My friend, Debbie Foster, President of InTouch Legal, sent me a link to the following blog post at The Positivity Blog – 16 Things I Wish They Had Taught Me in School.
Great stuff. Simple stuff.
Why is it that so often the most valuable stuff is the simplest stuff?
Take a few minutes to read it. It will be time well spent.
"Most people haven't realized how out of control their head is when they get 300 e-mails a day." David Allen
Is that you? Maybe it's more like 400, 500, 1,000? An out-of-control inbox is a problem for almost every attorney I know. It's impossible to function with that kind mess in your inbox. So, what can you do to stop the madness?!?! There are a couple of simple strategies you can start with.
First, make it a habit to deal with your email when it comes in. Either delete it, delegate it, defer it to a later date, file it, or do it if it takes less than two minutes. David Allen's Two Minute Rule applies not only to email but to every task you are faced with throughout the day. If it takes less than two minutes, do it. Period.
Second, create folders for all of your clients, and move your client related emails to those folders. Attachments to emails should be saved to a client file on your server. Simply leaving them as an attachment to email in your inbox is dangerous because no one else has access to your inbox.
Third, create an Archive Folder where you can place old emails that you don’t necessarily want to delete. Use the Archive Folder – you can create sub-folders, too – to get those emails out of your inbox.
To really crank up your productivity, download the Getting Things Done Add-In for Outlook from David Allen and Netcentrics. The GTD Add-In toolbar will be added to your Outlook toolbar. One of the coolest features of this add-in is that it allows you to automatically save the emails you send to the appropriate Outlook folder. No more looking through your sent items for the email you sent to a client two months ago. No more filling your inbox with cc's to yourself. With GTD you can send a copy of the email directly to the client folder when you send the email. This one feature alone makes the GTD Add-In a "must have" for most attorneys.
Click here to download a Pocket PC Magazine review of the GTD Add-in.
Click here to download a free trial copy of the GTD Add-In.
Have you ever thought about what makes clients like (or love) you? [Translate: Are so impressed with you that they become your best marketers?] I had an experience recently that really highlighted this for me. It was with a furniture repair shop – specifically the Furniture Workshop in St. Petersburg, Florida.
One of the legs of my coffee table had come loose, and though we tried to fix it, ultimately resorting to Super Glue, nothing worked. We looked for another table & couldn’t find anything we liked nearly as well. So, a couple of weeks ago I plopped the table in the back of my SUV and took it to the Furniture Workshop.
I was met by the owner, Russ Sines, who was instantly warm, funny, and friendly. He explained that the workshop had been opened by his father in 1935. Within moments, I knew that he would do a wonderful job repairing my table. And in the few conversations we’ve had over the past week about the fee and when the repairs would be completed, Russ made me laugh every time and think to myself, "Why can't all the businesses we deal with be this wonderful?" Russ knows the value of relationship. He knows everything matters. You can't sustain a business for 73 years without being really clear about those things.
The table will be ready tomorrow. I know it will be perfect. But the thing is, I'm looking around the house for other pieces I can bring to him. I'll miss just chatting with him. And you can bet I'm telling my friends about him.
In is book What They Don't Teach You in Harvard Business School, Mark McCormick reported the results of a study that tracked Harvard MBA graduates from 1979 to 1989. In 1979, the graduates were asked whether they had set clear, written goals for the future and made plans to accomplish them.
Here’s what the study found: Only 3 percent had written goals and plans for accomplishing them; 13 percent had goals, but they were not in writing; 84 percent had no specific goals at all, aside from getting out of school and enjoying the summer. These statistics may not surprise you.
However, these may. In 1989, the graduates were interviewed again. The 13 percent who had unwritten goals were earning, on average, twice as much as the 84 percent who had no goals at all. And the three percent who had written goals were earning, on average, 10 times as much as the other 97 percent of their classmates! The only difference between the groups was the clarity of their goals.
So where do you fit? Have you written down your goals for 2008? If not, what better reason do you need? Go for it!
A client sent me the link below yesterday, and I have since forwarded it to so many folks, I thought I'd just post the link here. If you need a reminder about what's really important – and especially if you think you don't – watch this video.
The holidays are here. Oh, the food, the egg nog, the parties. Oh, the tight-fitting clothes. Oh, the New Year’s Resolutions to lose those holiday pounds. Been there, done that.
For most of my life, I was a yo-yo dieter. Lose it, gain it, lose it, find it, find more of it. You know how that goes. (That’s me to the right a few years ago.) Like so many others, I struggled with weight my entire life, until a few years ago when I made a decision to change not just my diet, but my way of life. It’s worked. I’ve lost about 65 pounds and have been able to keep it off. You can, too. You just need to make the decision to do it.
Here’s what I suggest. Enjoy the holiday season. Then, make the decision to change things in 2008. Then, as the saying goes . . . just do it.
Need some motivation? Check out the story in this month’s ABA Journal about Mark Leventhal, the D.C. attorney who has gone from overweight attorney to personal trainer. Click here to visit the ABA Journal online.
With Thanksgiving right around the corner, now is a great time to reflect on where you are and where you’re going in your life. The book The Laws of Lifetime Growth is a great place to start. It’s a quick, but invaluable, read.
Constant and never-ending improvement is the key to ultimate success in any area of your life. This book will give you a new perspective on how to tap into your natural abilities to do just that.
As Stephen M.R. Covey says in his latest book The Speed of Trust, "If you’re not continually improving your skills, you’re quickly becoming irrelevant." Don’t do that to yourself. Get and stay relevant!
I just finished reading The War for Talent. If you've ever had any hiring or staffing problems, I would highly recommend that you read this book. OK, so I'm recommending that everyone reading this post should read it.
Aside from numerous references to Enron – it was written before Enron's collapse – it’s full of so much great stuff, I know I'll be blogging about it again in the near future. But for today, chew on this quote from the founder of Visa.
"Hire and promote first on the basis of integrity; second, motivation; third, capacity; fourth, understanding; fifth, knowledge; and last and least, experience. Without integrity, motivation is dangerous; without motivation, capacity is impotent; without capacity understanding is limited; without understanding, knowledge is meaningless; without knowledge, experience is blind. Experience is easy to provide and quickly put to use by people with all the other qualities."
- Dee Hock, founder and CEO emeritus of Visa
In the August issue of the ABA Journal, Scott Turrow makes a passionate argument for why The Billable Hour Must Die. He’s not alone in thinking that the future of the legal profession cannot be dependent upon the zero sum game of time x dollars. (See the April 4, 2007 post to this blog.) But Turrow asks a new question: Is the billable hour ethical? Turrow cites Rule 1.7 of the ABA Model Rules which provides that "a lawyer shall not represent a client if the representation reflects a concurrent conflict of interest," which the rule defines as "a significant risk that the representation of one or more clients will be materially limited by . . . a personal interest of the lawyer." Isn't there a clear conflict of interest whenever a lawyer's economic interests favor prolonging representation and the client's favor shortening the same?
Click here to read Turrow's entire article at ABAJournal.com
There is a saying in the military: "No plan survives contact with the enemy." In your law practice, the "enemy" may show up in a number of disguises: a member of your staff, opposing counsel, a client emergency. The "enemy" is anyone or anything that “blows up” your plan for the day or the week.
In the 1980s, the Army created a planning process inventing a concept called Commander's Intent. Commander's Intent (CI) is a plain-talk statement specifying the plan’s goal or desired end-state. For example, at the tactical level the CI might be: My intent is to have the third battalion on Hill 43, to have the hill cleared of the enemy, so we can protect the Third Flank as they pass through the lines. The CI never specifies so much detail as that it risks being rendered obsolete by unpredictable events. (See Made to Stick, p. 26, for this example.) When you know your CI, you might lose the ability to execute your plan, but you never lose the responsibility for executing the intent.
Weekly and daily planning are essential, but you need to know your CI so that you can adjust your plans accordingly. To arrive at your CI for the day or the week, get in the habit of asking yourself questions similar to those that officers ask themselves to arrive at their commander's CI.
If we do nothing else tomorrow, we must ______________.
The single most important thing we must do this week is _________________.
