Touch Your Audience with These Touchy-Feely Tips

Here's a must-read post from Laura Bergells with six "touchy-feely" tips that will help when you rehearse your next presentation (you do practice, right?). 

If you ever give presentations to clients, to peers or to juries, you need to be thinking about these practice ideas.  My favorite:

Record your presentation without video. Then, listen to it without watchingthe slides. I like putting my audio on my portable mp3 player -- andtaking a walk. While listening to myself on the ellipse machine at thegym last week, I found an area of my presentation that dragged sodismally, I barely registered a heartbeat while chugging along at ahigh incline! I went back to the office for a rewrite and added morepowerful visuals. Listening to "audio only" helps you spot pace andpitch problems -- but it also helps you later recall the words andinflections that work well.

Co-Op Your Small Team

If you're looking for a solution to keep your small team on track, you should check out Co-Op, a lightweight, super-intuitive way to know what everyone in your team is working on right now.  It is a bit like Twitter meets your time sheet, and looks very cool.  Here's a screenshot:

Pretending to Act Brilliantly

My friend Jim Canterucci interviewed me for his Personal Brilliance Podcast.  He'll be posting portions of the interviews throughout this month and I encourage you to check it out. I'm not sure how much brilliance there is in my interview, but I always enjoy talking with Jim and I think you'll find some interesting things in there. 

I'd also encourage you to check out the rest of the podcasts.  I'm working though them right now, and I've got to say, so far all of them have been worth a listen!

Hello from Idaho

Picture of the season's first snow in Sun Valley, Idaho.

I just returned from Idaho, where I facilitated an Idea Market for Boise-area entrepreneurs (more on that in a future post), gave a speech to the fine lawyers at Hawley Troxell Ennis & Hawley and spoke about Innovation for Real Lawyers at the Idaho Bar's annual meeting.* 

I'll post my slides next week, along with some pretty cool thinking that came out of the Idea Market.  I'm going to be in Minneapolis, New York, Boston, Atlanta and London in the next two months.  I'd love to meet you when I make it to your city. 

Stay tuned.

*Big thanks go to friend Steve Nipper, Travis Franklin and the Idaho Bar Association for taking such good care of me while I was there!

If Operators are Busy ..

I've just started Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive by Noah J. Goldstein, Steve J. Martin and Robert B. Cialdini, and can already give it my highest recommendation.  It offers fifty short lessons (2-4 pages each) on persuasiveness, along with the empirical evidence to back them.

One quick lesson from the first chapter in the book:  Simply by changing an infomercial's call to action from "Operators are waiting, please call now," to, "If operators are busy, please call again," resulted in a huge increase in products purchased. 

Why?  Instead of people imagining a room full of operators waiting by silent telephones, infomercial viewers imagined those same operators going from call to call without a break, and assumed "if the phone lines are busy, then other people like me who are also watching this infomercial are calling, too."

Very interesting stuff.  A highly recommended book!

Want to Buy a Law Firm Brand?

I came across IncSpring yesterday.  It is a marketplace where designers can sell (and companies can buy) "ready-made brands."  If is a pretty neat concept, and you get to deal directly with the designer.  Not a lot of "legal" brands yet, but if you're a Texas Lawyer, you can do a lot worse than Lone Star Law:

The Perfect Law Firm Retreat: Leave the Lawyers at Home

If you are serious about making your firm better, next time you are thinking about a law firm retreat, stop.  Cancel (or postpone) your lawyer's retreat and spend your money on a staff retreat instead. 

Here are seven reasons you should consider a staff retreat this year:

1.  Your staff know how your firm works better than you do.  You know how your firm is supposed to work.  They know how it actually works.  They observe,  notice and understand the little things that you may overlook.  Unlocking their creativity will give you dozens (if not hundreds) of practical ideas to make your firm work better.

2.  Your staff doesn't know what your lawyers know, but they know what your lawyers should know.  If you wanted to improve the efficiency of your firms lawyers by training them to do one thing better, what would it be? You might think a seminar on "rainmaking" will improve your firm's bottom line.  The staff might suggest "copier training" instead -- and they'd probably be right.

3.  Your staff knows how to save you money.  Every single person on your staff has at least three ways to save you $100 each month.  Whether you want to reduce your overhead or prioritize your technology spending, your staff will give you better ideas than your attorneys will.

4.  Your clients don't act like clients around your staff.  When "on the clock," your clients act like clients.  When talking to your receptionist, secretary or paralegal, your clients act like people.  Your staff know better than you what your clients hate about your firm.  Ask them nicely and they'll tell you.

5.  Your staff are your best source for competitive intelligence.  Want to know what your competitors are up to?  Ask your staff.  They talk with their peers at other firms, and they know what's happening in your slice of the legal market.  They also know (probably before you) when and why your clients won't pay their bills.

6.  Your staff can help you say no.  Your staff know which clients don't deserve your firm's work, and which ones you should fire.  They also know the least talented and productive members of your firm, but we'll leave that topic for another day.

7.  Your staff is cheap.  Well, not really "cheap," but compared to the hourly billing rates for a day of the firm's attorneys' time, a day-long staff retreat is a bargain. The staff probably doesn't expect four days in Maui, either.

The most important reason to do a staff retreat, however, is that your staff will feel great knowing you value their ideas.  The single most effective way to engage youremployees and make them feel good about working for you is to listen tothem -- and asking them to help your firm solve its most pressing challengesis a tremendous way to do it.

One important key:  whether you hire LexThink or someone else, you absolutely should not facilitate this one by yourself.  Keep lawyers out of the room if you want your staff to speak freely.  You'll be rewarded with their candor.

And when they get back to the office, make sure they each have their own set of business cards.  If you value them, there's no better way to show it, than by allowing them to be ambassadors for your firm.

The Perfect Law Firm Retreat: Introduction

Over at LexThink, I offer creative law firm retreat design and facilitation.  It is something I really love to do, and it is tremendously rewarding to work with a firm's lawyers as they collaborate and develop amazing ideas -- along with a plan to implement those ideas -- that will make their business better.
 
However, not every firm can afford to hire someone to design and facilitate their retreat or practice group meeting.  Starting this week, I'm going to be posting some of my thoughts on building the "Perfect Law Firm Retreat."  I'll include ideas, sample agendas and descriptions of exercises I've used to get people working (and thinking) together. 

I'll also include fun/crazy ideas for holding an "on-site" retreat (or even eliminating retreats all together) that will he help firms get most of the benefits of holding an off-site retreat without the costs.

I'd love your input, via comment, email or twitter (@mhomann).  Thanks!

So Easy a Lawyer Won't Do It?

"So easy a plumber can do it..." might not have the ring of Geico's caveman commercials, but when I saw this book excerpt on friend Phil Gerbyshak's blog from The Celebrity Experience, Insider Secrets to Delivering Red Carpet Customer Service, I knew I had to share it with you.

Author Donna Cutting tells a story about Hub Plumbing and Mechanical, a Boston-area plumbing company.  From the book:

Everyone in the company, including apprentices, has a business card. They give out slick folders, fun magnets, and dry erase boards. They've even been known to replace your toilet paper with a new roll bearing the Hub logo!

But John Wood knows something else, too. He knows that branding is not about the trucks, the carpets, or the toilet paper. It's about the service. If John and his team weren't consistent in the service they provide, the red trucks, the red uniforms, and the red carpets would simply be decoration. And if Hub Plumbing & Mechanical just relied on decor and didn't deliver the goods, it would not have grown from a one-man operation to a $1.5 million business with 11 employees in just six short years.

When you call Hub Plumbing, any time of the day or night, a live person answers the phone. (Once you have an appointment) you receive an email from your plumber. He tells you approximately when to expect him, what his specialties are, and all about his family and hobbies. As John says, "When people hire a plumber, their expectations are low. Our guys have personalities!

Did I mention the e-mail is in HTML format and a photo of your plumber is included?

The day of the visit, your plumber calls when he's on his way to the job. If he's running late, he will call in plenty of time to see if you want to wait or if you'd rather reschedule. Assuming the best, you would soon look out your window and see the bright red Hub Plumbing truck roll up to your house.

Once you have invited your plumber in, he puts plastic covers over his shoes to keep from marking up the carpet. And he lays down the red carpet with the Hub logo, and places his tools like surgical instruments on it. It's their Red Carpet Service.

Hub Plumbing took a look at things people said they'd disliked about plumbers:  showing up late, looking bad (plumber's crack, anyone?), overcharging and leaving a mess -- and changed everything.   

Lawyers, if you had to change everything about lawyers that clients hate, where would you start?

And if you want some motivation, take a look at Hub's Testimonial page.  Do your customers say the same things about you?

UPDATE:  Forgot to mention, HUB charges by the project, not the hour.

UPDATE 2:  Changed the title of the post and edited the content a bit.  Wasn't meaning to demean plumbers, just show how one plumbing company rethought their business to address (admittedly stereotypical) concerns people had about plumbers.  I wish lawyers (who can teach plumbers a thing or two about undeserved stereotypes) would do the same thing.

Five Reasons Lawyers Need a Digital Camera

Every lawyer needs a digital camera for their exclusive use.  I'm not talking about sharing one with the entire office, or using your camera phone or the one from home (when you remember to bring it).  I'm talking about a small, digital camera (like this one) you can keep in your pocket, briefcase or purse. 

I take mine everywhere.  Here are a few not-so-obvious reasons lawyers should, too:

1. To remember what your clients look like.  Go ahead, admit it.  When you look through your files at the end of each month (you do that, right?), you always have at least one client's name you can't put with a face.  How about the times you get a call from Bob Smith, and you can't remember just exactly who Bob is?  Every time you retain a new client, take their picture.  Upload it to your practice management/contact management program and print it out to put inside their file.  Even better, also put it in an album of past and current clients (like a yearbook) and you'll never be caught scratching your head wondering just who that person was you just bumped into at the supermarket.
2. To make sure you send your bills out on time.  Take a picture of something you want (a new car), or something you love that costs you money (like your children), and clip that photo on top of your stack of bills when you review them every month.  The picture will remind you just why you do what you do, and motivate you to get your bills out on time.
3. To make copies and turbocharge your whiteboard.  This tip alone could save you (or your clients) the cost of a camera in less than six months.  Sign up for a service like ScanR and send your photos of documents, business cards or whiteboards in and have them converted into .pdf files for free.  This can save you $1.00/page or more vs. paying for copying court files.
4. To help your clients find the courthouse.  Next time you head to the courthouse, take pictures of the parking lot, the entrance, and even the place you want your clients to meet you.  Send the pics along with your letter telling them about their hearing, and they'll be far more likely to be on time.
5. To capture the cool things you see.  There are always things we see that we wish we'd remember.  Take a picture.  What you'll find is you remember more things, and you'll also start to become a much better photographer.

Conference Tips Revisited

Two years ago, I wrote The Conferencing Manifesto on my Real Big Thinking Blog.  I'm about to put that blog to bed (more on that in the near future), and wanted to repost some of my favorites.  Here are a few tips for conference goers:

Know Your Questions.  Seek Your Answers.  Never attend a conference without at least three questions you want answered.  Never leave until they have been.

Their Conference is Your Focus Group.  Want to measure the pulse of the marketplace?  Want feedback on your idea, product, or business model?  Go to a conference populated by your ideal customer.  Forget the sessions.  Hang out in the hallway.  And listen.  A lot.

Be Smart.  Be Helpful.  Then Be Quiet.  Other attendees may have come to the conference to meet people like you.  They may want and deserve your help (and you, theirs).  They didn’t come to hear your hour-long presentation.  Please understand the difference.

Paper Works Best.  Your ability to pay attention to conference speakers and attendees is inversely proportional to your ability to pay attention to the outside world.  Stow the laptop, turn off the BlackBerry, pull out the Moleskine, and start writing.  Oh, and if you can’t leave the real world behind for an hour or two, please don’t leave it at all.

Vendors Matter.  Vendors are like puppies.  They crave your attention.  Give it.  They know your industry and the other attendees better than you do.  Talk with them.  Learn from them.  Then take a few pens.

Blogging is not Participation.  We get it.  Your blog has tens/hundreds/thousands of readers who can’t wait to hear your take on the last speaker’s presentation and about how crappy the WiFi is.  Your “audience” will be there tomorrow.  Your fellow attendees will not.

The most important people at the conference are sitting next to you.   Think Tom Peters gives a rat’s ass about your new business strategy?  Is Seth Godin going to give you personalized marketing advice?  Of course not.  The people at any event who are most likely to have already faced your challenges (and maybe even solved them) aren’t the highly-paid keynoters, but rather your fellow attendees.  They are like you.  They can help you.  Ignore them at your peril.

Mood Ring + Brainstorm = Moodstream

You've got to check out Moodstream from Getty Images.  From the site:

Moodstream is a powerful brainstorming tool designed to help take you in inspiring, unexpected directions. Whether you want images, footage or audio, or just need a stream of fresh ideas, tweak the Moodstream sliders to bring a while new creative palette straight to you.

It is really hard to describe, but think of a constantly changing mixture of pictures, video and music that can be customized with sliders in the following ways: happy to sad, calm to lively, humorous to serious, nostalgic to contemporary and warm to cool.  Very neat stuff.  And of course you can purchase the images if you see something you like.

Boise Idea Market

If you are in the Boise, Idaho area on October 8th, I'm going to be facilitating an Idea Market from 6:00 to 9:30.  The Facebook Invite is here.  Cost is $20.00 to cover food and supplies.  Would love to see you there. 

Building Banks with Generation-C

James Gardner at Bankervision has been thinking about "future-proofing" banks, and takes inspiration from Linux and Crowdsourcing:

We've been tracking a trend at the bank we call Generation-C, the generation that wants to Create. These are the people who write blogs, who mash up applications to create new ones, who contribute to forums and put themselves out there....

What might the power of crowds create if we let them loose on banking products and services?

Because if these Generation-C folk can create a better operating system for free than the folks at Redmond with billions to spend on R&D, what might fantastic things might Generation-C do for financial services?

Indeed.  I think the same goes for law practice.  What do you think?

Beep Beep

From Wikipedia, via Kottke:

The simple but strict rules for Road Runner cartoons.

1. 1. Road Runner cannot harm the Coyote except by going "beep, beep".
2. No outside force can harm the Coyote -- only his own ineptitude or the failure of Acme products.
3. The Coyote could stop anytime -- IF he was not a fanatic. (Repeat: "Afanatic is one who redoubles his effort when he has forgotten his aim."-- George Santayana).
4. No dialogue ever, except "beep, beep".
5. Road Runner must stay on the road -- for no other reason than that he's a roadrunner.
6. All action must be confined to the natural environment of the two characters -- the southwest American desert.
7. All tools, weapons, or mechanical conveniences must be obtained from the Acme Corporation.
8. Whenever possible, make gravity the Coyote's greatest enemy.
9. The Coyote is always more humiliated than harmed by his failures.
10. The audience's sympathy must remain with the Coyote.

If Lawyers Didn't Exist

I know, the title of this post sounds like the beginning of another lawyer joke, but it comes from a very thought-provoking article from Indi Young on A List Apart titled Look at it Another Way.

Indi suggests several ways we can "step out of our problem-solving role." This is important because:

Whether we’re improving what we make, how we make it, or how we shareit, we normally take the perspective of the creator by default. Wecan’t help it. We’re drawn into decisions about all sorts of details.We love the minutia—solving problems, finding a way around alimitation. We don’t try to see past our own role in the process.

Instead of trying to improve our businesses (or our processes/outputs/etc.) from the inside, she suggests we drop our problem-solving role completely, forget about our business' existing limitations and become the person we serve.

Pretend you and your organization do not exist, and study what this person doeswith all the resources available in her life. For example, what does acitizen need from her town government? She needs a way to get from herhouse to the grocery store, the library, the post office, herworkplace, etc. These could be roads, bike paths, public transit, andsidewalks. She needs utilities like water and electricity to bedelivered to her property. She needs assurance that her property willbe defended from fire, protected from floods, and accessible during adisaster. She wants to feel safe from assault, whether by a human, ananimal, pollution, noise, or disease. This list goes on.

Like governments, lawyers (though some might argue) exist to fulfill a need. Here's a way to identify those needs: Think about your clients for a moment. But, as the article suggests, don't think of them as a “user” of the thing you provide.Instead, "think about how and why they accomplish what they want to get done."

So, who are your clients? What do they look like? Where do they live? What do they need? What do they want to get done?

Most importantly, what wakes them up at 2:00 am the morning before they call your office? Would they say it is because they wanted "estate planning" or because they want to make sure they can "take care of their family" when they die?

Put another way, if lawyers didn't exist, what unmet need would your clients have? And if you were the only one to recognize that unmet need (in a world without lawyers, remember), would you invent your firm as it exists today?

Would your client?

Would Steve Jobs?

Start Clients Off Right With a "Starter Kit"

Mark Hollander shares a Patient Starter Kit from drug manufacturer Shire on his Group8020 blog (great company name, btw). The "Kit" consists of:

• 16 page, full color booklet with basic information about the disease state
• An interactive CD-ROM that plays on both Windows and Macs (thelatter representing a smart marketing decision. In the US, Applerepresents two thirds of all new computer sales)
• An ATM-like card to be used at local pharmacies for a free 30-day trial of the product
• Standard P.I. insert

According to Mark, "Theprocess of converting the “concerned and curious” to new customersbegins immediately. The right front page prominently displays aserialized card used for enrollment in the 30-Day trial."

Some other really cool things in the kit (for an ADHD drug):

• “Success Tracker” to chart and reinforce a child’s improvement in tasks that had previous proven difficult
• Recognition Certificate for the child - we’re assuming it works onthe principle of “accomplish so many things and your reward will be..”
• Household Organizer Chart - for both child and parent, bringing a little structure back into home life

Put aside what you think about how drug companies market for a moment, and think about this instead:

What would a New Client Starter Kit look like for your firm?

Would it have basic information about the area of law concerning theclient?

Would it contain links, scanned articles and documents (likequestionnaires and forms) on a CD-ROM that would work on both Macs andWindows PC's?

Would it contain photos of your office, including theoutside of your building and the parking lot, as well as pictures (andbios) of all your staff?

Would it contain a FAQ?

Would it be cool?

If you're looking for a project this month, perhaps building a New Client Starter Kit should make it onto your short list.

Line Up for Design Inspiration

Need a little design inspiration? Check out these results from a Smashing Magazine contest. The challenge? Design a horizontal line. It is a pretty basic challenge with pretty amazing results. The best part? They're all free for reuse.

Think Bigger

I've recently upgraded (the understatement of the year) to an Apple Cinema 30 inch display and I can't describe how much of a positive difference it has had on my work. Just the ability to see multiple windows at the same time has been a tremendous time-saver.

So, since I know a bigger screen helps me to work faster, I decided to try a another "does size matter?" experiment. I grabbed a pad of 18"x24" drawing paper and a marker and sat down to do some brainstorming.

What I found is that the extra room on the paper gave me permission to think bigger.

• Doodles? Check.
• To Do list? Check.
• Mindmap? Check.
• Notes? Check.

All on the same page.

If you've got something you'd like to think about in a different way, go ahead and up-size your canvas. I bet you'll find the extra space will give you (or your clients) more room to be creative. Give it a shot and let me know how it works for you.

The Curse of Almost Done

A few days ago, I wrote about how I was suffering from The Curse of Almost Happy. I realized that being "close to" fulfillment in my life and career wasn't close at all. So, as I've spent this past weekend knocking off several things on my "To Do for Too Long" list, it hit me that a cause (companion?) to that Curse is another one: The Curse of Almost Done.

Unless you're a hyper-productive, always-on-top-of-everything person, you know what I'm talking about. The Curse of Almost Done is evident all around you. It manifests itself the moment you put off completing those last few steps of a project that is "almost done." It keeps you from picking those projects up and finishing them now because you've got more important things to start, and since they are, after all, "Almost done."

Well, I've battled the Curse of Almost Done all weekend. I'm finally happy to unveil the new LexThink.com. It isn't done, but it is done enough.

Let me know what you think. Still to come: links to my presentations, a client intranet site, some video, my first e-book, and a top-secret project that will launch in two weeks (I promise).

So what's on your "To Do for Too Long" list? Set aside a day each week where you swear to not start anything new. Use that day just for completing things. "Finish Fridays" anyone?