Continuing competence (Part 2)

Posted on February 22, 2016 by knowledge4lawyers

In the last post I looked at where you should start with the new continuing competence regime in UK law firms: what the regime is and how you can investigate what your current knowledge needs are.

This time, I look at ways to identify your training needs and match the potential resources to them and plan yourself a training programme.

If you have finished the homework in the previous post, you should now have a better idea of:

  1. The areas of knowledge which you need to develop
    1. hard and soft skills (technical writing, understanding clients and client care, systems thinking, presentations, networking, sales, leadership, team-working etc)
    2. technical knowledge (your field of expertise, related technical fields and business knowledge)
    3. “know who” (understanding how you are connected to others, where you can go for different kinds of knowledge and help, and how you can improve your network)
  2. Your preferred modes of learning for different gaps in knowledge, in different settings
  3. Different tools and resources for learning

Training PlanTo develop your personal training plan, you firstly need to understand which are the areas for priority in your learning, then you can plan your training to match your needs.

Were there any areas which you identified during your month-long personal reflection diary which were obviously an urgent need? If not, were there any areas which related to key competencies for your role? You can always check these against your job description if you need to, but most people will have a good idea what knowledge is important for their role. If you are struggling, you could ask your boss what makes certain fee earners stand out, or ask your peers or friends in a similar role in different firms.

You need to think about

  1. areas where you need to learn new skills or fill in clear gaps in technical knowledge
  2. areas where your technical knowledge and skills are OK, but some time spent on considering, say, processes and  obtaining a fresh viewpoint would help deepen your knowledge or help you to question norms to find a better way of practising
  3. ways you can make your new knowledge stick and ways you can help others learn

Identify gaps in knowledge which are easy to fix and those which are more difficult to fix.

Also identify those gaps which are less important, but easy to fix.

Once you have identified these parameters, you can draw up a training plan which covers a balance of skills, technical knowledge and “know who”, but which focuses on matters which are critical to your work. Sprinkle the “easy-to-fix” matters with a small number of “difficult-to-fix” matters.

Make sure you identify learning resources to suit the need: you can begin to learn skills through books/lectures/webinars/MOOCs, but you will need to practice those skills soon after to consolidate what you’ve learned and build on that knowledge with your own experiences. Mentoring, job-shadowing and supervision can be a great resource for consolidating skills. Secondments, job rotations, random conversation/connection programmes (such as the RCT) and investigating areas outside your usual role will help you widen your knowledge and perspective, and question norms, to find a smarter way of practising. Consider attending a conference or training event on a field of interest, but outside your practice area. Also, don’t give up on your learning diary, as constant reflection will help you to consolidate and refine your learning.

In summary:

  • identify gaps in knowledge – technical knowledge, skills (hard and soft), and “know who”
  • identify resources which suit your learning style, setting and the knowledge gap itself
  • create a list of priorities
  • ensure learning is consolidated through action
  • pass on the benefits of your new knowledge through helping others

Lastly, although you should continue to use your learning diary daily/regularly, also diarise to review your programme in 6 months time and ask yourself how it is progressing. Is it delivering what you need it to? Is your knowledge widening and deepening in a way that is improving your practice? If not, review both these articles and work out what is missing, and change things.

And let me know how it all goes. Good luck!

For a free template and download click here.

If your firm would like to know more about the new learning regime and in particular reflective learning, I offer in-house training sessions on  the topic and other KM and learning topics.

For affordable regional learning through presentation, questioning and conversation, consider a group such as Knowledge Network UK, which offers quality specialist training for Knowledge Professionals in Bristol, Birmingham and Manchester, UK.

Love-Learning-stamp-COLOUR

Glad to be a Learning Ambassador, helping Bristol’s Learning City. More here.

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Love Learning

Posted on February 16, 2016 by knowledge4lawyers

If you love learning (of any sort) and live in the West Country of UK, have a look at this website about Bristol’s Learning City and see if there is a way for you or your organisation to get involved.

I’ve always thought that learning and knowledge creation needs to be part of everyone’s KM strategy, as what is the point of great knowledge curation and sharing, if nothing new or proprietary is being created and learned?

Love-Learning-stamp-COLOUR I’ve just become a learning ambassador and I’m looking forward to promoting learning in as many ways as I can think of this year!

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3 steps to more knowledge sharing in your law firm?

Posted on February 4, 2016 by knowledge4lawyers

A PSL friend of mine says she most enjoys the practical posts that I write, so here is a practical 3-step guide to improving the knowledge sharing in your firm (without breaking the bank).

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Does this sound familiar?

You want to encourage your lawyers to share their knowledge, but it is difficult. They let you down over promised training events and newsletter articles. They fail to share useful knowledge with the wider firm unless you nag. You come at the bottom of their “to-do” list. You understand. They are busy with chargeable work.

What can you do to turn things around?

My MBA research into knowledge-sharing antecedents (downloads at the end) showed that the majority of lawyers were intrinsically motivated to share their knowledge with others, but found that the barriers placed in their way (mostly related to fundamental business structures) were difficult to overcome.thank you heart leaf

They enjoyed knowledge sharing, but business structures inhibited them.

You probably don’t have enough influence to change the whole structure of your firm, so what can you do?

This isn’t a magic wand, but hopefully this very simple 3-step plan will help you nurture the existing knowledge sharing which is already happening in your firm.

Despite the barriers that exist in all law firms, I bet some of your lawyers still manage to contribute something towards your KM efforts.

Despite these barriers, I bet some lawyers enjoy some aspects of their work so much that they “make time” for additional tasks and fit them in somehow.

If so, then you can build on this. You can show that you understand how they’ve swum against the tide and done more than the average fee earner, that you truly appreciate their efforts and that you’d really like them to continue.

So, a 3 step plan for you:

  1. Identify who in your team/department/firm, has done any knowledge-sharing (and define this quite widely).

Have they:

  • Given a talk/organised some internal training
  • Written an article for your blog or newsletter
  • Mentored or taken time to help a junior member of staff
  • Given you some material for a database/project
  • Given you some helpful feedback about a project you are working on
  • Given up some of their time to help you with a project
  • Supported your knowledge sharing efforts in some way

I know knowledge sharing should be “just what we do around here” but it usually isn’t, so draw your net widely.

2.  Choose one person from the list and think about the kind of person that individual is. Tailor a small token of appreciation to suit them.

A name will probably stand out when you look at that list, for quantity/quality of help.

What do you know about their likes and dislikes? Are they gregarious or quiet? Do they love food or art? Do they like being the centre of many people’s attention or the focus of one person’s attention?

Think of a small token of appreciation that will work for them and give it to them in the way you think will be best for them. You could quietly drop off a chocolate coin/beautiful postcard at their desk. You could name them as an “expert” in your next team meeting or internal news-round. You could recommend them for a particular role or training day.

3. Talk to them about what they enjoyed about those pieces of knowledge-sharing work (and what they don’t like doing and why). Then see if you can push similar work in their direction and limit the rest.

It may be that they have ended up with a particular area of expertise, but enjoy working in a different field. It may be that they have to do a lot of public speaking for their job, but secretly loathe it and love writing articles instead. It may be that they’d make a great informal mentor, but haven’t had the opportunity yet. They may struggle with coming up with a topic for a talk/article/piece for your database, but once tasked with someone else’s topic or half-written article, they’ll enjoy researching it brilliantly or polishing it to a shine. Try to understand them and work with their preferences.

Then return to step 2 and repeat. Try to do this at least once a month, more often if you can. Don’t make it a formal “thing”. Make it authentic.

This plan isn’t about finding the weakest link and giving them all the work, but about finding out what work is a joy rather than a burden to your lawyers/fee earners and trying to ensure that the right work goes to the right people.

Let me know how you get on!

A bit more reading:

  1. My articles first published in Managing Partner about my research into knowledge sharing antecedents. Part 1    Part 2
  2. Rewarding your Team from Mindtools – lots of great tips on matching the team member to the token of appreciation
  3. 5 ideas to… 5 ways to thank contributors to your KM system

 

Do you want me to come to talk to your KMers or lawyers about my research into knowledge sharing antecedents and how you can improve rates of knowledge sharing? Download my training programme here

And visit my website here

 

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Birmingham Knowledge Network dates released!

Posted on January 29, 2016 by knowledge4lawyers

Birmingham eventsI’m delighted to announce our finalised programme of events for Birmingham:

  • 17th March, Graham Mitchell, Organisational Psychologist talks about change management and change readiness in law firms and gives top tips for embedding your new KM projects
  • 10th May, Duncan Oglivy and Melanie Farqueson from 3 Kites talk about new trends in law firm KM technology and help you to understand what could suit the needs of your firmKNUK1
  • 14th June, Sarah Fox, 500 Word Lawyer, talks about clarity in writing and helps you to improve your writing, whether that is technical precedent or marketing material
  • tba September, Mark West from Integreon talks about new ways to understand the needs of clients so that your firm can delight them

An annual pass for Knowledge Network costs £250 (5% discount if you apply before 31st January, 20% discount for second and subsequent passes). More info here.

For that, you receive 8+ hours of lovely training, which takes place over lunchtimes (12.30-2.30) in Birmingham City Centre, as well as our annual best practice survey, White Papers, Leaders Group, tailored learning (topics are chosen through a separate annual survey in each city) and November lunch social.

Buy an early bird pass before 31st January 2016 and get 5% off.

If you are interested in coming to a single event, that costs £100 pp.

We also have a new group in Manchester and I’ll release the dates for their events soon.

E-mail me if you are interested in joining in!

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Knowledge Network UK – Bristol event dates released!

Posted on January 19, 2016 by knowledge4lawyers

year of influencing v1

It’s our year of understanding and influencing at Knowledge Network UK and I’m delighted to announce our (very nearly!) finalised programme of Bristol events:

  • 14th March, Dr Hugo Gaggiotti, Course Director of MBA at UWE talks about understanding issues in cross-cultural projects and managing international projects
  • 5th May, Tony Coll helps us to understand the needs of the media in order to get the best coverage for our firms
  • 8th June, Carol Skolimowski talks about leadership and influencing
  • 5th July, Mark West from Integreon talks about new ideas for client understanding and engagement
  • 8th September, Graham Mitchell talks about understanding lawyers personalities in order to work more effectively with them.

An annual pass for Knowledge Network costs £250. For that, you receive 8+ hours of lovely training, which takes place over lunchtimes (12.30-2.30) in Bristol City Centre, as well as our annual best practice survey, White Papers, Leaders Group, tailored learning (topics are chosen through a separate annual survey in each city) and November lunch social.

Buy an early bird pass before 31st January 2016 and get 5% off. Buy more than one pass and get 20% off the second and subsequent passes.

If you are interested in coming to a single event, that costs £100 pp.

We also have groups in Birmingham and Manchester and I’ll release the dates for their events soon.

E-mail me if you are interested in joining in!

 

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Continuing competence? Getting started… (1)

Posted on January 13, 2016 by knowledge4lawyers

It’s crept up on us, but law firms must now move away from the traditional strict CPD structure based on time spent and towards a new era of needs-based learning. The old system won’t officially cease until November 2016, but you need to get yourself organised for the new system now.

If you want to learn more about the new system, have a read here.

But what does this mean for you? How can you change mindsets and make sure that you get the training and new knowledge that you need?

Goals: white board

This is the first of two blog posts on the new regime and how you, as an individual, can make sure that you are getting the learning opportunities which you need, even if your firm doesn’t have a big budget to spend on you. If you want to make sure you receive/read every post in the series, you can either follow this blog or sign up for my monthly “busy-person’s round-up”, which will summarise all my blog posts and a few other interesting bits every four weeks.

What is the new regime?

The new regime requires you to:

  1. analyse your learning needs for your role, discuss them with your firm, and
  2. create a tailored learning plan to ensure that those learning needs are met.

You can meet those learning needs in lots of different ways, including:

  • coaching and mentoring,
  • workshadowing,
  • face-to-face and online courses, and
  • research, teaching and writing for publications.

Where should you start?

Firstly, I recommend that you read up on some of the alternative ways of learning, creating and sharing knowledge, and sparking innovation. Other industries have learnt a lot recently about what works and what doesn’t. You may be surprised at what you learn.

I suggest that you start with “Deep Smarts” by D Leonard et al, and, especially if you are looking at your own training needs, “Know your Value” by M Cope.

Secondly, you need to analyse your training/learning needs.

To do this, I recommend that you keep a reflective learning diary for at least a month. Get yourself a new notebook, or create a new document/note/file for audio/video on your tablet/phone.

If you would like a template for a reflective learning diary, click here.

At the end of each day (maybe on the train home?) scribble/record a few notes about what went well and what was difficult that day and what you think might improve your skills and make you more attractive to clients and better at your job.

Write a few lines under the following headings:

  1. What noteable thing occurred today? What knowledge did I use and need?
  2. What do I think about the event? How did it make me feel?
  3. What do I need to do to improve the outcome next time? What knowledge or skills do I need to improve?
  4. Where will I find these resources? What types of learning can help me fill the gaps?
  5. What will I do differently next time?

Nearly missed a court deadline? Was it lack of knowledge about the importance of the deadline, struggling with time/file management skills, lack of understanding of your case management system, poor checklists/processes, confusion/mis-communication between yourself and another employee?

Don’t just focus on the negative. Did something go really well? What knowledge do you have in abundance, which perhaps you could share with others? It doesn’t matter if you are a junior member of staff, lots of us have developed particular skills or knowledge which are worth sharing with others. That could be sharing with people at your firm or you could develop a seminar for clients and share your knowledge with them. Use something you do well to develop a new skill (presentations, writing, organising events, marketing, networking). Or build on an area where you are knowledgeable, to develop a valuable deeper understanding.

If you went to a training event or undertook some form of learning, think about how it made you feel and how well it worked for you. You need to identify what methods of learning suit you best. Some people struggle with online courses but thrive with work-shadowing. Get efficient and focus on what suits you.

Be honest with yourself. Sometimes it is difficult to be honest about the reasons things happen as they do, especially when things go wrong, and it can help to write a few lines on the day of the event, but also to come back to the diary after a month and make additional notes. At this point you could also reflect on any common themes that you see. For example, was there 1 incident that you put down to poor time management but lots of difficulties working with your firm’s IT? Maybe on further reflection you are being hard on yourself blaming your time management on that occasion? Maybe you need more help with the case management system? Are you a great lawyer, but have a blind spot in one area of law or are you terrible at sharing what you know?

Once you have identified the knowledge, both expertise and gaps, you need to think about what you are going to do now: what will you do to plug gaps in knowledge, what will you do to exploit/build on areas of expertise?

Your ideas for resources and learning to fill the gaps could be anything: improving your understanding of your existing area of law, presentation and negotiation skills, new complementary skills (mediation? a new area of law?), more specialist legal training, understanding process management, understanding law firm metrics, management and profitability. Don’t limit the possibilities for learning at this stage. If you have read the books I suggested at the beginning, hopefully you will be able to be more creative about your opportunities and your list won’t just say “Go on a course on A, B & C” 🙂

Depending on what occurs that month, you should end up with a big list of knowledge and skills for improvement and exploitation.

Next time we will look at improving that list and what to do with it. Don’t miss the next post. Sign up to the news/round-up here, and follow the blog (top right button).

 

Link to the next continuing competence article here.

And if you need a spot of practical and useful training in Knowledge creation and management, come along to one of my regular intensive one-day workshops in London. More info here.

Or if your firm needs training or advice on the new regime, let me know.

And here’s that free download again 🙂

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Foundation course in Legal KM

Posted on January 8, 2016 by knowledge4lawyers

I’m running my popular (“7/7” “practical and useful”) foundation course in legal sector KM again on 28th January 2016 in London.

Do you know any…

  • new-ish PSLs,
  • Information professionals looking to add skills,
  • Partners with responsibility for Knowledge issues,
  • Leaders writing their first KM strategy?

This course is for them!

Learn all the basics about KM in one intensive day-long course.

We’ve had attendees from in-house legal teams, big firms, small firms and across Europe – everyone leaves with great ideas to begin to improve their firms.

More info here http://theknowledgebusiness.co.uk/kmtheworks.html

See all my open events on Eventbrite here.

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2015 in review

Posted on January 5, 2016 by knowledge4lawyers

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2015 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 2,700 times in 2015. If it were a cable car, it would take about 45 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

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Fail – first attempt in learning

Posted on December 7, 2015 by knowledge4lawyers

failure

So I didn’t finish my KM Strategies book during NaNoWriMo *sigh*. Just too many other balls in the air. Still, thanks to my failed attempt, I already have half a book, which just needs finishing. That sounds much easier than writing the whole thing!

For me, it’s a great example of how failure can be success-in-progress.

My book will get finished in the end and without this “failure” it would have taken me a lot longer than it will now (if you know what I mean) and the process of writing always helps me to clarify my thoughts.

However, learning from failure requires us to spend time reflecting on what is working and be honest about what isn’t working.

For me, NaNo has been enormously useful in helping me to clarify my priorities. Trying to add “writing another book” on top of all my usual responsbilities has helped me to understand where writing currently sits in priority against other jobs, and re-think where it ought to sit. Why did I prioritise other jobs ahead of writing this November and are those priorities the right ones? This way I’ll be ready for next time.

 

If you would like to receive occasional (usually monthly) emails with a summary of my recent posts, you can sign up to my newsletter.

If you want to find out more about my current books, click here.

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Mentoring for knowledge retention and transfer

Posted on November 20, 2015 by knowledge4lawyers

IMG_1113You want to improve knowledge retention and transfer within your law firm. You may have a strong supervision programme for junior members of staff, but do you need to do more? Would a mentoring programme help?

Firstly, do you really “get” the difference between mentoring, supervision and coaching? They have similar elements, but which is useful for transfer and retention of knowledge?

 

A supervisor is responsible for overseeing the supervisee’s work and ensuring that he/she does their job as expected: mistakes are spotted and corrected, KPIs are met. Supervision is about monitoring.

A mentor is a guide or trusted advisor who interacts with the mentee in order to help them to succeed. Mentors have generally “been there before” and know traps and pitfalls. Mentoring is about relationships and guidance.

Coaching is about asking questions to help someone question their own actions and goals, in order to help them find the solutions they need by themselves. Coaches don’t advise, but they tend to be task oriented and often work with people for a limited time, until the task in question is complete. You can use a coaching style in either a supervisory or mentoring relationship.

 

Once you clarify the difference between the roles, it becomes more apparent how supervision and mentoring can help you with knowledge retention and transfer.

Firstly, ask yourself what kinds of knowledge you need to transfer/retain. The dividing lines aren’t as obvious as this suggests, but as a guide…

Supervision is often useful for transfer of:

  • explicit knowledge and some tacit knowledge,
  • declarative and procedural knowledge,
  • embrained, encoded and embedded knowledge.

Mentoring can be particularly useful for:

  • hard-to-reach tacit knowledge,
  • causal and relational knowledge,
  • Deep Smarts (see D Leonard’s book),
  • embodied, encultured and embedded knowledge.

Which types of knowledge does your firm struggle with retaining/transferring? When you understand that and understand the differing approaches of supervision and mentoring, it becomes plain whether you should work on improving your supervision process or whether to improve/start a mentoring scheme.

Do you want an occasional (approx monthly) email with updates about my latest blog post and open training events? Sign up here.

Do you struggle a bit with the definition of “knowledge” and what tools and techniques to try?  You aren’t alone, many KMers in law firms have no formal training in Knowledge Management theory. For this reason, I run a day-long course specifically looking at the basics of legal sector KM in London each January, May and September. More info here.

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