Getting started with KM

Posted on September 10, 2012 by knowledge4lawyers

Are you a partner in a medium-sized or smaller firm, who knows KM could help you in improving your firm’s effectiveness, but is unsure where to start?  These are a few ideas which I hope will help overcome the inertia.

Read up and learn more about KM

Too many people think KM=IT and in order to tick that box they need to invest in an expensive IT system.  This isn’t true.  IT is a great facilitator of the management of a firm’s knowledge, but it is only half the story.  Read around the topic and learn what KM is really about and you’ll probably find that there are lots of things that you can do far more cheaply that will really improve the way knowledge flows around your firm.

Start with a fast-track KM strategy, aligned to your business strategy and begin making some positive changes straightaway

It can be tempting to feel totally overwhelmed by the task of starting your first KM strategy, but don’t delay making changes which will improve your business in order to start with a perfect strategy.  Don’t waste the opportunity to benefit straightaway.  You simply need to understand what your business’s top three objectives are for the next few years and compare how current activity supports this.  Once you know more about KM (see 1) you’ll see that you probably already do a fair amount of KM work, some of it really effective and some less so, and with some important gaps which only become obvious when you look at KM strategically.  Make sure you are covering all the important basics, then move onto the more sophisticated tools/techniques which promote your business objectives.

Be clear about your budget

There’s no point wasting time and money on aspects that you can’t afford to change – concentrate on those aspects that you can afford to change.  Don’t completely ignore the bigger projects, though – try to understand what data you will need in order to analyse the cost-benefit of potential solutions and take the simpler steps, so that when you do have the budget to tackle the bigger projects, you aren’t totally at square one.

Use the covering fire of quick wins to make progress in the longer battles

Get your fee earners involved in analysing their own work processes so that everyone can make real strides in improving their efficiency and effectiveness by studying how their knowledge is managed.  Once they see how their own work can be transformed by some strategic thought around KM, they will be far more likely to support you in tougher battles which may benefit the firm, but seem hard to individuals.

Don’t assume you have to do this alone

There are a number of independent professionals now who can help you in a wide variety of fields for fixed fees or hourly rates.  As well as those like me who offer independent KM advice, I’ve met independent PSLs and Information Professionals, and of course there were always contract IT professionals and self-employed marketeers to help you with the client-facing KM.

If you are new to KM, what have you found to be the best ways to just get started?  It’d be really interesting (and probably inspirational to others) to know.

If you need any training or advice, try The Knowledge Business or DIY with “Knowledge Management Handbook” from the Law Society.

 

*Update* “Practical Projects in legal KM: A Year of Living Knowledgeably” is now available to buy, giving you 12 fully planned projects to improve the knowledge flow in your law firm.

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I also talk about getting started in law firm KM in my popular “KM: The Works” training session in London (January/May/September). Find out more here.

I run various open training events in London. Click here for the latest ones on Eventbrite.

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Generic Strategies 101

Posted on July 12, 2012 by knowledge4lawyers

This is my second blog post about strategy, which follows on from my recent MBA module on the topic.  Read the previous one, Avoiding Bad Decisions, here.

This post looks at Michael Porter’s Generic Strategies and how these can be applied to KM within law firms and how they may affect KM strategies.

Michael Porter developed his “Generic Strategies” in 1985 (details at end).

From empirical evidence, Porter noticed that there was often higher profitability in firms with high or low market share and the least profitable organisations were those with a moderate market share.  He concluded that businesses which tried to be “all things to all people” suffer below average performance because of the inherent difficulty of trying to balance reducing costs and supplying added-value.  He averred that long-term strategic advantage would only come from following strategies in the following fields – cost leadership and differentiation. These two fields broke down into three generic strategies:

  • Broad Cost Leadership – being the leader in low costs in your industry
  • Broad Differentiation – selling a unique product or service with a unique value to your customer, often for a premium price
  • Focus – cost leadership or differentiation for a target segment

He advised that businesses which failed to focus on one of these would end up “stuck in the middle” and struggle to compete with businesses utilising cost leadership, focus or differentiation, because those competitors would be better placed to compete in any segment.

So what does this mean for KM in law firms?

If your firm is following a Generic Strategy, how can  your KM strategy support your firm in this?

Cost Leadership entails producing your product/service with a level of features which is acceptable to many clients, but at a lower cost than your competitors, which can enable you to reduce your charging rates lower than your competitors (although “cost leadership” isn’t always synonymous with lowest price – you may be able to capture the difference as additional profit, at least in the short term).

If your firm is committed to achieving Cost Leadership, you will need support it by a focus on cost leadership within KM.  The following is a list of ideas, by no means exhaustive, but hopefully sufficient to spark a few ideas of your own, which are particularly relevant to your firm:

  • reducing  staff costs, perhaps by hiring less expensive staff and training them up, and/or by reducing staff turnover
  • reducing training costs by devising in-house schemes for sharing skills and knowledge amongst team members
  • utilising seasonal capacity – if you know one department tends to have a busy season and a quiet one, arrange to utilise this downtime with Knowledge work
  • reducing expenses by using technology such as video conferencing and webinars
  • investing in technology which has benefits for processes and service delivery, and can increase leverage (case management systems, document automation)
  • analysing the cost-benefit of outsourcing non-proprietary knowledge services
  • focussing on the features that clients really appreciate and drop the nice-to-haves, particularly in relation to client-facing KM

A Differentiation Strategy requires a focus on quality, exclusivity, high client-care levels, rapid innovation and generally trying to create a service which is difficult or expensive for its competitors to try to replicate.

If your firm is pursuing a Differentiation strategy, you will need to be clear how it is differentiating itself and support it in that, perhaps by:

  • understanding what value clients place on different aspects of legal service and support fee earning staff in offering value-added services
  • improving customer service by offering KM services to select clients
  • supporting fee earning staff in their training and learning to enable delivery of exceptionally skilled and experienced services
  • encouraging and supporting fee earning staff in their collaboration and innovation to develop new and unique services
  • fostering a general culture of knowledge-sharing, continuous improvement, innovation, collaboration and learning
  • supporting fee earning staff in providing a quality service (which may mean investing in expanding your KM team and other resources)
  • reducing KM staff turnover and improving their motivation
  • helping to reduce fee earner staff turnover and improve motivation through closely aligning KM offering with fee earner needs
  • supporting perceptions through client-facing knowledge-based marketing (seminars, newsletters, social media etc)

If your firm has chosen a Focus strategy, you will need to be clear about what knowledge or expertise will add value for your niche clients that isn’t available to broad market competitors.  Many of the strategies involved in a focussed strategy will be similar to those in cost leadership and differentiation, but focussed on the needs of a particular niche.

Of course Porter’s Generic Strategies aren’t without their critics.  In summary, these are:

  1. being “in the middle” needn’t be a mistake and a “best-cost provider” focus may be difficult to achieve but it can provide a long-term competitive advantage (e.g. Toyota)
  2. cost leadership strategies often initiate price wars, which are unsustainable over the longer-term
  3. in the 1980s business environments may have been fairly stable, but today they are highly volatile, with disruptive technologies, and rigid business strategies do not allow for agile responsiveness to change
  4. there has been some disagreement over the data upon which Porter based his theory, with some finding that those businesses with hybrid strategies are more profitable than Porter thought and may even be more profitable than those with generic strategies
  5. Porter’s theory is very industry focussed and instead of competing “better”, businesses ought to look outside their present market at new ones where market demand isn’t being met at present  (search for the “blue ocean”)

What do you think?  Is your firm following one of the Generic Strategies?  If so, how do you support it within your KM department?  Or do you know a firm which has a really good Generic Strategic focus or indeed one following a really successful hybrid strategy?  How does its KM department play its part?

Read more

Michael Porter “Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance” The Free Press, New York

Kim, Chan & Mauborgne “Blue Ocean” Harvard Business School Press

“Knowledge Management Handbook” Law Society

 

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I teach KM Strategy each July in London and also talk about it in my popular “KM: The Works” foundation training day (Jan/May/Sept). Find out about the latest events on Eventbrite here.

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Avoiding bad decisions – strategic red flags

Posted on July 5, 2012 by knowledge4lawyers

Good leaders make bad decisions.  Good firms make wrong turns.  When things change, it often seems to be the most successful businesses which are the slowest to adapt.  I’ve just finished the Strategy module on my MBA and this is a topic which we debated at length.

There is no doubt that things are changing for the legal profession: limits on publicly funded work; ABSs; tighter court controls on costs; new entrants to the market; outsourced support services; in-sourced legal work to cheaper localities; new technologies and new ways of working.

As part of my MBA module, we looked at “Why good companies go bad” by Donald N Sull (details below), who points out that the majority of businesses in this situation do not fail because of paralysis, as previously thought, but due to active inertia.  The challenges are often recognised, analysed and a flurry of activity results, and yet businesses still fail to respond adequately.

Strategic decision-making may be too large a topic for a blog post here, but I thought it would be valuable to share some of the red flags, relevant to law firms and KM, that Prof Sull highlights, so that you can recognise them and challenge them in your businesses.

This may mean recognising them within your own internal dialogue and challenging yourself to think anew or recognising the thinking in others and challenging them.

Prof Sull highlights four modes of thinking that bring failure:

  1. blinders – strategic frames/mind-sets shape how a business sees the world and concentrates managers’ minds on items that matter (who are we, who are our customers, what business are we in, who are our competitors), which are valuable until they start to restrict peripheral vision so that no one spots new options and opportunities, and most importantly, disruptive technologies and competitors
  2. routines – efficient processes can strip out waste and improve productivity, but where those processes become routines and employees stop exploring new ways of doing their jobs, adaptations and more appropriate processes are not explored
  3. shackles – strong relationships with employees, customers and suppliers can be very valuable, but when conditions shift, a business needs to be free to consider whether or not it would be better off with different customers, suppliers or employees
  4. dogmas – a business’s values often unify and inspire its people, however, if they begin to harden into restrictive rules and regulations, they can prevent innovation as people “circle their wagons” in the face of perceived threats

What is interesting about all these modes of thinking, is that they will have brought a business its first successes, but it is the business’s inability to adapt and change, which makes them insidious.

So, how do you know where you are on the scale of good – bad with these modes of thinking?  Prof Sull lists a few suggestions of mind-sets which may suggest a problem, or at least need futher investigation.  I’ve adapted his list below, concentrating on those which most (to my eyes) affect law firms and their Knowledge professionals.

  • We know our market/clients/competition inside out
  • We can’t allow ourselves to get distracted by all the new fads in the marketplace
  • If it ain’t broke, we don’t fix it
  • We have carved out an enduring leadership position within our industry
  • We view our suppliers/clients as key strategic partners and don’t want to alienate them by rushing into new markets/new channels/doing X
  • Our top priority is keeping our existing clients happy
  • Our processes/systems are world class and we follow them religiously
  • Our processes/systems are so well tuned, the firm practically runs itself
  • Our corporate values are sacred; we’ll never change them
  • We have a well-entrenched firm culture
  • We have high levels of employee loyalty, but new talent seems to leave

What do you think?  Have you witnessed active inertia in the past? Have you seen it overcome? If so, how?

Read more

“Why good companies go bad” by Donald N Sull, Harvard Business Review July-August 1999, pages 42-52

“Why good companies go bad and how great managers can remake them” Donald N Sull, Harvard Business Review Press, June 9, 2005

“Knowledge Management Handbook” Law Society Publishing

And for personal Knowledge and process help and advice for your organisation, visit TheKnowledgeBusiness.

I teach in London on various KM-related topics, including KM Strategies. Find out what is on here.

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KM irritations

Posted on May 19, 2012 by knowledge4lawyers

What irritates you in your knowledge work?  These are some of my bugbears.  Interestingly, although some of them may never be solved, some of them would at least be ameliorated by greater firm-wide awareness of what KM is and how it works in law firms.

  1. When people try to fix broken communication culture with IT …
  2. But also when people think that there is no value to databases and all databases are ‘graveyards’
  3. Those who think that, just because the value of knowledge strategies can be difficult to measure, they’ll not do any knowledge work at all …
  4. But also when people give up trying to measure results and demonstrate value because it is difficult
  5. Those that say that what they do is too bespoke to have any standard elements at all …
  6. But also those who think that all legal work could be done by computer programs
  7. And lastly, those who fail to take into account the effect on a firm’s combined knowledge when undertaking their cost-benefit analysis in respect of restructuring (outsourcing or redundancies) or changing working practices (changing office layouts or team structures)

Perhaps if we all spent a little more time being cheerleaders for our work we could minimise these?  How do you market your knowledge team(s) and what are your bugbears?

If you fancy marketing your Knowledge department a bit more, you may find this article useful https://knowledge4lawyers.wordpress.com/2010/07/01/kmbuzz/ or if you want to improve your training, have a look at my training packages here.

 

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Measuring successfully – 5 ideas

Posted on April 26, 2012 by knowledge4lawyers

Someone asked me recently how they could improve the ways that they proved the worth of their KM work to the rest of the law firm.  Money is tight in many firms and KM can appear to some people to be a luxury (rather than, as I see it, the heart of how law firms arrange themselves to do effective and efficient business).  Effective measurement systems can help KM-ers demonstrate the worth of their projects.

These are a few ideas to help you if you are grappling with the issue of measurement:

  1. Use a mix of measurements (quantitive and qualitative; leading and lagging)
  2. What is measured gets managed/you get what you measure (so watch out for people unconsciously gaming results)
  3. Be clear about the business goal for measuring results and know what you will do differently depending upon the results (and what you can afford to do)
  4. Use measurements that are already in use in the business (these presumably are measured because they are useful for the organisation and the means for collecting these will often already exist)
  5. Identify the audience for the results and use the measurement which will mean the most to them (i.e. if the measurements are for a monthly report to the Exec Board, try to use the same metrics that they use in relation to other aspects of the firm; speak the right “language” for the audience)

How do you measure your firm’s KM activity and assess what is working and what isn’t?  What are your top 5 tips?

For personal help and advice, visit TheKnowledgeBusiness.

I run open training sessions on KM Measurement in London (February/June/October). Learn more here.

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

I also talk about metrics in my popular “KM: The Works” training sessions (January/May/September). Find out more here.

 

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…but not the twitter

Posted on April 18, 2012 by knowledge4lawyers

“I like your ideas … but not the twitter … no, absolutely not… it’s a non-starter…”

I have to admit that this recent comment in relation to a report to a mid-sized law firm caught me by surprise and prompted me to wonder “Why do so few senior lawyers “get” twitter?”.

My thought has always been “Why not?” rather than “Why?”.

  • It’s free (apart from the cost of the time spent on it).
  • It’s easy to work with, right from the start, and if you struggle, you can listen in until you are confident enough to take part.
  • It’s reach can be vast and followers are self-selecting (no irritating potential clients who didn’t want to receive your news).
  • It offers easy ways to measure success  (who is retweeting which of your tweets and how often?).
  • It offers easy search options, using key words or hashtags.
  • It offers easy ways to engage with customers (retweets, replies and direct messages),  converse with them and become closer to them.

Twitter is best for creating relationships and having conversations, but even if you haven’t the time to invest in doing that, it still has a role for research and broadcasting.

There are risks around client confidentiality and defamation and the risk that a single tweeter could negatively affect the firm’s brand, but if you have your HR policies in place and choose your tweeter with care, these needn’t stop you.

What do you think? Why don’t lawyers “get” Twitter?

Additional reading

Law Society’s Social Media practice note

A Practical Guide to Twitter

And for more advice on KM buy the Law Society’s “Knowledge Management Handbook” or visit TheKnowledgeBusiness

 

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I also talk about social media for knowledge sharing and marketing in my popular “KM: The Works” training session. The next one is on 28th January 2016. Find out more here.

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happy management = happy clients

Posted on April 3, 2012 by knowledge4lawyers

Lawyers often struggle with customer satisfaction issues.  Time after time surveys suggest that they get client relationships wrong.  Often a law firm’s response to relationship problems is to limit access to clients and increase controls.

An article I came across recently in Management Today suggests that this is the wrong solution.

The “Happy Manifesto” by Henry Stewart gives ten guiding principles to making staff more engaged, happier and more productive.  I won’t repeat all of his ten principles here, you can follow the links above, but I will highlight one in particular, which really struck me as a great, simple idea for law firms.

Select managers who are good at managing. Make sure your people are supported by somebody who is good at doing that, and find other routes for those whose strengths lie elsewhere. Even better, allow people to choose their own managers.

Let the partners who can mentor, teach, manage and develop junior members of staff, specialise in that and create the culture of learning and knowledge-sharing necessary for a well-leveraged law firm with happy productive staff who delight their clients (and let the partners who are best left alone to get on with their work (and charge like the light brigade), do that without negatively affecting the culture).

What do you think?

For practice management advice and help, visit TheKnowledgeBusiness.

 

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Flex for success

Posted on March 30, 2012 by knowledge4lawyers

I went to an excellent seminar last week at UWE, one of their Distinguished Executive Address series. Christine Hodgson, CEO of Capgemini UK plc was speaking about “Embracing technology for business success”.

At one point in the talk she reminded us how much technology had changed even relatively recently: social media, instant messaging, smartphones, mobile e-commerce.  Any business plan written in 2005 would be laughably out of date now.

Did any of us truly foresee how many people would switch to smartphones and how far these would become embedded within our society?  Did we realise the extent to which this would support the use of social media?  Did any of us realise how, despite the recession, people would still invest in smartphones when they could barely afford their gas bills?  Did we anticipate that people in the developing world would prioritise the purchase of mobile phones so highly?

So how does this affect those of us working in KM in law firms?

There are plenty of technological lessons to be learned by firms about ensuring they have caught up with recent changes: having mobile-enabled websites or updated security systems to support the tablets and smartphones lawyers will want to use when out and about.  However, this is a KM blog not a technology blog.

The talk reminded me about the fundamental importance of:

  1. focussing on current and future business needs in all KM work
  2. continuously adapting and improving a firm’s KM strategy

We all know that we should have an up to date KM strategy, we should be referring to our KM strategy regularly and reviewing it annually at least, but how often do we actually do that?

These are challenging times in the legal sector: LPOs, ABSs, changes to legal aid and recoverability of costs, outsourcing, offshoring, automated document assembly.  It is therefore doubly important that a KM department supports and promotes the organisation’s current business goals and utilises the right technology, not the business goals and technology available when it last prioritised a review of its strategy.  It needs to keep nimble and flexible to remain successful.

 

I teach about KM-related topics, including KM Strategies. Find out more here.

For personal help and advice visit TheKnowledgeBusiness.

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When should KM become a priority?

Posted on March 20, 2012 by knowledge4lawyers

Those managing small to medium-sized law firms often struggle to balance competing practice management costs and decide how to prioritise their spending. This post looks at practical situations which suggest that your law firm ought to be prioritising knowledge management more highly.

  1. Are your clients are becoming more demanding of your firm: increasingly price-sensitive; demanding certainty on fees; and demanding services beyond conventional fee earning?
  2. Does your precedent database (whether on paper or online) appear to be expensive to maintain?  Do you worry that you are paying to duplicate content which you suspect may be available more cheaply online?
  3. Have any of your firm’s Partners come back from a meeting with an existing or potential client and found that a different lawyer from the firm has already met with them recently, but they knew nothing about that meeting beforehand?
  4. Do you or other lawyers find that, when they have serious problems with files, they’re confident someone somewhere in the firm knows the answer, but they don’t know who?  Or after grappling with problems, do they later bump into a fee earner who has already solved that tricky issue, and so fear they can no longer bill their full time?
  5. Has your firm has lost, whether through redundancy, resignation or retirement, key people and those who remain are feeling that loss?
  6. Does your firm want to offer fixed fees to its clients, but is struggling to both compete with other firms and still make a profit?
  7. Do  your fee earners struggle to keep their legal knowledge up to date?
  8. Are your senior lawyers reluctant to delegate work to junior staff members, not because there isn’t enough work to share, but because they worry about the skills of the juniors?  Or can you not start to think about employing paralegals to bring costs down, because your in-house knowledge bases, systems and precedents are no longer fit for purpose?
  9. Is your firm happy with the level of write-offs, realisation rates, bill deductions?
  10. Does your knowledge-based marketing (newsletters, seminars, blogs etc) take up too much of your senior lawyers’ time?
  11. Do your lawyers prefer to work in silos, keeping work, clients and ideas to themselves, because that is how it has always been done?
  12. Do you have more than 30 fee earners and are you now thinking about employing know-how lawyers?
  13. Do your clients report that too much time has been spent on matters that they saw little value in, and too little time has been spent on those matters that they truly valued?
  14. Does your knowledge-based marketing fail to impress your existing clients or reach new clients?

If you have answered “yes” to any of these questions, your firm needs to look at its knowledge management strategy (if it has one) and prioritise spending on this area more highly.  If your firm doesn’t have a knowledge management strategy yet, it is now time to start one.

If you want to begin or improve your knowledge management strategy or knowledge activities, where do you go from here?

I hope that reading the following should help, but also look at the other blogs, textbooks and tweeters I have recommended.

But if you are still struggling, consider getting some professional help.

Call (07976 360 348) or email me (helenerussell@theknowledgebusiness.co.uk) for a free chat about your KM challenges.

I offer open training courses in KM fundamentals, KM Strategies and KM measurement, or a wide variety of in-house training courses. I also offer coaching, to ensure that you actually finish that first KM Strategy! Latest on Eventbrite here.

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The Future of KM

Posted on February 9, 2012 by knowledge4lawyers

I seem to read a lot of articles at the moment predicting the death of KM.

Personally, as increased competition puts pressure on law firms, I see a bright future for KM in the legal sector, although I have assumed that “KM” includes all the ways that firms create, capture, access, apply, interpret and utilize the combined knowledge of their employees to improve their businesses, rather than just those expensive graveyard databases that were once so popular.

I bet these come back to haunt me, but here goes…

My top 6 predictions for the future are:

  1. Increased demand for KM (in the wide sense) from all kinds of law firms, not just the “circles”.
  2. More intelligent use of IT – giving up the search for a killer database app and concentrating instead on technology which facilitates communication and conversation between fee earners.
  3. Acceptance of the importance of human interaction and an understanding that conversations at/about work add value to the business.
  4. Right-sourcing – in-sourcing, out-sourcing and off-shoring, but only where they save cost and improve (or at least do not negatively affect) value to clients, including a reconsideration of business processes previously out-sourced, some of which will be brought back in-house.
  5. Social media goes mainstream, although it will take a while before lawyers get beyond broadcasting into conversations and engagement.
  6. Intelligent measurement systems to improve the strategic focus of KM systems.

What do you think?  What are your top 5/6 predictions?

For personal advice and help, visit TheKnowledgeBusiness.

 

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