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Post #242 - Thursday, October 11, 2007
New Maister Book
 I received a note from David today advising of the release of his new book, Strategy and the Fat Smoker. Apparently it is scheduled to be published on January 2, 2008 - and is currently available for pre-order at Amazon.com.
The book is formed from 19 of David's articles, written over the past two years, including one which I am honored to have co-authored. Here's some of the advance praise received for the new book:
Strategy and the Fat Smoker is a masterpiece - a rare blend of wisdom, experience, and humility. Every manager, and anyone who works in a professional services firm, ought to read this lovely book.
- Robert I. Sutton, Stanford Professor and co-author of The Knowing-Doing Gap
David Maister has built a career on giving unerringly wise advice to those of us in the business of advising and leading. He offers the reader the motivation, tools and wisdom to achieve more than we might ever have thought possible. This is essential reading for anyone determined to succeed.
- Paul A. Laudicina, Managing Officer and Chairman of the Board, A.T. Kearney
David Maister reminds us remorselessly that knowing what your company needs to do is relatively obvious: the test for us all is actually making it happen. Through anecdote, metaphor and case history, he shows us how to turn empty aspiration into hard reality.
- Sir Martin Sorrell, CEO, WPP
David has a knack of explaining what is really going on around us in our business life in a way which brings clarity and insight to the issues. His long experience in the professional services sector shines through. His observations on decision making in my own industry, law, make painful but essential reading. David doesn't let anyone off the hook in his evaluation of where professional service firms often go wrong. He forces us to confront the real issues of lack of resolve, leadership, values and trust which so often hold firms back. This is a book which all those with an interest in how professional service firms should be managed and led should read.
- David Morley, Managing Partner, Allan & Overy
Post #241- Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Take Time To Reflect
Drawing from some meetings I’ve had this past week with managing partners, I think every firm leader should consider taking time to reflect on how their leadership actions are viewed by their colleagues.
• Moliere, the 17th century French dramatist, once said: It is not only what we do, but also
what we do not do, for which we are accountable. Is there anything that you are avoiding doing that needs to be done? For example, are you putting off a difficult conversation? Are you delaying any important decisions? Are you delegating away responsibilities that should stay in your court?
• At the end of each day, before you head home, take a few minutes to mentally go over your day. Think about significant conversations you’ve held, meetings you attended, emails you sent and other actions you undertook. Are you proud? Could you have handled anything a touch better? This should inspire you to plan your next day around your highest purpose.
• Get hold of a leadership assessment form and use it to reflect on how others in your team would rate you on each dimension. For example:
- puts the interests of the team before own interests;
- shares credit for successes;
- readily shares relevant information;
- asks how am I doing;
- treats others with respect regardless of their position;
- fosters teamwork across all practice groups;
- stands behind decisions made by the team;
- provides honest feedback on a timely basis.
How would others respond to these questions about you?
• No one can be responsible for your state of mind. We are totally responsible for the impact that others have on us. Understand the disruptive effect that emotions can have on your behavior and resolve to do something about it.
Post #240 - Thursday, October 4, 2007
Exploring The Dubai Boom
Gibson Dunn & Crutcher announced today that it is to become the latest law firm to launch in Dubai before the end of 2007. Dubai has been the center of aggressive recruitment from numerous firms in recent years. Lovells, Herbert Smith and King & Spalding have all launched offices there over the last 12 months.
 It has been hard to miss the news that Dubai is booming. The place is already home to the world’s tallest office tower; new residential islands bigger than San Francisco are under construction in the Persian Gulf; and the Dubai government has ordered up an amusement complex the size of Paris. Even more impressive, tiny Dubai—it’s both a city and a state in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and is only half again as big as Rhode Island—may transform not just itself but also the economy of much of the Middle East. Its successful launches of vast, well-run projects, including the profitable and popular Emirates airline, spectacular hotels, and a huge medical complex blessed by Harvard Medical School, have been noticed by its neighbors, such as Saudi Arabia. Now they too are spending far more on infrastructure improvements, health care, and long-term growth that will help build economies not entirely dependent on oil.
The question, of course, is whether you should join the party. Dubai deserves a serious look from just about any firm—or individual, for that matter—capable of delivering world-class services. The six countries that make up the Gulf Cooperation Council—Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the UAE among them—have a combined GDP of some $750 billion, which puts the group between Australia and Holland.
Dubai’s transformation has drawn hundreds of corporate players, including General Electric, Gillette, Halliburton, Microsoft, and Starwood Hotels, and many have made Dubai their regional headquarters. One of the first to do so was Gillette, which considered setting up a local base in a number of places, including Cyprus, but opted for Dubai in 1988. Dubai has created a dozen special zones, each dedicated to a single industry such as banking, telecom, health care, or Internet services, and has encouraged corporate newcomers to locate among their ilk. This clustering seems popular. Microsoft operates from a shiny new four-story office building overlooking a verdant park and pond.
Some caution is warranted on the part of companies considering the plunge. For one thing, Dubai isn’t the place to set up a manufacturing plant; there’s no pool of cheap local labor. And maybe some industries are reaching the saturation point. Foreign bankers with local roots are complaining about the influx of competitors that has pushed the total number of banking firms to about 30.
For now, real estate construction is the hottest business in town, and many U.S. companies have won big roles. It’s unlikely that U.S. producers could compete with low-cost steel and concrete suppliers from nearby India. But Dubai is hungry for top engineering, architectural, and planning expertise and recognizes American companies as often the best in the world at professional disciplines.
If you are interested in exploring more about the possible opportunities available in Dubai, shoot me a note and I’ll put you in touch with one of our colleagues who is on-the-ground over there and can provide you with advice on the legal environment.
Post #239 - Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Alliance With Change Leaders Inc.
Change Leaders, Inc. specializes in Board Development, CEO Coaching, and Executive Team Development. They make successful senior executives and their teams better. Partnering with the sponsoring executive, they leverage the ‘soft’ factors (e.g. group dynamics, CEO on-boarding, Board dynamics) that improve the ‘hard’ business metrics (e.g. growth, value, performance). With 20+ years experience and deep insights into the CEO’s world they are known as international solution generators.
With offices in New York, Atlanta, San Francisco, Denver, London and Brussels, Change Leaders, Inc. clients span the globe and range from global FORTUNE500 to local $100 Million companies. Clients come from a full range of industries, four continents, twenty countries, and with just as many cultures and languages.
Network for Executive Leadership Development. Over the years, a wide range of client requests has led Change Leaders, Inc. to develop alliances with a variety of hand-picked experts and their boutique consulting companies across the world. I am delighted to have been invited to be included among that network.
Visit them at: www.change-leaders.com
Post #238 - Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Giving In To The CEO Model
Interesting article written by Chris Mondics in the Philadelphia Inquirer on the changes in law firm management.
Chris contends that “at the biggest firms, the job of the lawyer who is also chief executive has evolved into something approaching a corporate CEO, with much of the same clout and responsibility. It often has little to do with the law. Law-firm chief executives now manage budgets approaching a billion dollars or more, hammer out strategic plans, and oversee workforces of hundreds if not thousands of employees. They puzzle over leases, agonize over partners with emotional or substance-abuse problems, and try to figure out how to market their firms and undercut competitors.”
Ain’t it about time!
Post #237 - Friday, September 14, 2007
From Partner To Leader
 ABA's September issue of Law Practice magazine is now online.
I was please to have participated in writing the feature articles: The Tensions of Leadership: Learning to Balance the Ends.
And a special thanks to Magazine Editor, David Bilinsky for his kind comments on the piece:
"Just finished reading your article. ~~Wow~~ An incredible piece of work!! And a substantial, thoughtful article for our readers. In particular, a key part of our leadership issue.”
Post # 236 - Thursday, September 13, 2007
Be On The Lookout For . . .
Whether reflecting upon what makes for a good client or even what makes for a good partner, this little passage, courtesy of Heidrick & Struggles, certainly nails it for me.
 Be on the lookout for . . .
Those who do not take the initiative. Their default mode is to be passive or reactive rather than proactive.
Those who will not make and keep commitments. They won’t give the same effort to a decision that they disagree with as they will to a decision they agree with.
Those who don’t and won’t cooperate. They always find some reason or way to “Yes, but . . . “ decisions and then bail out of them.
Those who refuse to be accountable for their decisions, actions and consequences. They are unwilling to own up to their mistakes and are equally unwilling to pay the consequences. They think, “I’m sorry” is sufficient.
Those who do not learn from their mistakes. Everybody makes mistakes, but these people just keep making the same ones.
Those who have no imagination and are not curious. They would much rather talk about people and how unfair things are then about ideas that could make their firm better and how to implement them.
Those who lack ethics. They don’t have the judgment to know the right thing to do, the integrity to do it, the character to stand up to those who don’t and the courage to stop those who won’t.
Post #235 - Thursday, September 13, 2007
From a feng shui point of view,
most of our offices are 'hindquarters,' designed around where we park our rear ends . . .
but what we need are 'headquarters,' places that encourage innovative thinking, novel ideas, and visionary solutions.
Post #234 – Monday, September 10, 2007
What Works In Developing New Business
This is my month for traveling through the three M’s – Montreal to Memphis to Munich. My first destination this past week had me presenting to over 120 managing and senior partners representing firms from over 40 different countries.
Many thanks for your presentation in Montreal. There were many very positive comments after the session. The audience was understandably very impressed.
Peter Bartlett, Chairman – World Services Group
The majority of these participants hailed from firms of between 100 to 300 professionals so they served as a particularly intriguing audience from which to anonymously survey views and behaviors. Here are a few of the highlights:
• Approximately, how much non-billable time do you spend annually on marketing and business development efforts and activities?
51% - 251 to 300 hours
11% - 201 to 250 hours
11% - 151 to 200 hours
27% - less than 150 hours
• The single greatest marketing challenge your firm currently faces is:
#1 – Developing more rainmakers
#2 – Follow up on opportunities we currently have
#3 – Helping practitioners find and make time to develop business
• What business development activity generates the best and strongest results for your firm?
#1 – Face-to-face meetings and contacts
#2 – Referrals including associations and affiliations
#3 – Targeted marketing
Less Effective: Advertising, newsletters, individual marketing plans, websites, blogs, seminars, media exposure and speeches.
Post #233 - Wednesday, September 5, 2007
Do No Harm Is Not Good Enough
Consulting is about a single issue: Improving the client’s condition. The physician’s admonishment to “first, do no harm” is simply not good enough. You don’t deserve to be paid for simply not screwing up. You should only be paid if your client is demonstrably better off after you leave, than the client was before you got there. This is a value that I have always advocated to other consultants and adamantly subscribe to myself.
So here comes the inquiry from this “relatively new COO” at a law firm with many hundreds of lawyers spread out over many offices, “We have decided that at this time we need to take a fresh look at our 2007 theme of revenue generation” and wondered whether I might conduct a one-day session with a group of the firm’s partners. Curious, I think to myself, okay . . . what is going on in this firm that instigated this inquiry, why only a group of the partners (and not all of the partners), and what outcome do they want as a result of getting these partners together at an enormous costs in lost billable productivity, and . . . you know, the types of questions that any supposed consultant with two brain nodules to rub together, might be posing to themselves.
So after a brief preliminary (and somewhat uninsightful) discussion with this COO (remember he’s still new to the position), we determine that what we really needed to do was have a conference call with the managing partner and a number of the executive committee members so that some of my questions might be answered by those in the know.
In relatively short order we have a call scheduled with myself and six power partners from across this firm. We begin with, as I had hoped, having the managing partner talk about what the firm is trying to achieve, and specifically with this particular meeting. He tells me that they’ve “done some strategic planning and identified a couple of initiatives, and that now, they would really like to have someone come in and inspire, motivate and catalyze their partners to become more focused!”
Duhh! Well, I don’t know if you have ever experienced anyone talk non-stop for twenty minutes without taking a breathe, and by the end of it all, quietly concluding that you still don’t have the foggiest idea of what they are trying to achieve. Such was this discussion.
As this didn’t seem to be working . . . I decided to embark upon my very best attempt to impress this august group by posing a number of thought provoking questions, like if they are intent on focusing on revenue generation, do they want more revenue to come from their existing clients or from targeting new clients; are they interested in filling the shop with just any business or are they truly focused on getting the better business (and of course, what specifically constitutes better business for them); are they satisfied with having this revenue come by way of lone wolf efforts or are they interested in promoting more collaborative group initiatives; and so forth. I soon concluded that that was one of my dumbest ideas, that it only served to waste another twenty minutes, and we were still no further ahead in getting clarity around what they wanted to have happen.
In desperation, I went back to the first question again and attempted to rephrase it: “What made them think that they needed a consultant, what specifically was happening in the firm that was causing them concern, what did they want to make better or change, and could they give me an example." A few minutes later the lights finally came on!
Apparently this little group of power partners had gone off and developed their rendition of a strategic plan for their firm. They came back and unveiled it with great enthusiasm to an audience of quietly skeptical colleagues – – I guess the earth didn’t move for a good number of those partners. Fast forward a couple of months and partner behavior has not changed to align with the strategic plan. So the answer, at least to this group, was bring in some outsider, who hasn’t a clue about your firm or it’s culture, and have that outsider try to motivate (read that to mean: sell the plan) to partners.
Well, I could have taken this engagement, performed an entertaining one-day song-n-dance for the partners, charged a nice fee; but I knew full well that that would not leave this firm demonstrably better off. Instead, I told them why hiring a consultant was the worst move they could make and exactly what steps they needed to do to begin to engage and get their individual partners on-side.
‘Doing no harm’ is never good enough. Know when and when not, to bring in a consultant.
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