS vendors and app developers or the more traditional IT consulting firms and VARs. In short, the business likes the selection and service it’s getting elsewhere, and routing around IT in many cases. [emphasis added]

Suddenly, we have a situation in which the IT department no longer is in complete control and may well have trouble imposing a locked down computing environment.  Now, if you’re working in the financial or legal services industries, consider what happens when you couple the move to CoIT and external IT providers with growing incursions by hackers. According to a recent report in Bloomberg News, there’s been disturbing hacker activity directed towards law firms lately:

Over a few months beginning in September 2010, the hackers rifled one secure computer network after the next, eventually hitting seven different law firms as well as Canada’s Finance Ministry and theTreasury Board, according to Daniel Tobok, president of Toronto-based Digital Wyzdom. His cyber security company was hired by the law firms to assist in the probe.

[...]

`As financial institutions in New York City and the world become stronger, a hacker can hit a law firm and it’s a much, much easier quarry,’ said Mary Galligan, head of the cyber division in the New York City office of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Galligan’s unit convened a meeting with the top 200 law firms in New York City last November to deal with the rising number of law firm intrusions. Over snacks in a large meeting room, the FBI issued a warning to the lawyers: Hackers see attorneys as a back door to the valuable data of their corporate clients.

To be honest, I don’t envy law firm IT directors.  They are faced with the difficult task of imposing stringent security measures even as they watch their internal clients scurry out the door, exercising their right to choose their own IT tools and chasing self-service IT as a means to get out from under the control of their organization’s IT department.  While security concerns have often trumped other considerations in the past, it will be interesting to see if the newly emboldened  IT consumers will insist on using their preferred devices and self-service IT despite heightened security concerns.

It’s a nightmare scenario, coming to an IT department near you — soon.

[Photo Credit: Terry Freedman]

Do you know what you know? And, more importantly, do you know how to communicate it effectively to someone else? For far too many of us, the answer to both of these questions is “No.”

To be fair, we may think we know the extent of our knowledge and may even believe we can be effective teachers of that knowledge, but Malcolm Gladwell suggests that we are just fooling ourselves. Take a look at the brief video clip below of Gladwell discussing why people succeed. He recounts instances where professional tennis players believed they were giving an accurate account of their knowledge and practice, and yet a video of their game proved the inaccuracy of what they said. At the end of the day, the explanation they gave about how they hit a topspin forehand did not match what they actually did.  Rather, their instructions would have led to a sprained wrist. Were they just dumb? Gladwell doesn’t suggest that.  Instead, he says that their knowledge as extremely competent professionals was instinctive and they really weren’t able to reduce it to words that could produce a topspin forehand if put into practice by someone else.

Now consider the implications of this for knowledge managers who seek to “capture tacit knowledge.” It is an article of faith in knowledge management that some of the most valuable knowledge is tacit knowledge:  that part of knowledge that comes through experience and cannot easily be codified into explicit knowledge.  It’s prized and it’s elusive.  Dave Snowden years ago reminded us that we know more than we can say and we say more than we can write down.  Yet so many of our knowledge management systems depend upon the written word. If you’re lucky, your knowledge management system will contain merely incomplete information.  If you’re unlucky, your attempts to render tacit knowledge explicit may result in information that is just plain wrong — like the instructions on how to hit a topspin forehand.

What are the solutions? Rather than asking experts to write everything down, consider making a video.  But have that video focus on what the experts are doing — not what they are saying. As we discovered with the tennis players, verbal explanations may be no more accurate than written explanations. Better still, facilitate knowledge transfer by having the experts work directly with less knowledgeable people.  It’s this old-fashioned apprenticeship approach that maximizes the flow of tacit information.

Granted, instituting an apprenticeship isn’t quite as cool as implementing new technology. But if you really want to learn how to hit a topspin forehand, you will have to learn by watching and doing.  If you rely on the incomplete transfer of tacit knowledge into verbal or written instructions, you may end up with a sprained wrist.

You’ve been warned.

For fourteen centuries she had information that everyone wanted. So they traveled from all over the ancient world to seek her guidance. And they paid lots of money for the privilege. Who was she? Pythia, the priestess of Apollo and the oracle of Delphi. Thomas Sakoulas describes how she worked:

Plutarch served as a priest at Delphi, and in his histories he has left many details about the inner workings of the sanctuary. Pythia entered the inner chamber of the temple (Adyton), sat on a tripod and inhaled the light hydrocarbon gasses that escaped from a chasm on the porous earth. After falling into a trance, she muttered words incomprehensible to mere mortals. The priests of the sanctuary then interpreted her oracles in a common language and delivered them to those who had requested them. Even so, the oracles were always open to interpretation and often signified dual and opposing meanings.

`You will go you will return not in the battle you will perish’ was an example of this duality of meaning. The above sentence can be interpreted two different ways depending where the comma can be placed. If a comma is placed after the word `not’ the message is discouraging for him who is about to depart for war. If on the other hand the comma is placed before the word `not’, then the warrior is to return alive.

In an age of uncertainty, access to information was valued, and the ability to interpret critical information was valued even more.  In fact, it led to the creation of a very nice business model:

A booming industry grew up around the Oracle. Temples were built and rebuilt, priests were trained, rituals evolved and sacrifices were performed. Priests interpreted the incoherent utterances of the Pythia. Presents were brought to both placate the deity and in the hope of influencing a positive prophesy. The Delphic temple itself became one of the largest “banks” in the world. Delphi became a center for banking and commerce.

The oracle and priests of Delphi are the spiritual ancestors of modern professionals who guard valuable information closely and share it selectively in exchange for considerable compensation. Lawyers and doctors have for years been the guardians of specialist bodies of knowledge to which lay people have needed access. But what happens when information is free? When your clients and patients have easy access via the Internet to the information for which you previously charged, what does that do to your role and your revenue?

As doctors having discovered, the result is patients who read Internet information and then show up in their doctor’s office with an extensive list of questions. Yes, this does make for more engaged healthcare consumers.  But contrary to physician worries, it need not render doctors obsolete. Why? Because the chief question of most of these patients is how to discern the reliable information from the downright wrong and misleading information. Dr. Kevin Pho reports that Drs Pamela Hartzband and Jerome Groopman wrote recently in the New England Journal of Medicine about the opportunity free information presents:

Information and knowledge do not equal wisdom. … Physicians are in the best position to weigh information and advise patients, drawing on their understanding of available evidence as well as their training and experience. If anything, the wealth of information on the Internet will make such expertise and experience more essential.

In Dr. Pho’s view, doctors can provide real value to their patients by acting as their guides through the freely available Internet information:

Doctors have to get used to the fact they are no longer the sole source of a patient’s health information. Instead, they need to serve more as interpreters of data, and be willing to separate the tangible information from the increasing amount of noise patients find online.

But what about lawyers?  At the end of the day the best business model for doctors and lawyers rests on their ability to provide more than the rudimentary materials available freely on the Internet. It rests on their ability to provide the benefits of their valuable experience and judgment to lay people.  This suggests the need for a more strategic approach to sharing information.  Given how quickly information spreads online, how long can you guard your firm’s information as if you were guarding gold bricks? Granted, if you have the secret recipe for Coca-Cola, guarding it rigorously makes sense.  But as far as much legal and medical information is concerned, its half-life is rather short.  This leads to an interesting question for law firms: do you want to invest energy restricting access to a resource of diminishing value, or do you want to be known as the go to firm that has confidence to provide useful information free of charge online, secure in the knowledge that the firm is always developing specialized experience and judgment for which clients will gladly pay good money? For a profession that is used to charging a premium for all information, this is challenging economic and cultural terrain to navigate. For the firm that finds the right balance between clinging to information until it turns to dust and giving away the shop, this is a marvelous opportunity to attract clients who want to know they are working with lawyers who really are at the top of their game and who have the cutting-edge knowledge, experience and judgment to back it up.

The oracle of Delphi was displaced by radical changes in political and religious power. The oracles in law firms and doctors’ offices are in danger of being displaced by technology.  How will they respond?

[Photo Credit: Bricke Dotnet]

It is the stuff of fantasy — for law firm knowledge management professionals, that is. Imagine law firm partners beating down your door asking to be involved in as many law firm KM projects as possible. Before you laugh derisively, consider the following report from The American Lawyer‘s ninth annual survey of managing partners, chairs, and other leaders of Am Law 200 firms:

Firms are also pushing for greater efficiency in their internal operations. Nearly half of respondents (49 percent) say they have aligned partner compensation with a willingness to cooperate in new initiatives, such as project management, knowledge management, and rethinking staffing requirements. Mentoring programs have also gained traction. [emphasis added]

Is this happening at your firm?

If it is, set aside some time to think about how best to take advantage of this windfall. Partners will come to you with views about what KM should do for their practice area. I’m willing to bet good money that many will focus on precedent collection projects or model document drafting projects.  These are obvious ways of building a knowledge base for a practice area, but are they always the best ways? Before you commit precious time and resources to these projects, take another look at the list of high-impact and low-impact law firm KM activities. You’ll see that both of these projects are on the low-impact list under the category of creating and maintaining content. This is not because they lack value. Rather, they have limited value unless undertaken in response to clear-eyed analysis as to the pros and cons of the project. Further, unless you  are diligent about finding ways to reduce cost through automation, these projects can require considerable amounts of time, money and manual work. For example, firm-sanctioned models can be a huge timesaver and training aid for lawyers drafting documents. However, these models tend to be costly:  they require a great deal of time, attention, willpower and political capital to move from the concept stage to the point where the model has been blessed and adopted by a practice group. While it might make sense to invest this heavily in a critical document that will be used so many times that its cost per use becomes negligible, it makes no sense whatsoever to invest that way in a document that will be used infrequently. Can you find other, less expensive ways to address the training or drafting gap?

One of the challenges of working in law firm KM is being a good steward of firm resources. This means investing in the KM projects that will provide the greatest return on investment for the firm.  Not every project will meet this standard. So, before you open the door to that long line of partners looking to get involved with KM, be sure you have a straightforward analytical framework for helping them understand how to assess potential ROI. (See some proposed indicia of impact.) And, be sure you have some suggestions of alternative, more productive uses of their KM-focused time and energy that balance their interests with KM needs. Partner time and attention is one of the most valuable resources within a firm. Don’t waste it on low-impact KM activities.

[Photo Credit: Jason Schultz]

Your New Year’s Eve celebration is a now a dim memory and, hopefully, you’ve fully recovered from the revelry. Now comes the hard part — putting plans in place to make 2012 a year in which knowledge management really counts in your organization. This is not just about creating a list of interesting projects and then tracking your progress on those projects. This is about ensuring you and your team are working on KM projects that really matter. Your challenge for 2012 is to make KM a real force multiplier in your law firm.

To recap, a force multiplier is something that helps the troops perform significantly better than they would without it. The key is that the improvement in performance should be substantial. And therein lies the rub. While lots of law firm knowledge management projects are worthy, too many result in incremental improvements in performance at best. In fact, a recent survey of senior large law firm KM personnel revealed that they were devoting far too much of their time and resources to projects that did not constitute true force multipliers. Based on their considerable experience, here is a list of the high-impact projects that in their estimation had a good chance of resulting in force multiplication:

• Creating smarter systems, processes and workflows throughout the firm
• Enterprise Search — ensuring that personnel can find what they need efficiently
• Matter Profiling/Tracking
• Providing a portal
• Investing in design — to ensure your KM systems fit with how people work and do not cause unnecessary barriers to adoption
• Promoting KM adoption practices / Training

And, here’s the list of the activities to which they currently devote considerable time and resources, but which they admitted were low-impact activities that had little chance of achieving force multiplication within their firms:

• Arguing with IT over priorities and resources
• Creating and maintaining content — legal models, practice guides, templates, etc.
• Data transfer
• Firm politics
• Getting buy-in from lawyers and management
• Intranet Management — this involves the daily tasks of editing pages (or chasing editors), ensuring content is maintained, etc.
• Manually categorizing or profiling documents
• Research/Search Requests (KM Concierge) — limited impact since you are helping only one person at a time
• Responding to individual requests for assistance — limited impact since you are helping only one person at a time
• Vendor demos

This suggests that if you want to make a real difference in 2012, you need to shift the bulk of your resources to projects that will deliver force multiplication.  But how do you actually move from aspiration to reality? Peter Bregman has a suggestion that can help you find your focus and then keep it throughout the year:

1. Identify your primary areas of focus for this year.  Bregman suggests identifying five areas of focus, but allows that anything in the 3-7 range would be reasonable. But no more.
   • What’s an area of focus? It is not a specific project or strategy.  Rather, it is an area in which you wish to make a difference this year.  For example, improving the speed and efficacy of information searches within your organization. For our purposes, it should be an area in connection with which you want to achieve force multiplication.
2. Then, using Bregman’s six box to do list (adapted as necessary to reflect your number of foci), label each box with the name of one of your areas of focus.  Label the remaining box “the other 5%.”  Next make multiple copies of this labeled to do list.
   • To create your annual focus tracker,  start with your list of current and projected projects for 2012. Transfer those projects to a copy of your labeled to do list, placing within each box the projects that will help you achieve force multiplication in that area of focus.  And what about “the other 5%” box?  Put here everything that has not been assigned to one of your areas of focus. The key to this system is that 95% of your time and effort should be spent on the areas of focus listed on this sheet, leaving “the other 5%” for the incidental projects that inevitable arise midstream.
   • To create your daily tracker, each work day take a look at the list of things you intended to undertake that day and then list within each box the tasks that relate to that area of focus.  Any task that does not relate to one of your areas of focus should be put in “the other 5%” box. Finally, schedule an appropriate amount of time that day to complete your priority items.
3. At the end of each week and each month, use these sheets as a check on your progress:
   • How are you distributing your resources across the areas of focus?  Is any area under-served? Are you spending more than the allotted 5% of your time on projects that fall outside your areas of focus?
   • Are the actions you’ve taken clearly moving you towards your goal of achieving force multiplication?  If not, what needs to change?
   • Are you accomplishing the tasks you set out to do? If not, should you minimize your distractions or minimize your areas of focus?

Now, let’s apply this to the world of law firm knowledge management:

1. Once you’ve identified your primary areas of focus, compare them to the lists provided above of high-impact and low-impact activities.  If you have not included these high-impact activities, why not? If you have included a low-impact activity as an area of focus (rather than as part of “the other 5%”), why did you do that? To be clear, the lists above are not prescriptive.  However, they do reflect a lot of experience.  To the extent your areas of focus differ, you need to ask yourself what about your firm puts it outside the norm of the firms reflected in those lists?
2. Fill out the daily tracker for yourself and for your department.  Do your daily time expenditures reflect a commitment to the areas of focus or are you and your team easily distracted by the crisis of the day?
   • In the interest of fairness, we need to admit that when you are in the client-service business, urgent client needs take precedence over nearly everything else.  Ideally, the urgent needs can be accommodated in “the other 5%,” leaving you ample time to work towards force multiplication. If that’s not the case, give some thought as to why these emergencies arise.  If it is a result of poor planning within the firm, can this be addressed by better training?  Do you have the right systems in place to address most client requests in a reliable and predictable fashion? If not, how can you improve your systems. The bottom line is that if you are in a constant state of crisis without good planning and systems in place, it’s extremely difficult to pay attention to the daily tasks that will move you towards achieving force multiplication.
3. On a weekly and monthly basis, take a look at your daily trackers.  What patterns are emerging?  Are you seeing signs of achieving force multiplication in your areas of focus?  If not, what needs to change?

There is no magic here.  It’s about finding your focus early, planning to achieve your goals, monitoring your progress, correcting your course as necessary, and then holding yourself and your team accountable for the results.

So there you have it — a plan for turning KM into a real force multiplier in your law firm, a plan for making KM count in 2012.  May the Force be with you!

This blog post was written originally for the knowledge management peer group of the International Legal Technology Association and can also be found on the ILTA KM Blog.  Thanks to Mary Panetta and David Hobbie for giving me the opportunity to write for that KM community.  Thanks also to Jeffrey Brandt, editor of Pinhawk Law Technology Daily Digest, who was the first to say “May the Force be with you” when he read my earlier posts on force multiplication.

[Photo Credit: Pete Reed]

New Year, new beginnings.

At this point in the calendar, the blogosphere is full of lots of advice for those of us who welcome the opportunity of a new beginning.  Since I’d like to avoid here one of the besetting sins of bloggers (i.e., hypocrisy), I’m going to restrict myself to sharing advice that I’m willing to take myself in 2012:

1. Find Your Focus. When your attention and energies are scattered in too many directions, it’s impossible to get much if anything done.  When you have multiple projects, it can be hard to determine priorities and allocate resources.  In 2012, be kind to yourself and decide what project (or small number of projects) will be your primary focus for the year.  What’s really worth doing? What completed project would you be glad to showcase at year-end as an example of work well done? Once you’ve identified the project, throw all your concentrated energy into it and see how quickly the results mount.
2. Plan to be Flexible. The beauty of a well-considered plan is that it helps you answer the daily question of how to spend your time and resources.  That sense of direction is freeing and allows you to just get on with achieving the success for which you’ve planned.  However, very few of us have the luxury of seeing everything go according to plan.  In fact, life often has a way of moving us off course. Sometimes there are bumps in the road, sometimes we find ourselves in a complete snafu.  And sometimes these interruptions are really rich opportunities in deep disguise. All of this is not an argument against planning.  In fact, the value of planning may well be more in the analytical clarity it brings, the contingencies is uncovers and the level of preparedness it inspires.  Eisenhower is famous for saying that “Plans are nothing; planning everything.” So go ahead and plan, but don’t let your plan blind you to life’s realities and opportunities.
3. Celebrate Progress. Teresa Amabile and Steve Kramer Kramer recommend that you Start the New Year with Progress.  By this they mean that “fostering progress in meaningful work is the most important way to keep people highly engaged at work — even if that progress is a `small win.’” Amabile and Kramer have several suggestions for keeping progress front and center:  keep a sharp eye out for progress, communicate it broadly and celebrate it widely.  Don’t let the press of business push people to the next task without recognizing work well done.  It you don’t pause and recognize accomplishment, you run the risk of having members of your team feel as if they are constantly slogging without achieving any meaningful results.  That feeling can destroy engagement and motivation all too quickly. As you focus on progress, be sure to explain why the work is important.  This is not about handing out meaningless gold stars.  It’s about keeping people engaged in work that matters.
4. Be Kinder. Aldous Huxley is quoted as saying, “It is a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one’s life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than ‘Try to be a little kinder.” I have neither his experience nor his wisdom, but this strikes me as good advice — especially in a time of uncertainty when too many are struggling with anxiety. Kindness can help us over the rough patches and sets the tone for how we want to work with our colleagues.

There you have it in a nutshell:  wise advice that, if followed, should result in a highly productive and more fulfilling year.  Now we just need to stay focused.

Happy New Year!

[Photo Credit: ihtatho]

It’s been over three years since the financial crisis of 2008.  Joblessness is high, optimism low.  Just in the last four months alone, the New York area has had epic weather (Hurricane Irene, floods, the Halloween blizzard) and an earthquake. Worst of all, no one knows when the turmoil (natural or economic) will end. Is it any wonder people are stressed?

Dr. James S. Gordon, clinical professor of psychiatry at Georgetown Medical School, wrote the following sobering words in the Washington Post in 2009:

I have been practicing psychiatry for 40 years, but I’ve never seen this much stress and worry about economic well-being and the future. There is a sense that the ground is no longer solid, that a system we all thought would sustain us no longer works as we were told it would. … In this uncertain time, symptoms of chronic illnesses — hypertension, back pain, diabetes — that were controlled or dormant are erupting. Low-level depression, whose hallmarks are feelings of helplessness and hopelessness, is endemic.

Dr. Brené Brown, research professor at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work, has an equally direct summary of our current state of affairs:

We live in a vulnerable world. And one of the ways we deal with it is we numb vulnerability. And I think there’s evidence — and it’s not the only reason this evidence exists, but I think it’s a huge cause — we are the most in-debt, obese, addicted and medicated adult cohort in U.S. history.  …  One of the things that I think we need to think about is why and how we numb. And it doesn’t just have to be addiction. The other thing we do is we make everything that’s uncertain certain. Religion has gone from a belief in faith and mystery to certainty.

If that’s what’s happening in the general population, what’s happening in the law firm world?  Toby Brown, a wise observer of law firms and the economy recently had an epiphany about the widespread longing for a return to simpler, more certain times:  it isn’t likely to happen anytime soon. In fact, he believes that the current “level of uncertainty may be here to stay. And it may even expand in the future. …  The bottom line is that rapid change results in uncertainty. And rapid change has become the norm.”

It’s pretty grim stuff.  So what can we do if we can’t get under it, over it or around it?  How do we get through it?  How do we cope with uncertainty? Dr. Gordon has the following recommendations for individuals:

• Begin a meditation practice.
• Move your body.
• Reach out to others.
• Find someone who will listen and help you take a realistic look at your situation.
• Let your imagination help you find healing — and new meaning and purpose.
• Speak and act on your own behalf.

Rosabeth Moss Kanter, professor at Harvard Business School, suggests the following strategies to help organizations cope with uncertainty and find opportunity:

• Provide certainty of process.
• Tackle maintenance and repair.
• Let ideas flow.
• Mobilize appreciation for key constituencies.
• Use purpose and values to “think beyond.”

For law firms that may be choking on the thought of spending money in these uncertain times, Toby Brown has the following recommendation:

In our conversation, we wondered with so much uncertainty where should a law firm invest its IT dollars? Our answer: invest in flexible infrastructure. Uncertainty drives the need to be able to adjust quickly to changing environments, driving the need to add and remove functionalities under very short turnarounds.

I’d take Toby’s advice one step further. In these uncertain times organizations should be investing to help make their people as flexible and resilient as possible.  This is what will help organizations respond quickly and appropriately to changes in the environment.  To be clear, in this context resilience does not mean simply reverting to the status quo ante.  The better definition of resilience for these purposes points to growth and progress rather than reversion:

Resilience is the ability to thrive, mature, and increase competence in the face of adverse circumstances.

While it is unlikely that 2012 will bring more certainty, let’s hope that we can bring more flexibility and resilience to 2012.  Onward and upward!

[Hat tip to Ron Donaldson for reminding me of Brené Brown's TED Talk on vulnerability.]

[Photo Credit: Frau Shizzle]

The older I get, the more I appreciate the effort it takes to get the important things done right.  Blogging is no exception.  Lots of blogs (and their bloggers) start out with a bright burst of energy and enthusiasm, only to falter when they come face to face with the realities of regular blogging.  As I have learned, it is very hard to maintain a schedule of regular blogging.  So I  remain impressed by those who do.  Equally impressive are the folks who have been blogging for years, but still find a reason to blog regularly and, more importantly, still find something interesting to say to their readers.

Accordingly, on this occasion of the the nominations for the 2011 ClawBies Awards, I thought I should pay tribute to Canadian bloggers who are relative “old-timers” in terms of their length of service in the blogging field.  Their longevity is a testament to their creativity, mastery of the art, and stick-with-itness:

• Connie Crosby.  Let me start by nominating “Info Diva” and consultant, Connie Crosby.  Blogging since 2004, Connie consistently provides her readers with the latest information and guidance in the areas of information management, social media and legal libraries.  In addition to her own blog, Connie is a contributor to the phenomenal slaw.ca blog. Active on Twitter and in several professional groups that meet face-to-face, Connie is a blogging leader.
• Garry J. Wise. The Wise Law Blog casts its net widely, covering legal, political and technology topics.  Garry started the blog in 2005 and has been joined over the years by contributors from his firm and by the occasional guest blogger.  In addition, he and his colleagues provide legal news updates via Wise Law on Twitter. The “140Law” headlines give readers a quick way to track legal developments in their Twitter feed.
• Allison Wolf.  Blogging since 2006, Allison provides timely and thoughtful advice in The Lawyer Coach Blog.  If you take a moment to read some of her posts, you’ll soon discover that her coaching advice is not limited to the world of lawyers and law firms.  Rather, it has broader application across a variety of workplaces.  In addition to her blog, Allison is a columnist on slaw.ca.

There is an old proverb that claims that “old age and treachery will overcome youth and skill.”  While I know little about the chronological ages of the bloggers nominated here, the quality of their blogging suggests that they have cornered the market on skill.  On behalf of their readers past, present and future, I wish them many more years of continued blogging success.

[Photo Credit: Hugh Bell]

“Meetings: the credible alternative to work.” That is the wry conclusion emblazoned on a mug that sits on my desk. It’s a useful daily reminder. However, until all of you get a mug like that to remind yourselves about the huge corporate waste represented by bad meetings, I’d like to make the following modest proposal to improve meetings.

It’s not unusual for a formal business meeting to be followed by the informal after-meeting discussion.  It’s often in that discussion that the meeting is evaluated and action steps are refined.  I’d suggest that after every meeting the participants take a minute or two to evaluate the effectiveness of the meeting just ended.  Did it have a clear goal?  Were the participants prepared and able to make a decision?  Did the participants meet the goal of the meeting?  Did the person calling the meeting do an effective job?  Did the person chairing the meeting do an effective job? In other words, was the meeting worth the time invested?

If the answer to any of those questions is no and if those participants earn a negative evaluation three times then they should be discouraged from calling meetings until they’ve done some remedial work to improve their ability to organize and deliver productive meetings.  Perhaps they should even be forbidden from participating in meetings until the remedial work is done since they clearly are not adding value to meetings.

This may strike you as overly harsh. However, consider what’s really at stake.  Bad meetings are a tax on productivity and morale.  Worse still, bad meetings waste time.

Of all the resources you and your organization have, time is the scarcest.  Can you really afford to waste it?

Above and Beyond KM has been named to the ABA Journal’s list of top legal blogs. Please vote for it in the Legal Tech category by clicking the Vote for this Blog picture below to register and vote:

[Photo Credit: Sami]

Just when you thought it was safe, I’m here to warn you to look out for the knowledge management menagerie.  What’s in that menagerie? Animals that can upset an otherwise well-designed KM program.  With some thought, we probably could identify enough animals to populate a zoo.  However, since this is a blog post and not a Harry Potter novel, let’s focus on just two: monkeys and bunnies.

Monkeys

Monkeys became an important part of the management scene with the publication by William Oncken, Jr. and Donald L. Wass of the management classic “Management Time: Who’s Got the Monkey?” In that article they explained how little of our workdays are really within our discretion and how easily that limited amount of discretionary time can be eaten up by colleagues who inappropriately delegate to us. In the case of the original article, the presenting issue was subordinates who delegate up.  In the context of knowledge management, however, we also experience colleagues in other departments who delegate to KM tasks they should be doing for themselves.

To understand the problem with monkeys better, here’s an excerpt from Oncken and Wass:

You’re racing down the hall. An employee stops you and says, “We’ve got a problem.” You assume you should get involved but can’t make an on-the-spot decision. You say, “Let me think about it.”

You’ve just allowed a “monkey” to leap from your subordinate’s back to yours. You’re now working for your subordinate. Take on enough monkeys, and you won’t have time to handle your real job: fulfilling your own boss’s mandates and helping peers generate business results.

How do you tame these monkeys? The Harvard Business Review offers the following management tip:

Have you ever delegated a task to a subordinate, and somehow it ends up back on your plate? Beware of this “reverse delegation.” Employees who are unsure how to do something may enlist you in doing it for them. Don’t automatically solve problems or make decisions for hesitant employees. Focus on generating alternative solutions together, making sure the employee maintains responsibility for executing. Don’t fall for it when a subordinate makes statements like, “You’ll do a better job with this.” While flattering, and possibly even true, they are often a way to get you involved when you needn’t be.

In the KM context, these monkeys pop up when colleagues ask you to find for them things that should be easily found by them using your KM systems.  A friend at another law firm described their expensive enterprise search engine as “a great tool that helps KM find things.”  It sounds as if what my friend has really found is a KM monkey. Similarly, when every unsolved problem within your firm suddenly becomes KM’s problem, then you’re probably looking at a barrel full of monkeys. As flattering as it may be to think that KM is at the center of your firm’s universe, chances are that you’ve got lots of half-finished projects and insufficient bandwidth to complete enough of them.  What you really need to do is get rid of some of those KM monkeys. The key is to train your colleagues to help themselves. If the issue is that people are coming to you because they are afraid of failing, you need to work with them to build trust and to create a safe-fail environment that puts failure in the proper context.

Bunnies

Bunnies? Yes, bunnies.  The particular breed that first caught my eye was “plot bunnies,” but they could easily appear in knowledge management.  Unwords.com defines a plot bunny as follows:

1. (n.) A tempting idea for a story that hares off into strange territory upon pursuit. Known for breeding rapidly and dividing a writer’s attention to the point of achieving nothing at all.

Example: “I’ve been trying to write a story, but I’ve been cursed by an infestation of plotbunnies.”

A KM bunny is a terrific new idea that comes out of nowhere and entices you away from your carefully developed plan.  The hard part is that KM bunny is extremely appealing and may, in fact, be brilliant.  Nonetheless, it can be a huge distraction that keeps you from getting the necessary done.  On the other hand, that bunny may represent the one thing you should have been doing all along.  And therein lies the ultimate challenge of the KM bunny — should you keep your eyes on the prize and ignore it, or should you allow it to lead you to potentially more fruitful paths?  How do you know?

A friend of mine who used to run Fortune 100 companies once told me, “Don’t let others put their monkeys on your back.”  I would add to his great advice the following admonition: And don’t let yourself get distracted by too many bunnies.  They can fracture your focus, disperse your energy, and still not result in anything tangible.

No matter how cute those monkeys and bunnies appear to be, remember that they can be lethal if not tamed.

[Hat tip to E.G.R. Warren for introducing me to plot bunnies.]

[Photo Credit: Barb Henry]

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