The iPad: For Techies Or Ordinary Users?

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="152" caption="Marcio Jose Sanchez/Associated Press"][/caption] David Pogue writes an interesting dual-view review of the iPad.

In 10 years of reviewing tech products for The New York Times, I’ve never seen a product as polarizing as Apple’s iPad, which arrives in stores on Saturday.

“This device is laughably absurd,” goes a typical remark on a tech blog’s comments board. “How can they expect anyone to get serious computer work done without a mouse?”

“This truly is a magical revolution,” goes another. “I can’t imagine why anyone will want to go back to using a mouse and keyboard once they’ve experienced Apple’s visionary user interface!”

Those are some pretty confident critiques of the iPad — considering that their authors have never even tried it.

In any case, there’s a pattern to these assessments.

The haters tend to be techies; the fans tend to be regular people.

He goes on to provide a helpful review -- from both perspectives.

At our firm, we're wondering who'll be the first to purchase an iPad. Our money is on the techies, though most of them are content to wait for the next generation. And Pogue makes a compelling case that this technology is geared less toward the traditional early adopters and more toward ordinary users.

Back From The Sedona Conference On E-Discovery

I apologize for the dearth of recent posts. I was traveling last week to attend the Fourth Annual Getting Ahead of the eDiscovery Curve Program presented by The Sedona Conference Institute. I had the honor of sharing notes with dozens of thought leaders in e-discovery, which by extension, means leaders in designing efficient legal processes.

I'm still in the process of catching up, but back to a normal posting schedule and promise to share some of the interesting ideas I've learned.

Reducing Stress With Checklists and GTD

In the ABA Journal, Martha Neil writes:

A sense of impending doom is a common feeling for many attorneys in practice: From the mistake made when drafting a document or taking a deposition to a transgression that you may not even be aware of yet, there's always something lurking in your consciousness to produce a feeling of being "in trouble."

She goes on to quote a psychotherapist and former lawyer who believes on-the-job stress can cause diagnosable disorders. I'll leave that question to the mental health professionals. But this will certainly sound familiar to any litigator.

While it's probably impossible to avoid stress in law practice entirely, checklists make a huge difference in addressing anxiety levels. If you've done a good job developing your checklist, you're much less likely to feel like you're forgetting something critical. And getting "In to zero" with GTD eliminates that feeling that something bad out there is waiting to bite you.

4 Reasons To Use A Checklist

Atul Gawande's The Checklist Manifesto has arrived, and sits in my kitchen until I get my first free moment to enjoy it. I hope to read it, fittingly, on my upcoming cross-country flight. I meant to post about this earlier, but Dr. Gawande was on the The Daily Show back in February. From the interview, here's four reasons to use a checklist:

1. Complexity. The complexity of our work has skyrocketed.  Aviators implemented checklists because airplanes became too complicated to fly safely otherwise. One of the best test pilots in the world crashed the B-52 on its inaugural flight because he forgot a simple yet critical detail in the pre-flight procedure. For many of us, we've reached a B-52 level of complexity with our work.
2. Forget your pride. Pilots embrace them, despite thousands of hours of training and having rehearsed routine procedures many times. Increasingly, surgical teams use them. So should you in your work.
3. People like them.  Most people actually enjoy using checklists. It eliminates that nagging feeling you're forgetting something and lets you concentrate on doing the work well.
4. They're useful. Almost all medical providers who have tried using checklists say they would want their doctor to use one, were they the patient.

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Lean and Daylight Savings Time: Beware The Ides Of March

I've never liked Daylight Savings Time. It's antiquated and disruptive. This humorous post sums it up well, and links to a Daylight Savings Hub for understanding how it's observed internationally with resources for IT administrators. The cited justifications just don't make sense.  For example, via Bill Petro, this Department of Energy study (PDF) found that the time change saves only about .02 percent of total U.S. energy consumption.

The change unnecessarily creates the chance for error. How many people forget to change their clocks and miss appointments on Sunday or Monday morning? Not that many, maybe, but enough to cause damage to a good number of relationships and measurable financial harm to companies. It's true that most clocks change automatically or are synced to a network. But globalization also increases the opportunity for cross-border disconnection. Economies are increasingly urban, exacerbating the problem of being an hour late. And how much money do we spend just reminding people to reset their clocks?

And resetting clocks -- or writing software to automatically reset clocks -- is not a value-added process. It's waste. On a national scale.

It's also bad for workplace safety. Based on data from the U.S. Department of Labor, Michigan State University researchers Christopher Barnes and David Wagner concluded that the number of workplace accidents jumps after Daylight Savings Time:

In two separate studies, they found that the March switch to Daylight Savings Time resulted in 40 minutes less sleep for American workers, a 5.7 percent increase in workplace injuries and nearly 68 percent more work days lost to injuries.

....

But can losing one hour of sleep really make a difference? “Yes,” said Barnes, “it can. Especially for those engaged in jobs requiring a high level of attention to detail. Studies have shown that lost sleep causes attention levels to drop off.”

....

There is other research available that tends to support Barnes and Wagner. A University of British Columbia study, using data from the Canadian Ministry of Transport, found that when Canada went into daylight savings time, there was an 8 percent increase risk of accidents on the Monday after the changeover. A similar study, using information from the U. S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, cited sleep deprivation as the most likely cause of a 17 percent increase in accidents on the Monday following the time change.

Daylight Savings Time disrespects human physiology, and therefore people. It subordinates humans to machines. And this study, if accurate, makes the case even stronger by pointing to real human costs in the form of injuries and death.

If this post sounds a little snarky, I blame the time change.

Race to Nowhere: How Are Tomorrow's Lawyers Being Educated?

Several weeks ago, I saw Race to Nowhere, a film screening to small audiences in the San Francisco Bay area. This movie documents the incredible demands we place on elementary and high school children. Many of these kids spend over seven hours a day at school, followed by two or more hours doing activities such as sports, music, or clubs. They visit with tutors. When they return home, they have several hours of homework. This over-scheduling is compounded by an incredible amount of time spent consuming media.

Despite these time commitments, children aren't learning more. Educators must increasingly prepare children for standardized tests in order to comply with state and federal mandates, lest they incur penalties and further budget cuts. Teachers spend less time teaching critical thinking skills, problem solving, and instilling a love of learning. Those passionate about teaching lose interest and burn out. Students cram material for the tests, then purge it from memory.

As a result, kids are a mess. They're stress out and sleep-deprived. Boys get frustrated, begin to dislike school and learning, and alarming numbers drop out.  Girls get depressed, and some develop eating disorders and resort to suicide.

And to what end? While U.S. elementary students perform slightly better on tests than those in other countries, this advantage disappears by high school. Tellingly, even the most academically selective universities - think Harvard, Yale, Stanford -- must remediate half their incoming students. That is, fifty percent of entering freshman at our best colleges lack basic reading, writing, and math skills.

How does this affect the legal profession?

Lawyer Sara Bennett, featured in the film, is co-author of The Case Against Homework: How Homework is Hurting Our Children and What We Can Do About It. She left the legal profession partly out of frustration that incoming members of the bar couldn't do the work without extraordinary levels of handholding.  She argues we are creating generations of adults lacking critical thinking skills and the ability to work independently.  Today's adults are still "studying for the test."

Bennett invites us to consider what might have happened to a kid like David Boies today and references this excerpt from his biography.

And then there's this depressing vinette from Ralph Losey.

If our educational system is as infirm as reported, what type of lawyers will lead in twenty years? Will we be equipped to deal with the future's increasingly complex problems.

I've written about the importance of nuturing creativity in young people so that we can solve humanity's emerging problems. We don't seem to be on track.

Our professional institutions also reinforce the problems in our educational system. Law school admissions still fixate on standardized test scores -- despite being a poor measure of lawyerly ability -- draining the pool of legal talent. Associates are "over-scheduled" with billable hour requirements. The work frequently lacks the depth and intellectual content that promotes growth and satisfaction. Attrition rates were high (at least until the recent economic downturn).

What's the lesson here? Recognize that test scores are not the full measure of a person. Acknowledge the human limits on how long we can work, especially when humans are still growing and developing. Provide nourishment and allow time for rejuvenation. Understand that physical and mental health are prerequisites to academic and professional excellence.

And lawyers, and indeed all professionals, should remember their fundamental responsibility: to resolve society's most difficult problems though -- yes, hard work -- but also though creativity, compassion, and other unquantifiable traits that make us human.

Site Maintenance

(updated below) I've decided to upgrade the site, mostly to deal with behind the scenes issues which I'll share later.

To do it in the cleanest way possible, I'll be taking the site down for most of the weekend. There won't be any new posts and you'll likely encounter a placeholder page.

Thanks for your patience.

UPDATE:  Maintenance went smoothly and there was minimal downtime this afternoon. There are a few minor upgrades still in progress and I need to further test several items.  But with these exceptions, normal blogging will resume. Thanks again.

Respect For Teachers

The New York Times had an interesting article earlier this week about Diane Ravitch, an education historian and former official with the U.S. Department of Education.  She recently went public with dramatically changed views on standardized testing and charter schools. It's a nice story about a person's willingness to examine core opinions and basic assumptions in the face of adverse career and political consequences. The article also raises the issue of Respect for People. This quote particularly caught my attention:

“Nations like Finland and Japan seek out the best college graduates for teaching positions, prepare them well, pay them well and treat them with respect,” she said. “They make sure that all their students study the arts, history, literature, geography, civics, foreign languages, the sciences and other subjects. They do this because this is the way to ensure good education. We’re on the wrong track.”

I think educators are highly respected for what they do, but our system doesn't reflect it by providing good compensation, career opportunities, and autonomy. I wonder how many of the problems in our educational system can be traced back to this fundamental problem.

Would focusing on this single flaw -- one that is highly interrelated to other elements in the system -- make a big difference?

D. Mark Jackson

Law and Longevity

I have no idea how long lawyers live in comparison to other cohorts, though this study found that male Virginia lawyers live longer than the general population. So, these two stories caught my eye. First, meet 102 year old Wesley Brown:

First appointed to the federal bench by President Kennedy in 1962, U.S. District Judge Wesley E. Brown bore witness to the tumultuous civil rights era. In his lifetime, he's experienced the advent of radio, television and the Internet.

And he's still going to work in Wichita, Kan., every day, even though he took senior status in 1979.

In a profile of Judge Brown that includes video interviews, the Wichita Eagle says that the judge credits his longevity to a strong work ethic and healthy curiosity.

"I've worked all my life," Brown told the paper. "I wouldn't know what else to do."

Then, meet 90 year old Robert Morgenthau:

Robert Morgenthau may be retiring from his 35-year career as Manhattan district attorney, but that doesn’t mean he is giving up legal practice.

The 90-year-old Morgenthau is heading to the New York law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, the Associated Press reported based on a firm press release (PDF). The Am Law Daily and the Wall Street Journal Law Blog noted the report. Morgenthau will be of counsel at Wachtell, the release states.

According to the Blue Zone study, longevity is associated with four attributes:

1. Movement - not necessarily exercise, but frequent natural physical activity such as gardening and walking
2. Good outlook - have purpose in life and keep things in perspective.
3. Eat wisely mostly a plant based diet and smaller portions
4. Connect - belong to a group and take care of people around you

Practicing law can giving you a purpose in life and provides the opportunity for making some amazing connections. Of course, it also requires a lot of sedentary time and can cause folks to lose perspective.

Here's a great presentation about the Blue Zone study.

D. Mark Jackson

A Potent Cultural Cocktail

In today's New York Times, David Brooks recounts the amazing story of Jan Baalsrud.  Baalsrud snuck back into Norway during World War II to help the anti-Nazi resistance, battling severe weather and terrain, only surviving because of his own outdoor skills and the help of strangers willing to risk their own lives.  I won't attempt to summarize here further -- you really should read the whole column.  Brooks concludes with this:

But there also is an interesting form of social capital on display. It’s a mixture of softness and hardness. Baalsrud was kept alive thanks to a serial outpouring of love and nurturing. At the same time, he and his rescuers displayed an unbelievable level of hardheaded toughness and resilience. That’s a cultural cocktail bound to produce achievement in many spheres.

This sounds like a good approach to most business endeavors. As Conan O'Brien recently said:  "Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you're kind, amazing things will happen."

D. Mark Jackson

Serve It Up Precisely

Chuck Hollis thinks IT managers have paid too much attention to costs for hardware and software, and not enough attention to internal IT processes. He argues in favor of less precision and more speed, since the "time to serve" -- the time infrastructure is requested to the time of deployment -- determines the business advantage of implementing new IT infrastructure. "Time to serve" is another way of describing lead time, which is, indeed, something we rarely hear about when evaluating IT initiatives. And in discussing IT costs, we rarely explore how much of these costs are the result of internal wasteful processes. Instead, the discussion focuses almost exclusively on costs for hardware, software, and training.

However, I disagree that "time to serve" is improved by reducing precision. In many projects, resources are spent fixing bugs, troubleshooting, training because of poorly designed systems, and modifying existing processes so they are compatible with the new infrastructure. Less precision just exacerbates these non-value added processes, or waste. On the other hand, waste -- and therefore costs -- are reduced the more an IT project fits an organization's needs.

Interestingly, he concludes:

Over the last year, I've sketched out what I believe to be the dominant model for next-generation enterprise IT: the private cloud. What makes it a "cloud" is that it's built differently, operated differently and consumed differently. What makes it "private" is that it's under the control of the enterprise IT organization.

But new models require new metrics to judge their effectiveness, and drive continually improvements.

As cloud computing matures, and our assumptions about hardware and software change, will we see new focus on internal IT processes?

D. Mark Jackson

Ninja Email Laws

Time Management Ninja offers “9 Laws for Work Email.” They're all worth checking out. My favorite is "Keep it Short," with the suggestion that all emails be less than five lines long. But I particularly like this insight:

Do not expect an immediate response – In our hyper connected world, email is the new snail mail. Once upon a time, email was considered fast. Wanted a quick response? Send an email. But it has since been demoted down the communication response priority list. If you need a more immediate response: call, text, or come see me. Many people check email only 2-3 times a day and are turning off their work email on breaks and weekends.

It's just impossible for busy people to reply quickly anymore. Handhelds aren't the solution, and by contributing to the volume of sent email, arguably they're part of the problem. And constant checking and responding to emails is poor workflow. If you need an immediate response, better choose a different medium.

If you find these rules useful, be sure to visit Merlin Mann's series of posts on email best practices.

D. Mark Jackson

Toyoda's Testimony

Today, I watched some of the Congressional testimony of Akio Toyoda, President of Toyota, and Yoshimi Inaba, chief operating officer for North America.

First off, as to how to respond to the Toyota recall from a Lean perspective, I'm essentially in agreement with Mark Graban over at Lean Blog, who pithily says what needs to be said. Here's his post regarding today's testimony. And obviously, my sympathy goes out to those hurt in vehicle accidents and their families. But I trust our tort system will do a fair job of compensating any victims and punishing any wrongdoers. For purposes of assessing fault, these hearings seemed premature.

Instead, the most fascinating thing for me is the chance to see inside Toyota as an organization. If Toyota failed to get things right -- and the executives seem to have admitted as much -- we have the opportunity to learn why -- really why, and not just hear spin from various factions or carefully crafted press releases.

Just given the incredibly public nature of this inquiry, we are likely to learn a lot. But more importantly, unlike many organizations, Toyota has clearly articulated standards, making deviations from the standard more apparent. With a solid basis for comparison -- a theoretical ideal serving as a control -- we stand to gain real insight.

D. Mark Jackson

Stephen Covey and Lean

Via Mark Graban at Lean Blog, here's an interesting video introducing Steven Covey as a keynote speaker at this year's Shingo Prize conference.

Like Mark, I see connections between Lean and some of Covey's principles (e.g. Be Proactive,  Sharpen the Saw). My major criticism of Covey has been insufficient attention to good processes. Principles aren't enough; the skeleton needs muscle to move. But I confess to having read only the The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, and not some of his later books.

And regardless, I'm glad to see these two worlds overlapping.