I recently stumbled upon an alternative pricing scheme that I instinctively felt was wrong.  The details are irrelevant, but I was struck by how vastly different the attorney’s point of view was from my own.  So I tried to expand my viewpoint and to see the problem from all sides.  I came up with three questions that I needed to answer and I sent them to the smartest, most knowledgeable people I know.  Their answers below:

1.      What do attorneys think they sell to clients?
·         Top notch expertise and experience in a specific legal field.
·         Expert advice, not available from anyone else in the industry, business expertise. 
·         Their special skills, unique only to them.  Or there’s the old quote from Lincoln, “A lawyer’s time and advice are his stock-in-trade.”
·         Legal advice that is based on expertise and experience.
·         Most – Knowledge of the law.  Some – Solution to a business problem. 
·         Themselves
·         Confidence
2.      What do law firms think they sell to clients?
·         Top notch legal services.
·         Professional services, expertly crafted advice and a business partnership
·         Their name.
·         Expert legal advice that addresses client needs
·         Experts in the law. 
·         Legal Services
·         Expertise
3.      What do clients think they are buying?
·         An expensive service that they had to purchase because of their risk exposure, but would rather not… (they also think that any big firm like ours is chalk full of experts, but they know lawyer “x” from previous work and decided to stick with them.)
·         An overpriced, but necessary evil service/commodity
·         Someone who can solve their problems.
·         A way to minimize risk or to solve a problem
·         Solution to a business problem. 
·         Security
·         Solutions
Within this group of respondents there is a lot of agreement.  That may point to some underlying truths, or it may be an example of selection bias on my part. I don’t claim this is a scientific result, but the most interesting aspect of these responses is that they all indicate that each party (attorney, client, and firm) is entering into the same sales transaction with a different understanding of the commodity that is being transacted. 

It seems to me that many of the problems plaguing modern law firms may be the result of different answers to these three questions.  If I go to a fishmonger, and he thinks he’s selling fish, I think I’m buying beef, and the sign out front reads, “Fresh Flowers!”, then we are going to have trouble communicating effectively and the Fish Shop is going to have trouble staying in business.  Maybe, if we can identify a single commodity that all parties agree is being transacted at a law firm, then we can focus on building the necessary internal structures, communication pathways, and marketing apparatuses to support the sale of that commodity.

Of course, you can semantically sidestep this problem by answering all questions extremely specifically (a merger agreement) or extremely generally (legal services), but that doesn’t seem like a satisfying solution to me.  So I asked my brilliant friends one additional question.

4.      What should law firms actually be selling to clients?
·         A relationship with the client where the firm better understands the overall needs of the client (not just legal, but pricing, communications, etc.) and builds upon the relationship in a way that results in the client trusting the firm.
·         Law firms should actually be selling a relationship, and a series of tools/opinions to expedite the legal process for securities, contracts etc. and effectively manage risk.
·         Their skills as problem-solvers. Good business development and competitive intelligence is based on the premise that lawyers are not salesmen (or -women).  Rather, it shows them what the client or prospective clients problems are and allows the attorneys to showcase their skills as problem-solvers.
·         A partnership that integrates the client needs with expertise and tools in order to manage risk and solve problems.
·         Business problem solvers. 
·         Solutions
·         Relationships
A “problem solving relationship” isn’t a bad answer to all of the first three questions, but paying for a “relationship” (especially by the hour) feels a little sketchy.  As good customer service representatives, attorneys understand the importance of maintaining a good relationship with the client, but I don’t think that the relationship itself is the commodity being sold.  I think I would say the attorney and the firm are selling the client access to the collective knowledge and expertise of the firm.  The key word being “collective”.  If “collective knowledge and expertise” is our commodity, then that has far-reaching implications for the ways we communicate internally and externally, for the ways we bill our clients and pay our employees, and for the ways we manage our firms.

If not “collective knowledge and expertise”, what is the commodity supplied by firms and purchased by clients?  How would you answer the questions?

So much for Bloomberg Law’s transparency in pricing! If the statement below from the April 23, 2012 Law Librarian Blog post “Blaw Makes Its Push into Law Schools” is accurate it appears BLaw pricing transparency is out the window as there is a different price for law school libraries versus law firm libraries.

“Any school that subscribes to the BNA Premier Service will receive a significant discount on their subscription charge and free access to Bloomberg Law.”  

And the main requirement for getting this pricing is the law school must provide parity in promotion of the BLaw service similar to the law schools promotion of Lexis and Westlaw!
Seems unfair to me! Law firms have to ultimately pay $356/user/month to move their BNA content to the BLaw platform and law schools get it for free and they also get a big discount on their BNA subscription charges

I’ve had a number of conversations over the past couple of years about the information that lawyers place on their LinkedIn pages versus there law firm attorney profile pages. As someone that prides themselves on the ability to uncover good information on people, I’ve come to appreciate the information found on LinkedIn. Many times there is more detailed information there than is on the firm bio page, most likely because the attorneys are not filtered (as much) by the Marketing team when it comes to their LinkedIn information.

It is quite easy to search law firm websites and find the attorneys, along with their sanitized biographies. Usually chalked full of such interesting tid-bits like “represented a major technology company in complex litigation matters.” (yawn) Or, “won a $20 million settlement for a major pharmaceutical company against another major pharmaceutical company.” (any way to make this more generic, or more boring??) The whole process of a public biography page for attorneys seems to be fixated on how the firm can make the attorney sound wonderful, without actually giving any specific details to why that is.

On the other hand, a LinkedIn bio can tell us a few things that you may not find on the firm’s bio page. Even better, it could actually supplement the bio page by filling in some of the details. For example, if you notice that the person has a number of connections with XYZ Pharma Company, there may be a good chance that this is the Pharma Company that he or she won the $20 million settlement. This doesn’t always happen, but when it does (and you happen to be looking for lateral hires), this is good information to know.

Perhaps the best details found on LinkedIn pages that you don’t find on law firm bio pages is the work history of the person. You usually get a nice synopsis of the previous firms, dates and areas of expertise of the attorney’s work history. This may help in isolating people within your own firm that may have worked with them in the past. Combined with certain InterAction reports, this might connect dots within your organization that you wouldn’t find otherwise.

Outside the area of legal practice, many people leave interesting pieces of information about themselves that may come in handy if you have to go talk with them (or need an “in” with recruiting them to your firm.) Areas of interest, groups they belong to, or associations which they are members are all good pieces to know before approaching them. In some instances, it might be good information to know for NOT approaching them. It is all small pieces that help form a picture of what the attorney does, what they like or dislike, and where they’ve been.

Of course, not every attorney is a LinkedIn member, but I’ve had good success in finding many who are. So this got me thinking about what percentage of attorneys are on LinkedIn. Just for my own interest, I thought I’d take a small sample of three firms and look at their Silicon Valley offices to see just how many of their attorneys I could find on LinkedIn. The sample is completely unscientific, but I found it interesting in the fact that Partners (78%) were more likely to be on LinkedIn than their Associate (65%) counter-parts. Again, this is completely unscientific, but here are my results.

Firm A
Total Attorneys: 8 
          Partners:   5
          Associates: 3

Firm B
Total Attorneys: 26
          Partners:   8
          Associates: 11
          Counsel:  5
          Others:  2

Firm C
Total Attorneys: 119
          Partners:  69
          Associates: 32
          Counsel:  9
          Others:  9

























Totals:
         Attorneys: 153
         Partners:  82
         Associates: 48
         Counsel:  14
         Others:  11
  

One of my life rules is: If you hear it once, it might be interesting. If you hear something twice, it’s a good idea to check it out. If you hear it three times, it’s time to pay attention.So what triggered my rule? People recently suggesting the data is out there on what clients are paying for legal services. Or inversely, the fees law firms are charging.
The general thinking is there is a database that has the information; it might be a law firm’s or group of law firms, or better yet, one of the e-billing companies. All you need to do is push the magic search and retrieve button and the data will tell you the price of things.
First off – I completely understand the strong desire for wanting to know the price of things. After two or three beers with Greg, I will occasionally suggest I would give one of my children to have that kind of data on legal offerings. Although in my defense, I am somewhat vague as to which child.
So applying my life rule – where should I apply my attention? Answer: Not on a Magic Button. I suppose the real take-away on this issue is evidence of the growing hunger for a market pricing mechanism. I recall one client going to great efforts in its bidding process, with the stated goal of finding “fair market value’” for any legal work it procured.
But here’s the rub – this market information doesn’t exist. And for many types of legal work, it may never come in to existence. For a will or a patent filing – probably. For a run-of-the-mill corporate acquisition – we might see a price range. For commercial litigation – not very likely since each case will have different value drivers.
After ruminating on this challenge for a while, I had one of my mini-epiphanies. This is a classic case of imperfect market information. ‘Imperfect’ meaning the market does not have enough information to produce fair market pricing. Technically, most markets are imperfect but some are more imperfect than others. The legal market is nearly perfectly imperfect (I just made that phrase up – copyright time!). And in imperfect markets, some people have better information than others. Those are the people who usually do the best.
Which brings us back to the magic button (which still doesn’t exist).
In my experience, those who succeed under imperfect markets are those that take the time to build good pricing knowledge. True – some of it comes from looking at your own data. But most of it comes via participation in the market. Practically speaking, this means firms should be more proactive with AFAs and develop pricing expertise such that they are constantly building this knowledge.
So for those with pricing hunger, I suggest spending more time in the market and less time hoping for a magic button. Although billing data has some value, it does not come with The Button.

I had the honor of presenting to at the Texas Library Association Conference here in Houston today. The topic was on Library and Knowledge Management’s collaborative roles within a firm, and how they can work together to bring in better processes, automate certain manual procedures, and add analyze data in a way that makes it (and as a result, KM and Library) more valuable.

Below are the thoughts I wrote down to discuss six questions. These questions were raised at the ARK KM meeting earlier this year and, although the audience was substantially different, I thought it would be a good reference point to cover what is expected of us, and how we can contribute to the operations of the firm in unexpected ways. Thanks to Sean Luman for stepping in and co-presenting with me after Toby suddenly had a conflict.

[Note: Click here to see the Prezi that went along with the presentation.]

How Do We Assist the Firm In Using the Knowledge Base?
Law firms collect enormous amounts of information every day. Much of this information sits in databases, shared drives, email, Document Management Systems (DMS), Client Relationship Management Tools (CRM), and other repositories. Some of it is valuable, but much of it is not. So when we ask about the Knowledge Base, we really need to ask ourselves:
1. How do we make it easy to put good data in?
2. How do we make it easy to pull good data out?

How Do We Assist Our Attorneys in Doing the Same Work More Efficiently?
If you ask most lawyers how they work, they will talk about how they are the expert in “X” field and that nearly everything they do is original or “customized” work. That the client’s needs are so unique, that it takes their expertise to understand it and make it happen. On the other hand, if you ask the client what their lawyers do (and remember, many of them worked at law firms before going in-house), they would say that a lawyer pulls out an old document, or a standard form and changes the name of the old client and inserts theirs. Then bills them for four hours of work at $800.00 an hour. Although there is some cases where the work is truly unique and customized, most work in law firms is repetitive legal work. Although clients have let firms slide for years on the “customized” vs. “commoditized” work, many clients are now pushing back on their lawyers and demanding that they work more efficiently, and if they don’t, the client demands for the lawyers to “write-off” the portion of the bills that they think comes from inefficient processes.

This is a golden opportunity for KM and Library to step up and help. It’s not a new concept. Libraries and KM have been attempting to bring efficiencies into law firms for 20+ years. However, the billable hour model did not support the concepts of streamlining processes, creating clause libraries and Best Practices Documents, or creating checklists to make the work go faster and smoother. Most lawyers (although they would not publicly admit to it) would think that thinking of their work as commoditized work was beneath them, and that all the work they did was customized, therefore, streamlining wasn’t an option. Richard Susskind has a book on this topic and has spent the last four years traveling around the world talking about how lawyers that continue to think this way will soon find themselves without clients.

How Does KM/Library Drive the Strategy for Legal Project Management?
Project Management is the big buzz word in law firms these days. Although many discuss it in different ways, it really boils down to the idea that all of the work performed is done so by the appropriate people and or technology. Work should be pushed down to the most effective/efficient level. KM and Library have a role to play in Project Management because there are many jobs that the firm has to do that the library could take on, or that KM could automate. Whether it is called Six Sigma or Lean Sigma, Legal Process Management, or Alternative Fee Arrangements, all of these ideas mean that all work performed on a matter is performed at the appropriate level (no Partners doing Associate work, etc.) and that the work is performed at the right time, and in the right order. Librarians and KM workers that understand and step up to take a seat in this process will find themselves to be a very valuable piece of the overall project.

How Do We Provide the Best Information for Business Development & Legal Practice?
Since 2008, the push in law firms has been to cut overhead. Although firms are still watching the bottom line in 2012, there is a new focus on how to develop new business and start increasing revenues. KM and Library is strategically position to assist business development projects because these groups sit right in the middle of a wealth of internal and external information. Biz Dev looks for opportunities in Lateral hiring, Cross-Selling to Existing Clients, Attracting Clients Away From Other Firms, and Being Ready for Alternative Fee Deals when they come around. Library/KM helps strategically position the firm for these opportunities by finding methods of identifying prospects and working on processes that push the key information into the right hands at the right time. The two pieces that KM/Library can be most effective is in the areas of Automation and Analysis.

How Do We Partner With Other Departments to Provide Insight regarding Our Clients and Potential Business Opportunities?
The “Administrative” side of the law firm (Marketing, IT, Biz Dev, Practice Development, Professional Development, etc.) has a very important role to play in the new environment of the law firm. Not only do they need to make sure that the law firm runs smoothly, but they also need to look at ways of increasing potential opportunities.

Marketing, for example, is constantly needing information about what our clients are doing, down to the individuals within our clients’ companies. They are also charged with keeping our attorneys well prepared, usually at a moment’s notice to discuss what is going on with the client, and any potential risks the client may currently be facing. Again, a perfect Library/KM opportunity to have a strategy that focuses on identifying external resources and internal knowledge in a way that creates an end product that can be assembled quickly and allows for quick analysis as the need arises. Portals and Enterprise Search tools are one of the biggest areas that Library and KM can offer to support these needs.

How Do We Do It All With Fewer Resources?
Library and KM (as well as any department in a law firm) is still feeling the pains of the recession. Less staff… less budget… fewer resources… all the “new normal” of law firm administration. Unfortunately, we can’t sit back and say “sorry, we can’t support that because you cut our budget.” It means that you have to think creatively about what it is that you are doing. It means getting rid of old projects and processes that either aren’t working, or aren’t worth the amount of effort that your having to put in. Again, think of the “push processes down to the lowest appropriate level” of work and determine if automation can be brought in for processes that are now manual processes. Can existing software do more than you are making it do? Can we remove duplicate work? Can we set up self-help systems that allow those seeking the information to go directly to that information? If you think that everything you do has to be customized, then just like the attorney, you will soon find yourself without clients, and without a job.


My first few posts on this blog were about the coming end of Corporate Information Technology, or the CorpTechPocalypse as I coined it.  Nearly 18 months have passed.  The world around IT has changed substantially, but like the dinosaurs shortly after the meteor impact, IT itself is still desperately trying to understand its role in the “new normal”.  It’s too late. It’s over. I’m calling time of death: early second decade of the 21st century.

The last remaining hold-outs of the former IT department are the Medieval Plumber Dinosaur Zombies.   After all, information technologists were the plumbers of data, concerned with storage, distribution, manipulation, and security of information.  In their waning years, everything took a back seat to security and their mindset was strictly Medieval. Build a wall high enough and strong enough and you will keep the Barbarians at bay.  In certain circles, IT became known as the “Knights who say ‘No’”.  All technology requests were denied unless the requester could prove that the business need outweighed ITs security concerns, or more likely, could convince management to pull rank over IT.

The truth, though it’s particularly hard for Law Firms to appreciate, is that outside Cloud Service Providers are going to soon provide better, more flexible, and more secure services than in-house data centers with the best technicians at a fraction of the cost.

Many MPDZs will stumble on until management takes pity and puts them out of their misery, but just as a subset of the dinosaurs survived the K-T event and evolved into modern birds, I believe some Information Technologists will survive the CorpTechPocalypse and evolve into Innovation Technologists.

Innovation Technology is an enhanced business role for technologists.  Whereas the old IT was its own little fiefdom within the corporate structure, the new IT is deeply embedded in the fabric of the firm.  The new Innovation Technologists are trained in business processes and have a clear understanding of the work their firm is doing.  Having relegated the techno-plumbing to their Cloud Service Providers, the new IT are more concerned with case and deal schedules than server patches and software upgrades.  They follow technology trends and business trends with equal passion, and they use that knowledge to provide a technological edge to their firm.

They are proactive, anticipating the needs of the users and developing solutions to business problems before business leaders realize the problem exists.  With the proliferation of cloud services, the new IT can provide alternative solutions specific to the needs of the moment, rather than providing a single solution and trying to make it work for every situation.

Security is still a priority for IT, but the mindset has changed from Medieval to Metropolitan.  Just as cities eventually recognized that large walls provided security at the expense of growth and innovation, so too will businesses.  The new paradigm will be one of effective policing to stop cyber-baddies and a laissez-faire attitude toward all otherwise rule-abiding netizens.

Gone will be the ubiquitous IT “No”, replaced by the question, “What are you trying to do?”  Whereas, the old IT focused almost exclusively on the technology, the new IT is focused first on the business and the user’s needs.  Confronted with a user’s inability to send an email, old IT would spend an hour or more troubleshooting the client application, then the server, then user’s machine.  Innovation Technology will first focus on the business need, “What are you trying to do?”  The answer is not necessarily, “Send an email”, it’s actually “Get this information to my client.”  Innovation Technology knows of 5 other methods to get that information to your client.  They will seek to accomplish the underlying business task first, then attend to any problems with technology.

This new IT department will be much smaller, but more effective.  A source of innovation rather than aggravation.  But in order to truly be effective, Innovation Technology cannot be relegated to the second class citizen status that Information Technology formerly held.  The Chief Innovation Officer needs to have latitude to build what needs to be built, to purchase what needs to be bought, and to be present when and where the most important business decisions are made. Most corporations figured this out long ago and put the Chief Information Officer on the board.  Most law firm’s never did.  Even as law firms get out of the techno-plumbing business, technology will play an increasingly important role in the practice of law.  IT is evolving, but before Innovation Technology can truly take flight, law firm management structures will have to do the same.

Image [cc] ISCTE

I was on a call recently where a bunch of HR Directors were discussing, among other things, training new employees and providing those newer to their job or profession the skills they need to be successful.  Someone asked the question, “Does anyone have training programs in place that address this?” and one of the first replies was “We have the expectation that one of the regular duties of our managers is to essentially ‘train’ their staffs.  It is part of their job as managers to continually develop the talent within their departments.”

Now, I know what you’re saying…in this new law firm reality, managers have to be more focused on more immediate needs like keeping expenses down and coming up with that next great and innovative idea.  True.  However, I would argue that if managers can take the time to develop solid relationships with their staff and have what the authors of a recent article called Managers: Your Development Power Players call development or career conversations, many staff members may be empowered to step up and contribute at a much higher level.

Although building the trust with employees takes time, it is the basis for having these kinds of conversations that will, ultimately, engage and retain the best talent.  The authors of the article break down the reasons this is important into the following four areas:

  1. A manager’s job is easier when their staff members are performing at their peak.
  2. Talented employees are engaged when they know their contributions are valued.
  3. Job satisfaction increases when employees see a future for themselves in the organization.
  4. Talented people want to work with other talented people.

What this all means is that managers need to take the time to have candid conversations with their staff members about their career goals and where those fit in within the organization.  They also need to give constant feedback, since employees can’t stretch themselves and really grow unless the know what skills are beneficial and what behaviors they may need to change.  Managers should also help employees articulate their professional goals and then connect them to the resources and individuals within the organization that can help them achieve those goals.

I don’t mean to put all of the pressure on managers here, since although they can provide the information and resources employees need to become really engaged and empowered, this is a two way street and the employee has the responsibility to do their homework on their end and want to stretch themselves and develop.  I think the closing line of the article sums it up perfectly by saying “…[i]f talent is the ultimate competitive edge, then preparing managers to build development dialogues needs to be a fundamental part of the overall learning strategy.”

Take the time to build the trust, start having career conversations, and truly embrace your role as an employee development partner.

Many of you may have heard the news that LexisOne, Lexis’ minimalist effort at providing a limited selection of free case law, was officially shut down earlier this month. Apparently, Lexis did a two-step program to first place LexisOne behind a “community site” (which required registration), and then two months later shut it down completely. Many of us were not surprised by Lexis’ move, but we were still disappointed that once again, an access point to legal information was first placed behind a registration wall, and then eventually placed behind a pay-wall. Now in order to get to the cases that were once available to anyone with an Internet connection, Lexis now requires that you subscribe to its pricey subscription-based product.

It reminds me of when Thomson West (now Thomson Reuters) bought up Findlaw and turned it from a free legal information site into the abomination that it is today as a quasi-marketing, blogging, lawyer website creating resource. 
As many of us took to Twitter last week to discuss what options were out there, we quickly came to the realization that Google Scholar was still an option for cases, and there was Fastcase’s Public Library of Law which apparently had not been updated in many months and was assumed dead. 
However, occasionally Twitter can cause good things to happen. Yesterday, Fastcases CEO, Ed Walters, sent me a Direct Message on Twitter telling me he saw the discussion that Jason Wilson and I were discussing on Twitter and that PLoL would be brought back to life:

See, Twitter can be more than just a way to let people know what you are reading, or where you are at the moment. 
With both Google Scholar and PLoL, there are at least a few options remaining for finding cases.
Note: Remember there are limits to both Google Scholar and PLoL’s coverage. You can look at the scope of coverage for each:

One of my academic friends (Katie Brown from Oklahoma City University) forwarded me this article written by Virginia Tech’s Library Associate Dean, Brian Mathews, titled “Thinking Like A Startup: a white paper to inspire library entrepreneuralism.” Although it is written from the perspective of an academic librarian, there are many parallels for the law firm library.

I’ve adapted some of the headlines to fit the law firm library environment. If you read the white paper (and I strongly encourage you to do so), I’d suggest thinking of how these ideas play out in our environment:

  • Is Your Law Firm Library Too Big To Fail?
    Our jobs are shifting from doing what we have always done very well, to always being on the lookout for new opportunities to advance teaching, learning, service, and research.
  • Innovators Wanted
    There is a huge demand for librarians who “think different.” The environment needs to foster these different ideas or we’ll be stuck in the status quo. The environment should be one that challenges the status quo and is ready for disruption.
  • Think Like a Startup
    What can we create today that will be essential tomorrow? This type of thinking gives us a way to analyze what we do, why we do it, and how we might implement change.
  • Most Startups Fail; Learn From the Ones that Didn’t
    Look at examples of peers that succeeded. “Get a Plan/Goal that Works.” Setting goals that you can tick off, and meet deadlines, doesn’t necessarily make them good goals. Setting, and accomplishing Goal “A” should help get you to Goals B, C, and D.
  • Build, Measure, Learn: The Methodology
    This is how it works: you take your initial concept and develop it into a shareable format. Test it and analyze the reaction. You then use this insight to build a better prototype. Repeat the process. Iterate forever.
  • Three Essential Qualities of Inspiring Products:
    1.Usability
    2. Feasibility
    3. Value
    “Entrepreneurship is a lot like to a science experiment; you’re constantly creating and testing new theses and seeing what works.”
  • Too Much Assessment, Not Enough Innovation
    We invest a lot of time, money, and effort into metrics… but does it work? matter? produce something useful? encourage innovation?
    Ask this question: If we stopped all of our assessment programs today would those that use our services notice anything different tomorrow?
    Innovation needs to be in everyone’s job description.

  • A Strategic Culture (Instead of a Strategic Plan)
    Instead of building a strategic plan that reads like a “to-do” list, they should discuss how we will:
     – develop three big ideas that will shift the way we operate
     – transform how our lawyers work
     – think BIG, and ask BIGGER QUESTIONS
  • Microscopes & Telescopes
    Stop looking at what we’ve done under a microscope and start looking through a telescope at what we should be doing next and work to see, plan and implement the transformation together.
  • Innovating Means Getting Your Hands Dirty
    Coming up with an idea doesn’t take a lot of work, and it doesn’t change anything. The goal is to build something that doesn’t exist; to make those ideas tangible; and to create something that is absolutely essential.

Perhaps my favorite (although probably the hardest to actually follow through on) is the “Too Much Assessment, Not Enough Innovation” heading. Not that metrics and statistics aren’t important, they are, but rather the idea that metrics for metrics sake is not enough. Metrics are “Plan A” and should therefore lead us to Plans B, C, and D. Many of us stop at Plan A (show someone how important we are by the results of the metrics.) What metrics should be enabling us to do is to look at what we are doing, and then improve, remove, redirect, or supplement the information buried in these metrics.

Do any of these topics spark an idea for you?

I seem to be encountering a lot of information about teams lately. Last week, I sat in on a webinar put on by Patrick Lencioni, the author of many books on teamwork, including The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. Then, in reviewing the April 2012 issue of Harvard Business Review, I read two articles on teams – Teamwork on the Fly and The New Science of Building Great Teams. (These links will take you to an abstract of each article, but you will need to purchase them or log in as a Harvard Business Review subscriber to get the full text.)
Patrick’s talk was actually focused more on his soon to be published book called Organizational Health – A Powerful Advantage, which focuses on the organization, but one of the essential building blocks that has to be in place for an organization to be healthy is a healthy, functional, cohesive team.  In order to do this, leaders and their teams need to master these five behaviors: Trust, Conflict, Commitment, Accountability and Results.  It all starts with trust and team members wiling to be vulnerable with the group.  With this kind of trust in place, the team can engage in conflict without fear.  The team also needs to be able to disagree and then commit. Each team member also needs to hold other team members accountable and call them on their behaviors without having to go to their leaders all the time – the need the “…courage to enter the danger.”  Finally, the team has to have attention to results – not their own individual results based on their department, status or ego, but rather those of the team and the organization.
The two HBR articles focused on different, but complimentary, ideas.  In the “Teamwork on the Fly” article, the author makes the case that in this fast paced and constantly changing world, teams as we have traditionally known them are not as effective as the concept of teaming, or flexible teamwork.  What teaming really amounts to is teamwork on the fly and teams that are made up of members across departments, disciplines and geographies.  The issue that often bogs these kinds of teams down is that they do not have the opportunity to develop trust and build psychological safety over time – this must be accomplished much quicker and, essentially, as the team is doing its work.  The author provides ways to get teams to embrace the concept of teaming and use it to allow participants to become nimbler, more innovative and achieve amazing short-term results.

In the article titled “The New Science of Building Great Teams,” the author studied physical characteristics of team members and suggests that building great teams is a science.  We can’t all go out and buy wearable electronic sensor for our team members to capture their tone of voice and body language, so the biggest takeaway for me from this article was that the ideal team player is one that the author calls a “charismatic connector.”  These are the people that circulate within the team and engage in meaningful conversations, listen as much if not more than they talk, and connect their fellow team members with each other to facilitate the sharing of ideas.  (I don’t know about you, but this reminds me a little bit of the “Connector” that Malcolm Gladwell talks about in The Tipping Point, no?)

What if we were able to bring some of these concepts and tools and apply them to our teams, both the teams we lead and the teams we are members of?  Law firms are still asking us to work more efficiently and be innovative and having the “best team on the field” would certainly allow us a much better chance at success in these areas.  I suspect that many of us are already embracing the concept of teaming without knowing to call it that, but we are also probably encountering many of the pitfalls of teaming.  Maybe we all need to spend some time thinking about what we can do to be a better team member and make the teams that we are a part of and that we lead the best teams they can be.