Above and Beyond KM

Error + Flexibility = Innovation is a formula few of us were taught in school.  Even fewer of us were told about this during our orientation at our law firms.  Law firms, like most businesses, spend time thinking about the right way of doing things.  This results in business processes that are hardwired into the firm’s systems or “best practices” that are documented and distributed.  Then, all of us are encouraged (or required) to agree to never stray from the chosen path.  

Innovation happens when people use things in unexpected ways, or come up against intractable problems.  We learn from tolerated failure, without [which] the world is sterile and dies.  Systems that eliminate failure, eliminate innovation.

What can law firm knowledge management learn from the war on terror?

Fred Burton, former deputy chief of the counterterrorism division of the U.S. State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service and author of Ghost: Confessions of a Counterterrorism Agent, told Leonard Lopate in a recent public radio interview that counterterrorism experts have a proven set of tools for convincing an informant to collaborate with the US authorities. They use mice.

MICE????

M: Money
I: Ideology
C: Compromise
E: Ego

Their experience has shown that one or more of money, ideology, compromise and ego will be sufficient incentive to cause an enemy informant to become a double agent in service to the US.

So how might we use MICE to assist law firm knowledge management? Perhaps as incentives for collaboration and contribution of content. Let’s start with Money. Some firms have offered outright monetary awards or something similar (e.g., Starbucks cards or gift certificates from other vendors) to induce lawyers to participate in their firm’s knowledge management effort. At one point or another, almost every firm relies on Ego to prod a lawyer into sharing valuable content. As for Ideology, we see this in the law firm context as an individual lawyer’s belief that contributing and collaborating are the right thing to do — that lawyers have a professional responsibility to participate and invest in the institutional knowledge of the firm. Ideology also shows up in the guise of firm culture. It’s a little harder to find a law firm analog for Compromise, but undoubtedly a little further thought would reveal it.

Of these various incentives, I find that Ego and Ideology are the most effective in law firms. In busy times and in economic slowdowns, it’s the lawyers that believe in contributing and collaborating who always find the time to participate in knowledge management initiatives. It takes very little effort on the part of knowledge managers to involve them. Similarly, Ego is a constant. The folks motivated by their ego needs to participate will do so regardless of the business cycle because they get enormous psychic satisfaction from having their names and work product prominently displayed. As for monetary awards, they might spur a little short-term participation, but I doubt they actually lead to long-term collaboration and contribution. (For an earlier discussion of incentives, see Chocolates and Roses.)

Whether dealing with enemy informants or busy lawyers, there are some incentives that have been proven to be effective with all human beings. Perhaps it’s time to put some MICE to work in your knowledge management system.

I used the telephone the other day.

Around the time of WWII, US theologian Reinhold Niebuhr wrote a prayer that has become known as the “Serenity Prayer”:

God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things that should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.

According to the Wikipedia article on this prayer, it became widely known after it was circulated by the World Council of Churches, the US armed forces and various Twelve-Step programs, beginning with Alcoholics Anonymous.

It might be wise to post this prayer in the office of every knowledge manager. Given the constant struggles with technology, the glacial rate of change in user behavior, and the concentrated long-term effort required to achieve even a small modification in organizational culture, it is a challenge to attain serenity. Much of the problem lies in the fact that there are limited areas in which knowledge managers are given a free hand and actually have the ability to affect the organization in a meaningful way. In the quest for relevance and serenity, perhaps our task is to be very clear-eyed about where our efforts can really make a difference and then apply ourselves accordingly. Not every interesting project is worth doing.

My post last week on Generation Y versus Big Law and its impact on law firm knowledge management generated a great deal of traffic and some interesting discussion.  Among the commentators was Anna Ivey, who is an expert in law school admissions.  In her post Gen Y, Meet Big Law, she suggested that Gen Y will not have a revolutionary impact on Big Law, at least not initially, because the lure of large salaries (and the reality of mountains of educational debt) will cause them to refrain from making demands that result in material changes in the way Big Law does business.

In his recent discussion of Charles Heckscher’s book, The Collaborative Enterprise, Larry Prusak notes that while collaboration may be the latest buzzword (with all the attendant shallow writing and commentary that regularly accompanies business fads), Hecksher’s book is a material improvement over most of the other available analysis of collaboration. One striking observation is reported by Prusak in the following way:

[Heckscher] knows well that collaboration depends on trust, and trust depends on a sense of shared equity within the organization. In situations of gross disparities of power and compensation how can one expect collaboration? The real class conflict that exists within most organizations strongly inhibits real collaboration.

These notions of “shared equity” and the perils of “class conflict” raise some interesting issues for law firms, which tend to be highly hierarchical and often lack a sense of shared equity between the partners and their employees (including associates and the non-lawyer staff). If Prusak and Heckscher are correct, will it ever be possible for law firms to develop a true culture of collaboration?