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I am not one who is big on New Year’s Resolutions. I prefer daily resolutions, and last year I challenged myself (and all of us) to find our adventure:

For me, finding my adventure will be subtle. There’s an introspection I am exploring. It’s about fearlessly following my path and journey, wherever it takes me. It’s about treasuring life’s journey, today. It’s about growing through adversity, not overcoming it or pushing past it. It’s about treasuring life’s journey and not the destination.

That journey was more than just subtle for me. I had an epiphany mid-year: I’m really stressed and I take it out at home.

In the spring I joined some friends in a class that really explored my spiritual program. I went a little deeper than I had in the past, and then it hit me: Every stressful moment I have “out there” I recreate in my home. I was driving the Sports Dude and my kids crazy with my control issues. But rather than confront me, it created chaos amongst them, which just stressed me out further. We were in a bad loop, and it was really up to me to correct the course.  Continue Reading Resolutions or Intentions? How are you beginning your year?

2016 Happy New Year, everyone. I spent my morning sitting on my couch, watching the Rose Parade and trolling Facebook for healthy eating ideas (should I do the 100 Days of Real Food challenge, or just go with some detox?) and alternatives for the gym (Yogi’s Anonymous is leading my choices). The Sports Dude slept in before heading off to cover the Rose Bowl Game, and the kids slept at friends’ houses. Basically, this year began like every other year. In other words, it was quiet around here. Just me, a good cup of coffee and my laptop. I usually take the time between Christmas and New Year’s off from work as it gives me the opportunity to process, reflect, and think about the year that was, and what is to come. I’ve written before that I do not make New Year’s Resolutions; I make daily resolutions. However, if you ask my kids, I’m a control freak and I have to have a plan. I like to have a theme for the year in order to answer the inevitable, “What’s your New Year’s Resolution?” It’s much easier to live a theme on a daily basis then try and live up to the outlandish and unachievable resolutions people make. In my struggle to find my theme for the year, I found it staring at me from across the room in HD:

Find your adventureFind Your Adventure. Photo: @RoseParade

Thank you to the 127th Tournament of Rose’s Parade for a great theme and mantra for 2016: Find Your Adventure. Watching the parade, you can’t help but appreciate how the theme takes on different meaning for each float coming down Colorado Boulevard, just as it will mean something different for each and everyone of us. Continue Reading Don’t seek resolutions. Find your adventure.

Here we are. A new year. Resolutions will be made by many, but not by me (Here’s why I prefer A Daily Resolution).

I have also decided to not look back. 2013 is so, well, 2013. I am well into 2014 and I’m wondering what’s ahead? What I can do? What I can shape? Where will I have influence and impact? What do I have to accept? What do I have to let go? futureI’m reading Richard Susskind‘s Tomorrow’s Lawyers: An Introduction to Your Future (a year after it was published), and I couldn’t get through the first chapter without writing a blog post. The recession is over. We are not only not going back to the way things were. And we are not going back to Wordperfect, or Microsoft Office 2003, or Windows 7. And yet, lawyers and law firms will continue to resist technology on several fronts: They are skeptical to new technologies. They don’t want to learn something new. The cost to train and roll out a new system. My favorite, is that new technologies will make lawyers more productive, and therefore bill less to the client (ugh). Lawyers need to step up their adaption to new technologies if the profession is to stay relevant. Legal Zoom has taken over in many areas of the law, and that is going to continue. Technology is speeding up, not slowing down, our ability to collect and process information. According to Susskind,

You can call me radical, but is seems to be that if we can see the day in which the average desktop machine has more processing power than all of humanity combined, then it might be time for lawyers to rethink some of their working practices.

Susskind goes on to make the case why lawyers need to stop resisting technology:

It is bizarre to think that in, say, two or three years’ time, our online lives will be dominated by systems that very few of us have heard of today, or indeed that may not have been devised. Three years ago hardly any lawyers had heard of Twitter. Today, more than 300 million people are users. And yet, even with that number of subscribers, I always get the sense that lawyers are waiting for Twitter to take off. In resisting Twitter and other emerging systems, what we are often witnessing is a phenomenon that I call ‘irrational rejectionism’ — the dogmatic and visceral dismissal of a technology with which the skeptic has no direct or personal experience. One key challenge for the legal progression, however, is to adopt new systems earlier; to identify and grasp the opportunities afforded by emerging technologies. We need, as lawyers, to be open-minded because we are living in an era of unprecedented technological change.” (emphasis is mine)

So why do lawyers need to be open-minded? Well, clients for one. They are insisting upon it (anyone take the Kia technology challenge yet??). Secondly, younger lawyers will insist upon it. If your technological house is not in order, how will you recruit the best and the brightest when you are the old and the Luddite? Finally, this is the world we live in. I am looking forward to 2014. My kids are culminating their schools and will be headed off to high school and middle school in the fall. I will be participating in a Leadership Institute beginning in March. I plan to spend a good chunk of the early part of my year getting my technological house in order at work. It’s time. And helping the partners look forward to a new year and a new focus. All in all, I think we’ll leave 2013 behind us for now. I’m sure there are lessons we can learn back there … but I’d rather click the page onto something new.

For those who follow me, you know I am not big on New Year’s resolutions. I prefer daily resolutions or intentions.

But this year, I’d like to introduce a new concept: Why not set aside everything you think you know?

Stay with me here.

I was in a meditation meeting on Friday, where we began by reciting a version of the “Set Aside Prayer.” My personal one is:

God, help me to set aside everything I think I know about you, me, these steps, and my recovery so that I may have an open mind and a new experience with all these things. Please help me to see the truth.

And it hit me for the first time in that moment that I could replace “these steps” and “my recovery” with anything: My relationship. My job. My career.

The clarity was immediate. The fog that had been swirling around me lifted. Energy and excitement about the possibilities flowed in.

On a coaching call this morning, I challenged the attorneys to set aside everything they think they know about their clients, their practice, and the services they provide for a new experience in all these things.

Later today, I will challenge my team to set aside everything they know about our sales and coaching program, our PR campaigns, our annual client survey, our annual signature client event … absolutely EVERYTHING we do for an open mind and a new experience in all these things.

By opening ourselves up to a new experience in all things, what fresh ideas will we uncover? What “tried and true” things will we retire? Is there a better, more efficient way to achieve the same goals? Will we look at the challenges and find possibilities?

I don’t know. But my intention is to begin this year with a new perspective, so:

God, help me to set aside everything I think I know about legal marketing, the legal industry, and my role at my firm for an open mind and a new experience in all these things. Please help me to see the truth.

I know, I know, I know. It’s January 2020 and I blogged exactly seven (that’s 7) times last year. WTH??

It boils down to two things:

1. I’ve been really busy. 

I started a new job which required a move from Los Angeles to New Orleans. It was my first move in more than 20 years, and wow, that threw me. I’m really good at transitions and multi-task organization, but this one really got me and I actually started to doubt myself, but I knew better than to listen to “that” voice and I pushed through it. That first month I really wondered if it would all settle down or if this would be my new normal. It took a couple months, but it finally did settle down, just in time to buy a house, pack up all the stuff we had unpacked (Sports Dude says he got a head start by not unpacking a dozen or so boxes that just sat around our rental for the 8 months we were there), and move to our new home.

One of the reasons we moved was to get out of the crazy of LA. The congestion. The pace of life. The “culture.” We bought this house to literally stop and enjoy the views. To recharge. To let go and be in the moment. We have yet to be disappointed. Photos above and below are from our back porch of a sunrise and sunset this week.

Image may contain: sky, tree, outdoor, nature and water
Davey House, 2020.#NoFilter. Photo credit: Eric S. Geller

2. I really didn’t have much to say. 

It kinda struck me this year more than other years, but we’re still talking about the same crap we were talking about 20+ years ago: Industry groups. Diversity. Attorneys not wanting to do business development. What to do about the service partners when their rainmakers retire. Succession planning. Client service. Billing rates. CRM.

Sure we’ve had some disruptions: generational shifts, AFAs, AI. But they all come back to the same themes. I keep thinking, “Ah, this is going to really change things,” but it rarely does. We just keep operating in a very small bubble because, well, lawyers.

This avoidance of changes (innovation) in our industry comes from the risk aversion of lawyers; decision are based on precedence, not looking forward. It’s amazing that all these years (decades) later the basic tenants of Dr. Larry Richards article Herding Cats: The Lawyer Personality Revealed still hold true: Lawyers remain more skeptical, less resilient, and more autonomous than the general population. Great for writing a legal brief, not so great when it comes to business innovations and practices.

While I have seen glimmers of change with the entrance of the Millennials into the law firm, on the whole, there has not been too much change, because how we cultivate and educate lawyers hasn’t changed much. Oh, wait, what’s that I’m reading and hearing? Law schools discussing getting rid of the LSAT? Law firms starting to change hiring practices and looking at non-traditional (tier 1) law schools? Oooh, is that the rise of the millennial leader (video) I’m seeing?? Hmmmm.

So what to do?

Continue Reading Seriously? 2020 already?

Technology changes the way we do things, and sometimes it’s really hard to let go of the way things have always been done. Add lawyers to the conversation–who have been trained that precedent is pretty much everything–and we have the next best thing since oil met water.

I want to introduce you to a term that you most likely have heard of, have an idea of what it is, and are most likely wrong. I know I was.

Access to Justice.

What pops into my mind are state appointed criminal defense attorneys. What I have discovered is that my concept of “access to justice” was really limited to the narrow definition.

I like this definition:

Access to Justice means different things to different people. In its narrowest sense, it represents only the formal ability to appear in court. Broadly speaking, it engages the wider social context of our court system, and the systemic barriers faced by different members of the community.

The barriers to the legal system are immense. It can impact access to immigration assistance, landlord tenant disputes, divorces, child custody, wills and trusts, adoptions, elder care, transgender services, and a multitude of other civil matters, not to mention criminal defense.

And this is where things are getting interesting because “Justice is about just resolution, not legal services”: Continue Reading Will the future of law need lawyers?

Happy New Year!

Let me be the first to burst your bubble: Your resolutions are going to fail.

Why? Because resolutions almost always fail because they are based on fixing something or achieving a specific outcome that is most likely unachievable otherwise you’d already have done it.

Yes, it’s time for my annual “set intentions, not resolutions” post:

You get the idea.

Too often we set ourselves up for failure, not success, which is why I coach not to set resolutions, but intentions, and I am not alone in this practice.

From the Daily Calm meditation this morning:

With intentions we are not focused on what we need to fix, but what we want to create.

Or this from Russell Brand:

How did he become such a spiritual guru? I know … he set an intention to do just that.

My Intentions for 2019

I have two intentions for 2019: 1) Clean my life and 2) have more fun.  Continue Reading New Year. New You. No Way.

I started this year off wiping down my white board and getting ready to plan my year. IMG_9184 So much white. So much potential. So many ideas. I am not a huge fan of large and intense marketing plans; they usually just end up buried in some drawer somewhere, only to be pulled out at the end of the year to be revised for the next year. I prefer A Daily Resolution:

By setting daily resolutions and having daily goals, I am setting myself up for success. By doing this, day after day, I will achieve something wonderful over a span of time (could be one week or one year). The end results might not be exactly what others expect, or what I expected myself, however, the flexibility will allow me to alter my plans as to best accomplish what needs to get done today. Flexibility will allow me to adjust my sails to the changes in the economy, in technology, in my personal and professional relationships. By focusing on what can and must be accomplished today, I can set aside worrying about things that I have no power or control over (yet). I’m not saying, implying or inferring in any way, shape or form that you should not have, nor should you abandon, long-term plans and goals. I am just saying, break those action steps into daily activities, actions and resolutions. Focus on what can and must be done today.

In other words, you do need a plan, but you don’t need a complicated one. What I do, and suggest to the masses, is to focus on three to five larger ideas (buckets) that you can rattle off the tip of your tongue. Under each bucket fall the specific tasks. Those become your daily resolutions. So here’s my white board now. IMG_9185Eventually all the white will disappear filled in with ideas, tasks, notes, and more. I continue to manage my tasks through Get it Done, and am spending time this week cleaning out all my emails (work, personal, Girl Scouts) to make sure I am good to go. So Happy New Year to everyone. I look forward to a productive year, and look forward to the new experiences and good things to come.

I’m not a New Year’s Resolution kinda gal. I live a day at a time and prefer to make a daily resolution. However, I have a couple resolutions I’ll share over the next few days.

My first one is “Honor Your Commitments.”

When you commit to doing something, or showing up somewhere, it’s not just a calendar item in your Outlook, or an entry in your lists that you can press “snooze” or ignore.

You have committed to another person to meet somewhere, return a call, submit a document, etc.

In many cases, the other person, or persons, cannot move forward until your piece of the pie is completed.

It’s a relay race of sorts.

By not honoring your commitment, you are, at the very least, inconveniencing another person. At the most, you are putting other people, or projects, at risk.

Think about all those HORRIBLE presentations you sit through at a conference. I assure you, someone on the “team” did not honor their commitments. They didn’t turn their handouts in on time. They did not prepare in advance, and threw the slides together at the last moment. They missed the conference calls where the panel would run through the materials.

I can give example after example of how lawyers fail on this one, especially when it comes to committing to their marketing departments.

  • There’s a reason why marketing departments hire outside consultants and coaches for attorneys. For some reason, attorneys are more likely to honor their commitment to an outside consultant than to inside colleague at the firm. We marketing directors and administrators jokingly refer to this as paying someone $5,000 to do what we can do (or say what we can say) for free.
  • What about that RFP that is sitting on your desk, or in your in-box, that you forget to hand over to the marketing director until just days before its due?
  • What about the emails asking for key information to complete a project that just seem to go into that black hole of nothingness? Sometimes you really are the only person who can answer that question.

This behavior is not exclusive to lawyers. My eleven-year old — going on 22 — did it to me today.

She really wanted to come with me to the office. I woke her up at 7:00, told her we were leaving at 8:30, and instructed her to get up and get ready.

At 8:15 she still wasn’t ready. In fact, she hadn’t even started getting dressed. Her room was in such a disarray that she couldn’t find anything to wear. Lots of excuses. But, really, the TV and Nintendo just distracted her. She thought she had more time.

A normal mom would just yell or walk out the door. I, however, chose to explain to her (again) that by not getting ready she was inconveniencing ME. In fact, she wasn’t just inconvenicing me, but a whole group of people down the line:

  • Her sister was ready, so she was forcing her to sit around and wait.
  • There was no time now for breakfast at home, so we’d have to eat downtown, which is costing me money.
  • I will now be late to work. Sure, I’m exempt, but she doesn’t know what that means yet, and it would ruin the lesson.
  • The project I was hoping to have completed by 9:30 wasn’t ready until 10:00, pushing my service manager’s projects back, which pushes the other projects back, and so on.

I not only made her feel guilty, I even made her cry a little.

Some might say I was harsh, but I hope she remembers that conversation the next time I say “Be ready by 8:30,” or her professor says “Final term papers are due at 12:00 p.m., sharp,” or her boss says, “I need that presentation by 3:00 p.m.”

Yes, there are always emergencies, but skiing in Vermont when an RFP-follow up is due on January 4 is not an emergency (True story, different firm).

Sure, you can pretend to not get my faxes (Really?? No WiFi at the lodge). And wasn’t it convenient that you happened to forget your Blackberry at home that week.

But what it came down to is that there was a job to get done. I was committed to it, but the partner of record was not.

Never mind that the firm was incredibly vested in us winning that new line of business. I just wanted to scream “We pulled a team together between Christmas and New Year’s to make YOU look good, and you keep dodging my phone calls!! Why??”

If the work turned out to be sub-par, and you didn’t win the beauty contest, accept responsibility for your actions. Don’t turn around and blame the marketing department. But, hey, thanks for throwing us under the bus nonetheless.

What it comes down to is that every time you commit to someone you form a team. If you cannot honor your commitment, then get it covered, or redefine the time commitments to which everyone can agree, and adhere to them.

Because, at the end of the day, it’s about your reputation. It’s about the work product. It’s about the relationships.

What it comes down to is that no matter how bright and gifted my kid is, if she can’t get herself dressed and out the door on time by the time she graduates high school, she’s going to have problems in college, which will boil over into her career.

In a society where bad reputations can be spread like a viral YouTube video, this is something I do find to be of concern.

But don’t blame me. I tried.

Photo via computerworlduk.com

I don’t like marketing plans. For the most part, they’re too long, too complicated, too detailed, too focused on what you think someone else expects of you. They are too easy to forget, toss into a drawer and ignore. I do believe that they have a place, but I think they need to be as simple as possible if they are to be lived (see A Simple Marketing Plan).
I feel the same way about New Year’s resolutions. They too are too big, too complicated, too focused on another person’s ideals (anyone resolve to lose 10 lbs this year???), too unattainable, and too easily broken.

However, I do believe in daily goals and daily resolutions. Come on, I can do anything for just one day. Just for today:

  • I can clean out my in-box of today’s messages before I leave the office
  • I can call a client (in my case, an in-house attorney at my firm)
  • I can write a blog post
  • I can return the phone calls on my list
  • I can prep the ad for the magazine
  • I can schedule the ad placement for that conference
  • I can participate in networking (online or in person)
  • I can make plans for an in-person meeting with a fellow legal marketer
  • I can go to the gym and follow my trainer’s food plan
  • I can give more than I take

Just for today I can set goals and achieve them. By setting daily resolutions and having daily goals, I am setting myself up for success. By doing this, day after day, I will achieve something wonderful over a span of time (could be one week or one year). The end results might not be exactly what others expect, or what I expected myself, however, the flexibility will allow me to alter my plans as to best accomplish what needs to get done today. Flexibility will allow me to adjust my sails to the changes in the economy, in technology, in my personal and professional relationships. By focusing on what can and must be accomplished today, I can set aside worrying about things that I have no power or control over (yet). I’m not saying, implying or inferring in any way, shape or form that you should not have, nor should you abandon, long-term plans and goals. I am just saying, break those action steps into daily activities, actions and resolutions. Focus on what can and must be done today. Yeah, it does sound easier said than done, but, then again, I can do anything for just one day.