I used the telephone the other day.Of course, using the phone isn't exactly a radical thing to do, except that my reason for using the phone was important: I picked up the phone to short-circuit an e-mail mess. What was the e-mail mess? My colleague and I were e-mailing each other to make some practical... Continue Reading →
Serenity and the Knowledge Manager
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... Continue Reading →
Gen Y’s Delayed Impact on Big Law
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... Continue Reading →
Collaboration and Equity
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... Continue Reading →
The Power of Saying Thank You
Yesterday a colleague asked me to help him locate a particular sort of precedent that was not all that common. When I asked him about his time frame, his reply was "the usual." (Based on prior experience, I knew that the best translation for that was "yesterday.") After quickly reorganizing my schedule, I turned to... Continue Reading →
Setting Limits on Collaboration
Collaboration is the business buzzword* du jour. As with any other fad, it's tempting for business leaders to say that everything they do is collaboration. Resist this temptation. As aptly pointed out in a recent Economist Intelligence Unit report and discussed in this Wikinomics post, if we define collaboration so broadly as to cover virtually... Continue Reading →
Change is Good…You Go First
Change is Good ... You Go First.That's a great line -- worthy of a great philosopher* (e.g., Dilbert or Garfield or Calvin & Hobbes). And it speaks to a fundamental of human nature. While we objectively may understand that a proposed change will be beneficial, we intuitively resist change. Whether it's because it takes a... Continue Reading →
Generation Y versus Big Law
I can't wait until Generation Y lawyers start flooding through the doors of big law firms. We're told that just about everything about Gen Y runs counter to the work ethic and environment of these firms. So a showdown is inevitable. It will be very interesting to see which force prevails. Gen Y is often... Continue Reading →
Getting Your Money’s Worth Out of KM
Lately I've been thinking about whether law firms value knowledge management and how to measure knowledge management ROI. The underlying concern is that law firms don't know how to measure and value knowledge management activities. (If you ask most law firm knowledge managers if their firms are doing a good job valuing KM, I suspect... Continue Reading →
The Key to an Effective Knowledge Management System
Is the key to an effective knowledge management system a "non-optional mindset"? This is an attitude that says that a certain activity (e.g., contributing content or collaborating) is a necessity and must be done. It cannot be avoided, evaded, delayed or ignored. Therefore, it takes precedence over all optional activities.In his provocative post, How to... Continue Reading →
Above and Beyond KM 