Finding the Fulcrum, Tipping Boulders:
Strategic Approaches to Effecting Change
#SPEC4
Richard Clark
Director of Conflicts & Records,
Haynes and Boone LLP
Our Panel
Jeff Willinger Sally Gonzalez
KM & IT Strategy Consultant Michael Farrell Group LLC
Social Business Strategist, Rightpoint
@jwillie
Agenda
• Creating a sense of urgency
• Common barriers to change
• Psychology of change; how to foster listening
• Identifying and prioritizing opportunities
• Case Studies
• Q&A
Change is easier when the platform is burning…
1. Create urgency
8. Anchor new approaches in culture
7. Consolidate gains; produce more change
6. Generate short term wins
5. Empower broad based action
3. Form vision and strategy
4. Communicate the vision
2. Broad-based coalition
Low
Organizational
Reach
High
Low
Number of
Leaders Needed
High
Source: Leading Change; John Kotter
The Legal Platform is Finally Burning…or Smoldering
The Good Old Days… Pre 2008
The Legal Platform is Finally Burning…or Smoldering
Pre-2008
Demand Exceeds Supply
• Demand growth of 4.5% per
year
• Rate growth of 6-8% per year
• Modest competitive pressures
• Healthy growth rates even for
firms lacking strategic focus
Post-2008
Supply Exceeds Demand
• Organic growth dependent
on stealing market share or
finding market niches
• Strategic focus becomes
critically important
The Legal Platform is Finally Burning…or Smoldering
Pre-2008
A Seller’s Market
• Law firms control basic structure
and processes of legal work as
well as pricing, organization, and
scheduling
• Focus on rates and billable hours
• Few incentives for efficiencies
Post-2008
A Buyer’s Market
• Clients demand efficiency
and cost effectiveness in
delivery of legal services
• Firms beginning to work in
different ways
• New competitors in market
“Well, in our country,” said Alice, still panting a little, “you’d generally get to somewhere else – if you run very fast for a long time, as we’ve been doing.”
“A slow sort of country!” said the Queen. “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that.”
Lewis Carroll, Through the
Looking Glass and What Alice
Found There
Barriers to change
• Leadership coming from same background
• Closed-minded attitude
• Client demands / external pressures
• Absence of financial incentives or motivation
• Scale of change required
Psychology of Attorneys
What makes attorneys good for their clients? • Critical Thinking:
• Skeptical • Cynical • Pessimistic • Negative
• Attorneys all come from the same background • Always top of class • Smartest person in the room • Result oriented, rather than process oriented
Psychology of change; how to foster listening
• Avoid coercive or incentivized approaches
• Make sure you understand the objective
• Obtain attorney buy-in
• Solicit input, or
• Make them think it is their idea
• Listen to Needs
Identifying Opportunities -- In A Target Rich Environment
Identifying Opportunities -- Measure Against Business Value
Identifying Opportunities -- Setting Priorities
Identifying Opportunities -- Transform Into a Roadmap
Case Studies
Case Study: Driving Change in Project Athena
“Kotter Step” Approach
Create urgency Powerful business case presented in KM Strategy
Broad-based coalition Project team included representatives from all stakeholder communities (KM,
IT, Firm Management, Lawyers)
Form vision and strategy Spent 2-3 months envisioning and strategizing
Communicate the vision Formal communications plan; tightly controlled and consistent messaging
and language throughout
Empower broad based
action
Outreach to KM Community and Practice Groups; engagement of IT
resources
Generate short term wins Agreement on work flows, policies, and procedures; culling of legacy
collections; agreement on doc types; system pilots
Consolidate gains; produce
more change
Policies & procedures enabled work flow changes; system enabled desired
behaviors
Anchor new approaches in
culture
KM Central team conducting individualized consultations with practice groups
in each office to foster/reinforce behaviors
Cross fertilization from other organization types
The US Military after
WWI
Gulf War
The US Military in
WWII
Vietnam Korea Iraq War Afghanistan
WHY? DEFINE BUSINESS CONTEXT • Business Case • Definition of ROI • Stakeholder Deep Dive • Milestones
DEFINE THE HUMAN CONTEXT • Who are the end-users? • What do we want them to do? • How do we engage them? • What’s in it for me?
DEFINE PROCESS & TECHNOLOGY CONTEXT • Process • Platform Requirements
o Functionality o Content o Workflow
HOW?
ENSURING ALIGNMENT OF
GOALS, USERS, AND SOLUTIONS
To deliver accelerated acceptance, adoption, and advocacy.
WHO?
CRAWL, WALK, RUN….
5 step process to achieve social collaboration
goals
Define Create Personas & User Requirements
Discover
Conduct Stakeholder Workshop
Design Create Collaboration
Adoption Strategy
Develop Create Roadmap
Deploy Execute Roadmap
Project Management and Quality Assurance
1
Roadmap
2 3 4 5
WHY WHO HOW
Collaboration goals
OVERALL COLLABORATION GOAL: Develop a purposeful social collaboration approach that unleashes the power of ORGANIZATION’S people and knowledge and helps form a “culture of collaboration”. GOAL FOR INTRANET:
1. Enable INTRANET to be a model for how best to manage and grow collaborative communities that meet clearly defined business goals.
2. Lead by example - influence the company’s behavior and culture by making collaboration a regular practice – not an isolated event.
3. Enable the Portal to leverage collaboration to:
Drive innovation for products and capabilities
Energize decision making by putting together the right information with the right experts
Accelerate the spreading of new ideas
Collaboration Maturity model
Level 1:
Traditional
Collaboration
» Face-to-face, phone, email
Level 2:
Experimentation
» Point solutions; departmental/business unit focus
» Prompted by specific user needs
Level 3:
Proliferation
» Tools in use on widespread basis
» Lack of interoperability; duplicate functionality
» Basic enterprise standards / governance
Level 4:
Standardization
» Enterprise strategy in place
» Standardization on collaboration platform
» Collaboration partially integrated into business
processes
» Anytime / anyplace access
Level 5:
Culture of
Collaboration
» Integrated workspace strategy in place
» Collaboration fully integrated into daily processes
» Cultural integration
If current
collaboration
maturity level is
at Level 1, with
steps taken
Level 2.
To achieve
effectiveness, we
recommend focus on
attaining high Level 3 /
low Level 4 capability.
Collaboration Adoption Barriers
“We’re not
seeing the value
of social
collaboration”
“We don’t know
how to use
SharePoint to
collaborate.”
“We don’t really
understand the
value social
collaboration”
“Our
leadership
team doesn’t
get social
collaboration”
“Our culture
doesn’t
support this
whole social
thing”
“We can’t
collaborate
socially because
of compliance”
“The tools are
hard to use
and
cumbersome”
“We don’t have enough
resources to focus on adoption
right now”
“Straw man” adoption plan
Collaborating using social tools is often a behavior change for an organization. A thoughtful communication plan will help prepare your users and drive fast adoption.
Pre-launch Ideas
1. Create multi-channel communication plan.
2. Conduct Collaboration Adoption Strategy Workshop.
3. Define the core goals for end-user participation and create an incentive program.
4. Create an idea generation initiative
5. Enable sponsors and champions to build buy-in and enlist participation.
6. Send teaser emails to end-users to create buzz and awareness.
Launch Ideas
1. Create a focused contest
2. Disseminate Trivia to create engagement
3. Implement Gamification / Badging Program
4. Incorporate a “No Email Day” into the Launch
4. Celebrate great use, encourage users, address frequent questions
Ongoing Ideas
1. Conduct Listening Tours to guide the Communities – based on feedback and observation, provide gentle guidance to drive the right behaviors
2. Celebrate Success – share great use cases, quotes, etc. to show value and drive the right behaviors
3. Disseminate “Tips of the Week” via different channels
4. Conduct User Experience Testing
24
The Connected Company: Modernizing the Workplace to Increase Productivity & Engagement
My Network (PeopleFinder) • Search skills experience
• Find subject matter experts
• See status updates & activity
Knowledge
Documents
Capabilities
My Aon
• My Email, My Calendar,
My News, My Corp Tools,
My Client Tools, Access to
PeopleFinder & Knowledge
Hub
Q3 2013 – Q4 2015 Q1 2013 – Q1 2014 Launch 2Q13 Today
1. Connect
Colleagues to
Expertise
4. Transform
Intranet to
Personalized
Workspace
3. Enhance
Collaboration 2. Connect
Colleagues to
Knowledge
Knowledge
Harvester Workflow moves
approved content from
team sites, communities
& BU sites into
Knowledge Hub
Instant access to the
knowledge,
information and tools I
need
to do my job
Create a
Personalized
Colleague Experience
My Subscriptions
• Colleagues subscribe to ASC & BU
news & events, knowledge in the Hub
and external syndicated content
Instant Messaging (Lync) • Connect real-time
• Instant message colleagues
• Presence and screen sharing
Knowledge Hub • Search vetted & approved
documents to sell /deliver to
clients
Search • People
• Sites
• Geography
Communities &
Team Sites
• Communities of Interest with
microblogs, feeds, liking, comments
• Project Sites with shared documents,
discussions, tasks, version control
ASC & BU
Intranet Sites
• Publishing center
• News & Announcements
• Policies & Procedures
• Knowledge
• Documents
• Capabilities
Questions & Answers
Reading List
• Leading Change; John P. Kotter; 1996
• The Heart of Change: Real-Life Stories of How People Change Their
Organizations; John P. Kotter and Dan S. Cohen; Harvard Business
School Publishing; 2002
• The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference; Malcolm
Gladwell; Little, Brown & Company; March 2006
• The Village; Bing West; Simon & Schuster, Inc.; 1972
• One Tribe at a Time; Major Jim Gant; Nine Sisters Imports, Inc.; 2009
• “What Makes Lawyers Tick” (www.lawyerbrainblog.com); Dr. Larry
Richard