Schedule a meeting with yourself.

Go somewhere where you can be undisturbed.  If you stay in your office turn of your email and blackberry.  Work on your project-list, to-do list, and calendar, and spend time reviewing what you finished in the past week.  Treat this meeting with the respect you would give to a client meeting.  Put it in your calendar and don’t book over it.  This ritual is very effective for being mindful of how you are spending your time.

Here’s a Harvard Business Review blog post with great additional information:
How to Stay Focused on What’s Important by Gina Trapani

Best wishes for a productive September!

It all comes down to the central question:  What activities are going to be the most effective?

The answer to that question is going to be different for every lawyer.  One of the first steps I do when I begin working with a new coaching client is to conduct a strength analysis. 

Why the focus on strengths? Because by focusing on what we are good at we start ahead of the game. We all come into this world with a unique set of talents, and over our lifetime with the addition of experience and learning we establish a foundation of knowledge, skill, and ability. The winning strategy is on maximising your strengths. Tim Ferriss, author of The Four Hour Work Week puts it this way:

It is far more lucrative and fun to leverage your strengths instead of attempting to fix all the chinks in your armor. The choice is between multiplication of results using strengths or incremental improvement fixing weaknesses that will, at best, become mediocre.

If you have never done a strength analysis then think of it as a detailed answer to the question: What am I good at and what have I got going for me? I have an article posted on the cooperative Canadian weblog Slaw.ca with a short list of questions that can guide you in conducting your own strength inventory. Who do you know? Do you enjoy writing or presenting? The answers to these and other questions begin to form your inventory of strengths.

In addition you can try taking the free VIA Signature Strengths Questionnaire found on the Authentic Happiness Web site. You have to register (free) on the web site in order to access the test. This test will indicate your top 5 strengths. It was developed by Professor of Positive Psychology Martin Seligman at the University of Pennsylvania. Thanks to Alexander Kjerulf and his blog Chief Happiness Officer for passing on this tip!

Your goals provide the directions and your strengths (and values!) make up the foundation for your business development efforts. The right moves so often take advantage of the resources you have at hand, the people and contacts you have in your life, and your natural abilities, drive, and motivation.

Time is at a premium. The pressures of the billable hour and the stress of meeting client needs and expectations are reaching an all time high. With all the developments in communication technology the boundaries between our home and work environments have eroded. We can now be reached by cell phone and email anywhere in the world and at anytime. Setting and respecting our boundaries is more difficult then ever. No is today’s biggest challenge.

What you say No to can be one of the most powerful forces for developing your practice. For a step-by-step guide on how to wield your effective No while maintaining positive professional and personal relationships look no further than The Power of a Positive No by William Ury.

To read on just follow this link to the full article.

Here’s the difference: The right strategy makes any tactic work better. The right strategy puts less pressure on executing your tactics perfectly.

Here’s the obligatory January skiing analogy: Carving your turns better is a tactic. Choosing the right ski area in the first place is a strategy. Everyone skis better in Utah, it turns out.

If you are tired of hammering your head against the wall, if it feels like you never are good enough, or that you’re working way too hard, it doesn’t mean you’re a loser. It means you’ve got the wrong strategy.

Here’s the big question for consideration.  Are your tactics bringing in the big wins or are they just barely keeping your head above water?

For another story that describes the distinction between strategy and tactics we can look to the Second World War when Winston Churchill proposed the strategy:

“Attack the soft underbelly of Europe.”

This strategy determined the tactic of advancing on the German empire from North Africa, Egypt, to Sicily, and through Italy.  The strategy was dead on.  The tactics worked.

Here’s the caveat. Once we have bought into a strategy, and are deep into tactics, it’s easy to loose sight of the distinction. When the tactics fail or underperform it is tempting to look to different tactics rather than back to the strategic vision and plans.

In addition, many lawyers, administrators, and legal marketers, are trapped in a tactical silo, as so many firms still lack the strategic plans that come first.

If your firm, practice group, client team, or your own practice is struggling, take the time this January to review and re-think your strategy and ask:

“What is our strategy?” This should be answered in one or two sentences.

“Is this strategy paying off?” If not, “what’s working?” “What’s not?” “What could make a difference?”

And if you don’t have a strategy, make this the year that you develop one.

In this fast paced world of blogs, blackberries, and instant messaging, we are all caught up in fast forwarding the action.   

Coaching is about maximising effectiveness, and accelerating results.  So as a coach I am all about hard work, effective use of time, and strategic action, but it is important to remember the vital step that comes before: goal setting.

Here are a few words from an executive coach I admire, Mary Beth O’Neil, from her book Executive Coaching with Backbone and Heart (2000):

Without clear goals and measures for those goals, neither leader nor coach is focused enough to choose the most effective course of action. … It is astonishing how often leaders ignore the goal setting process.  I have come to the conclusion that this task – like many that involve people processes with hard-line results – is simple but not easy.  Goals are simple and obvious to understand, but difficult to pull off well and consistently. (P. 112)

When you are working on your own planning this year, whether you are a managing partner, practice group leader, partner, associate, or newly called lawyer, take some time for meaningful goal setting in three key areas:

Bottom-line: Measurable revenue, profit, billable hour goals.

Work process:  Quality levels of service to clients, these are goals that related to how the work gets accomplished.

Human relations: How you need to work with others to accomplish your bottom-line goals. 

Robert Crosby first outlined these three types of goals in his book The Authentic Leader (1998) and O’Neil discusses them in her book.  I find them very helpful in my work with lawyers because when a lawyer goal sets at these levels, he/she begins to focus beyond the the financial objectives to the changes in behaviour and processes that will be required to achieve the bottom-line results.  Planning on this foundation means the actions that follow are meaningful and effective and the financial goals are much more likely to be achieved.

This morning I took a moment to visit their site and came across an excellent article by their chairman and CEO Glenn Callison that was published in the Texas Lawyer journal. The title “Five Lessons For New Managing Partners” caught my attention.  Here is a quick summary of Callison’s top top five points:

1. Know who you are – conduct a complete evaluation of the firm’s two key assets: people and relationships.

2. Determine where you are going – engage in top to bottom strategic planning.

3. Understand how the firm measures success – use several measurement tools AND examine subjective elements such as client statisfaction and firm morale.

4. Realize leadership is by consensus and example – in law firms, in particular small to mid-sized firms, effective leadership comes through continuous communication and leading by example “rather than any power inherent in the CEO or managing partner position”.

5. Accept that change is constant – the non-stop stream of change is what quickly fills a managing partners cup to overflowing.  Associates leaving the firm, associates joining the firm, compensation issues, technology issues, and 101 other necessary and time consuming bits of business can rapidly overwhelm new managing partners. Callison’s advice for the new managing partner? “Manage by looking forward, not by looking in the rear-view mirror.”

One of my favorite sections of the article is point three. It is often easy to confuse the measurement with the object measured. Law firms are complex organisms. To really begin to understand how they are working, it is crucial to measure them in a variety of ways and over at least a five year period of time (if possible), and to consider these results along with more subjective information such as client satisfaction, retention issues, office morale. Look for the gaps between what is being said and what is actually being done.

My thanks to Glen Callison for sharing these gems with us.