Thank you, and good night.
Bert Decker has some really fantastic tips for ending a presentation. Decker suggests that the last three seconds of any presentation are among the most important. His tips:
- Don’t step back. If anything, take a half-step toward your listeners at the end. Don’t step back verbally, either, by softening your request to “I surely hope something…” or worse, “There seems to be a need…” Keep saying “we” and “you” to the end.
- Don’t look away. Some people harken back to the last visual-aid, as if for reinforcement. Some people look aside, unwilling to confront listeners head-on at the last words, the murmured “thank you,” or the instant of silence that follows. Stay with them.
- Don’t move on the last word. Hold still for a half-beat after the “you” in “thank you.” You don’t want to look anxious to get out of there. If anything, you want to let people know you’ve enjoyed being with them and are sorry you have to go. Don’t rush off.
- Don't raise your hands. In our seminars, we recommend “clean and firm endings” to actually show people you’re finished. You must “let them go” visually. If you keep you hands up at waist level, you look as if you have something more to say. You’re still “holding them.” (You can see this same phenomenon in on-on-one seated conversations: the person whose hands are up still “holds the floor” and the listener will not begin talking until the hands themselves are finished.) In speaking, think of yourself as the gracious host or hostess as you drop your hands with an appreciative “thank you.” That image prompts you to be warm and natural.
- Don’t rush to collect your papers. Or visual aids, or displays. Stop and chat with people if the meeting is breaking up, then begin to tidy up in a calm, unhurried manner. Otherwise you might be contradicting your calm, confident demeanor as a presenter.
- Never blackball yourself with a critical grimace, a shake of the head, eyes rolled upward, a disgusted little sigh. So what if you’re displeased with yourself? Don’t insult your audience by letting them know you were awful; they probably thought you were pretty good. One lip curl in those last three seconds can wreck 30 minutes of credibility.
Bert’s blog is one of my new favorites. It is chock-full of great tips like these. Add it to your aggregator. You won’t be sorry.
It's all about the grades.
Freakin’ great advice. Don’t major in something that interests you. Don’t challenge yourself. Don’t worry about learning anything important. (Thanks to Buffalo Wings and Vodka for the tip.)
Teach Creativity Everywhere
Michelle Golden hits the nail on the head:
Partners continue to complain that associates (managers, supervisors, seniors, etc) don't know how to develop business and don't know how to even spot additional service opportunities whilst serving clients. Senior partners frequently complain about the same problem with some of their younger partners.
They even know it is largely their own fault. But they don't know exactly why or how to fix it.
These partners haven't realized that their firms have so strongly squelched the characteristics of creativity and problem-solving, not to mention listening, IN the office that their people don't know how to do an about-face to suddenly exhibit these characteristics OUTSIDE the office?
One cannot successfully breed a problem-solving mentality in people without allowing them to practice constantly. Instead, firms are training an assembly-line mentality. And instead of role-modeling open-minded, creative behavior, they are employing a 'do as we say, not as we do' approach to client relationship management, sales, mentoring, and firm management. So, why is there so much surprise at the present result?
Partners, you cannot have it both ways.
In her post, Michelle adds a link to DumbassReviewNotes, a site from CPA Robin Jerauld that contains some great (and funny) bits showing that accountants’ prevailing business model is just as broken as attorneys’.
Are you your own worst boss?
Jeremy talks about his horrible boss, too bad he can’t find another.
My boss needs to be fired. He lets me come in late, he lets me leave early, he doesn't stop me from spending hours doing things completely unrelated to work, and he gives me unlimited vacation days. He doesn't hold me to deadlines, he accepts lame excuses for why I don't get anything done, and he refuses to impose any sort of structure on the work day. He's pathetic. The problem is that I can't fire him because he's me. I'm a terrible boss. I came to the realization a few years ago that I'm consistently motivated more by trying to impress others than by anything inside of me, but didn't really believe that was completely true. It's completely true. To impress someone I respect and want to think highly of me, I will do anything, and I will do it quickly, and I will find the motivation somewhere. It'll just be there. It'll keep me up nights. It'll kick in, every time. Without that, it's like pulling teeth. I turn the Internet off and ten minutes later I turn it back on to check e-mail. I promise myself no food until I write another thousand words, and I eat anyway. I can't hold myself to anything. I need to get better at that, or get my editor to whip me with a belt or something. I'm a terrible boss. Two months and I still don't have a regular daily schedule. I make the excuse that writing is governed by the inspiration. I need to get over that crock of baloney, because I don't think it's really true. I'm just a bad boss. At least when I'm the employee. I suck at this part of being a writer, I really do.
Trying Steve Pavlina's 30 Days Formula
I ran across Steve Pavlina’s blog post titled 30 Days to Success just over a month ago. In it, he outlines a fairly simple way to make dramatic changes to your life. First, Steve’s explanation:
A powerful personal growth tool is the 30-day trial. This is a concept I borrowed from the shareware industry, where you can download a trial version of a piece of software and try it out risk-free for 30 days before you’re required to buy the full version. It’s also a great way to develop new habits, and best of all, it’s brain-dead simple.
Let’s say you want to start a new habit like an exercise program or quit a bad habit like sucking on cancer sticks. We all know that getting started and sticking with the new habit for a few weeks is the hard part. Once you’ve overcome inertia, it’s much easier to keep going.
At the time, I was drinking 3–5 Diet Mountain Dews each day. I figured I’d take Steve’s advice, and resolve to stop drinking soda for “only” 30 days. Days 1–3 sucked, but I slowly replaced my morning Dews with one cup of Green Tea and drank water the rest of the day. Gotta tell you, it worked. The thirty days was an easy amount of time to measure, and though I fell off the wagon a couple of times, it was pretty easy to get back on. I don’t miss the soda at all.
Now I’m looking for another 30 day challenge. For you lawyers out there, how about resolving to return every phone call within 24 hours just for the next 30 days. I dare you!
Ten Law Firms that Wouldn't Hire Me Out of Law School
One of the perks of being a member of the Law.com Blog Network is that I get to share with you this sneak peak of the Am Law 100. After the jump, you can order an electronic spreadsheet or subscribe to American Lawyer to see the other 90 firms that wouldn’t have hired me either.
How comfortable are your client chairs?
I blogged a bit about this before, but Howard Mann gives a great tip on seeing yourself (or your company) as others do:
I asked the President of the company to go outside and come in as if he was a client arriving for an appointment. Within 5 minutes of sitting in his own reception area he didn't like how uncomfortable the chairs were, hated that he could see a bunch of old boxes in a cubicle down the hall, didn't like how dark it was and we stopped right there.
Stupid exercise?...perhaps. Definitely simplistic. But it was a start.
It will all seem unimportant until it is you waiting in the reception area or stuck on hold.
What if you took some time away from trying to figure out what your clients want next and spend time every month experiencing how they actually see you today.
A quick quality of life quiz.
Anita Sharpe has this quote (which I’ve edited just a bit) from a book she just read:
Of course, everyone spoke ill of his profession, but, basically, it was all a question of selling his time, like everyone else. Doing things he didn't want to do, like everyone else. Putting up with horrible people, like everyone else. Handing over [ ] his precious soul in the name of a future that never arrived, like everyone else. Saying that he still didn't have enough, like everyone else. Waiting just a bit longer, like everyone else. Waiting so that he could earn just a little bit more, postponing the realization of his dreams; he was too busy right now, he had great opportunities ahead of him, loyal clients who were waiting for him. . .
What profession? Take a look here to find out. Or read the book.
Next Stop, Law Review!
Saw this story from the Boston Globe (via Fight the Bull):
THREE MIT graduate students invented a computer program that can spit out randomly selected words to create grammatically correct research reports that make absolutely no sense. Now they have had one of those papers accepted for presentation at a July scientific conference. . . . Jeremy Stribling, Max Krohn, and Dan Aguayo call their paper ''Rooter: A Methodology for the Typical Unification of Access Points and Redundancy" -- which might have been seen as a tip-off that scientific beaks were being tweaked. After all, why would anyone want to unify redundancy?
But the four-page send-up, laced with confounding graphs, was accepted by an international conference that itself sounds like a spoof: ''The Ninth World Multi-Conference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics."
If only I’d had their program in law school. I may have actually made law review.
Hell freezes over first.
AJ Levy, at Out-of-the-Box Lawyering points us to a law review article (not online, I’m afraid) suggesting law school professors have an obligation to engage in law practice. The cite is here — Bluebook be damned:
"The Dangers of the Ivory Tower: The Obligation of Law Professors to Engage in the Practice of Law." 50 Loyola L. Rev. 623 - 673 (Fall 2004) by Amy B. Cohen.
The author, a professor herself, came to her groundbreaking conclusion after taking a one semester sabbatical to return to law practice!
I’m not going to take potshots at Professor Cohen, because I totally agree with her argument. But one semester, come on. If she had taken five years to rejoin her law school brethren (and sistren) in the trenches, she would have gotten a better picture of current law practice, but may have penned this article insead:
“What the Hell was I Thinking: The Obligation of Law Professors Never Ever Ever to Leave the Ivory Tower.”
How can you let law practice get in the way of blogging?
As I posted last week, I'm moving to California. My wife is taking a temporary (now between 9 and 18 months, we're told) assignment with Nestle in Glendale, California. My wife leaves in two weeks, and I'll follow around March 15th or so. What this means is very light blogging. I have set aside today for blog and LexThink related stuff, so while I can't promise an all-request day like my friend Dennis Kennedy did last week, I'll be clearing out some cobwebs and throwing a bunch of stuff on-line.
Who knows, as my wife and I prepare to sell our house and clean out all of our accumulated junk, I may decide to host the first-ever combined real garage sale and virtual idea garage sale in the history of the internet.
Two "Wrongs" can make a "Right"
David Batstone, in the Worthwhile blog, tells us to Make Promises We Can Keep. One of his four tips:
Turn your mistakes into opportunities for invention. That is howAmazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos keeps his company on a creative edge. Bezossays that he reviews the Amazon site every Saturday and lists the 10things that are “wrong,” and that sets his agenda for Monday morning.“Perfect people” are boring...and delude themselves about theirimperfections.
I really like this idea. Ten "wrong" things are a bit overwhelming for a small organization, but maybe two or three. I think a perfect compliment to Bezos' method would be to identify three things that are "right" and take the week to make them incrementally better.
Process Management
I ran across a post, titled Re-Invent YourBusiness, in the Project,Process & Business Improvement blog that really summarizes what we’vebeen trying to do in our firm as we move from a task-centered model to awhole-business centered model. Here it is in its entirety:
An organization, be it a business, a school, a non-profit agency, is acollection of processes. These processes are the natural activities you performthat produce value, serve customers and generate income. Managing theseprocesses is the key to the success of your organization.
Unfortunately,most organizations are not set up to manage processes. Instead they managetasks. Think about it. Isn't your company organized around functions. . .theaccounting department, the engineering department, the sales department, thecustomer service department?
As a result, people tend to focus ondepartmental concerns instead of the company-wide needs of customers.Sub-processes evolve within departments without consideration of otherfunctional areas. Layers of communication and management are created to ensuredesired outcomes, thereby adding to costs and lengthening cycle and customerresponse times.
Inefficiency and waste become part of the system. Theyrob your organization of profits, productivity and its competitive advantage.But, there is a way out.
Process mapping is a simple yet powerful methodof looking beyond functional activities and rediscovering your core processes.Process maps enable you to peel away the complexity of your organizationalstructure (and internal politics) and focus on the processes that are truly theheart of your business. Armed with a thorough understanding of the inputs,outputs and interrelationships of each process, you and your organizationcan:
* Understand how processes interact in a system
* Locate processflaws that are creating systemic problems
* Evaluate which activities addvalue for the customer
* Mobilize teams to streamline and improveprocesses
* Identify processes that need to be re-engineeredProperlyused, process maps can change your entire approach to process improvement andbusiness management. . .and greatly reduce the cost of your operations byeliminating as much as 50% of the steps in most processes as well as the rootcauses of systemic quality problems.
As you put your plans and goals for2005 together, re-invent your business.
What will you say "no" to?
Sam Decker has this absolutely amazing list of things he resolves to say “no” to:
1. What strategies, initiatives and activities will you say no to?
2. What measurements will you not pay attention to?
3. What customers will you not target?
4. What people will you not keep?
5. What competitors will you not follow?
6. What will you remove from your web site?
7. What money will you not spend?
8. What meetings will you decline?
9. What trips will you not make?
10. What slides will you not create?
11. What will you not say?
12. What thoughts will you not entertain?
Read Sam’s entire post — especially the comments under each “resolution” — and resolve to not do some things yourself this year.
Legal Buzzword B.S.
Michael Cage, in his newly renamed Local Small Business Success S.T.A.K.S. Blog (Strategies, Tactics And Kick-Ass Systems, if you must know) suggests playing this Buzzword B.S. game:
When someone, especially a consultant who is trying to take your money, explains what they are going to do using a buzzword, tell them to explain it again. But without the buzzword. When I first started doing this, I added on: “…and do it in one sentence.” Problem was, they’d end up giving me a 97-word sentence. So, nowadays, I just ask the question and wait. … If they can’t clearly explain it in one sentence, they don’t know what they are talking about. And they get no money.
How would you respond if one of your clients started playing this game with you?
Keep Sick Workers Home
Have employees who are feeling a little under the weather? Are they still at their desks hacking and wheezing away trying to get through the work day? Next time, make them stay home -- or so says this article from HBS Working Knowledge:
Employers worry a lot about absenteeism, but new research suggests a bigger threat to productivity is “presenteeism”: sick workers who show up at work but are not fully functioning. U.S. companies may lose $150 billion (yes, that’s billion) annually because of presenteeism, according to some estimates.
Now, tell them to go get that bowl of chicken noodle soup.
To work at home -- or not?
From Arnie Herz’s Legal Sanity comes this link to an ABA Journal article titled, “Home Alone. Using Available Resources, Working at Home Can Pay Off,” that suggests that working at home is a viable alternative for some small firm practitioners. However, this BBC News Article seems to point to an opposite conclusion. According to a study quoted in the article:
Less than 50% of people who work from home are satisfied with their home office space, with a quarter of them forced to work in the kitchen, 37% in the spare room and 10% "hotdesking" it to anywhere they can find. [In fact over] three-quarters of home workers have found themselves working in a cramped and cluttered space, and over 50% of those surveyed said they did not have enough room to work effectively.
What does this all mean? Make sure the productivity gains you experience by losing your commute or gaining convenience are not offset by a bad work environment. Just because something feels like it is more productive, does not make it so.
The Dream Firm
Jessamyn West at librarian.net has this post about her dream library. Two of her suggestions:
- We'd be open when people wanted to use the library, not just when librarians wanted to work. How would we know? We'd ask them. [some surveys: here, here, here and here]
- In my library, we'd fix your computer for you. We'd work the information booth at your event. We'd answer your questions any time and any place, not just when you come to us and wait at the reference desk for us to be free. We'd save your time, even if it sometimes meant sacrificing our own.
I've been thinking about how the dream law office (or any professional services firm) would look and operate -- if it were designed by clients. Any ideas?
Tom's Rage Against the Medical Profession
Tom Peters is taking on the medical profession/industry in this post. The money quote:
The "system"—training, docs, insurance incentives, "culture," "patients" themselves—is hopelessly-mindlessly-insanely (as I see it) skewed toward fixing things (e.g. Me) that are broken—not preventing the problem in the first place and providing the Maintenance Tools necessary for a healthy lifestyle. Sure, bio-medicine will soon allow us to understand and deal with individual genetic pre-dispositions. (And hooray!) But take it from this 61-year old, decades of physical and psychological self-abuse can literally be reversed in relatively short order by an encompassing approach to life that can only be described as a "Passion for Wellness (and Well-being)." Patients—like me—are catching on in record numbers; but "the system" is highly resistant. (Again, the doctors are among the biggest sinners—no surprise, following years of acculturation as the "man-with-the-white-coat-who-will-now-miraculously-dispense-fix it-pills-for-you-the-unwashed." Come to think of it, maybe I'll start wearing a White Coat to my doctor's office—after all, I am the Professional-in-Charge when it comes to my Body & Soul. Right?)