The World's Got Talent

Among the many ways the web has changed the world, I'd like to add one more. For me, at least, it's engendered a greater appreciation for the variety and extent of human ability. Sure, some of what gets posted to the web is of questionable taste (or worse), but I can recall dozens of times reading someone's writing or watching a video and being, not just impressed, but surprised a fellow human was even capable of doing that.

David Letterman used to have a segment called Stupid Human Tricks, and maybe he still does. For the most part, they were, in fact, pretty stupid tricks. The web is full of those too.

But what I'm referring to is genuine talent: artistic and creative, athletic, literary, and intellectual. Okay, so the slip 'n slide video wasn't real.  But the web is a massive repository of human ability. And it's easily accessible through a computer and phone.

In doing this, it's helped me to realize that "ordinary" people can do "extraordinary" things. The world is full of talent. Human ability is everywhere. And never underestimate human potential.

On that note, please enjoy this video:

Psychological Techniques For Boosting Creativity

Looking for ways to increase creativity, methods grounded in actual research?  Take a look at this two part series on psychological techniques to boost creativity.  One of my favorites:

People often jump to answers too quickly before they've really thought about the question. Research suggests that spending time re-conceptualising the problem is beneficial.

Mumford et al. (1994) found that experimental participants produced higher quality ideas when forced to re-conceive the problem in different ways before trying to solve it. Similarly a classic study of artists found that those focused on discovery at the problem-formulation stage produced better art (Csikszentmihalyi & Getzels, 1971).

◊ For insight: forget the solution for now, concentrate on the problem. Are you asking the right question?

So many knowledge workers -- lawyers in particular  -- rush to solve problems, because that's what they're good at. But stopping to thoroughly examine the problem not only serves to identify the real issues at stake.  According to these studies, it also helps apparently stimulates creative thinking.

(via Kotte)

How A Burglar Changed Gravity

The New York Times has an interesting article about a new approach to understanding gravity led by physicist Erik Verlinde. Rather than treating gravity as a separate fundamental force, it can be seen as a consequence of the laws of thermodynamics. Basically, gravitational attraction is the result of the universe's natural tendency toward disorder, or entropy. This makes no sense to me, since I think of gravity as an ordering force, coalescing mass and maintaining the proximity of objects in space. But apparently I'm in good company -- the idea is pretty controversial among scientists.

Besides its radical nature, however, what I found interesting was how Verlinde came up with the idea:

That inspiration came to him courtesy of a thief.

As he was about to go home from a vacation in the south of France last summer, a thief broke into his room and stole his laptop, his keys, his passport, everything. “I had to stay a week longer,” he said, “I got this idea.”

Up the beach, his brother got a series of e-mail messages first saying that he had to stay longer, then that he had a new idea and finally, on the third day, that he knew how to derive Newton’s laws from first principles, at which point Herman recalled thinking, “What’s going on here? What has he been drinking?”

When they talked the next day it all made more sense, at least to Herman. “It’s interesting,” Herman said, “how having to change plans can lead to different thoughts.”

So the next time you're forced to change plans, or otherwise bumped off your routine, it may be an opportunity for a breakthrough idea. Try to create some time and space for creativity. And be sure to capture any imaginative sparks so they can flash over later. For more on routines and creativity, see this interesting post from Jack Cheng.

Is Law Practice More Like Russia or Poland?

Salon has a fascinating interview of Clay Shirky in which he lays out his Russia-Poland Theory:

Which is: one of the reasons Poland did better than Russia after the collapse of Communism is they'd only had one generation under the Communists, so there were still people who could remember that it had been different. Whereas, under Russia, no one alive remembered what life was like in 1916. When people go through two generations of stability, it's easy enough to adopt an attitude that it has always been this way. So for somebody entering the book publishing business in, say, the year 2000, some 23-year-old just out of school, it has always been this way. No one in the publishing industry has known anything but the postwar landscape. What you get when a situation like that happens is that one word comes to stand in for a business, a production method, a product, a cultural signifier -- the whole range of it is all compacted into that single thing.

For more about what this means for writers, books, and literature generally, definitely treat yourself to the whole piece.

As for lawyers, is there any doubt we're still at the early stages of the digital revolution? The radical re-working of how we share and value information has just started, really.

And is there any doubt the Western and international legal system more closely resembles Russia? The answer is hewn into the name plates of essentially every major law firm.  (Literally, are there any lawyers alive who remember the profession being fundamentally different in structure from ours today?) Were Abe Lincoln still around, he'd have no trouble returning to practice.

As Shirky goes on to explain, those able to work across disciplines -- people capable of seeing truth residing in the center of human inquiry and beyond the leading edges of specialities -- are well-suited for the change ahead. So, set aside that Blackstone-esque treatise this afternoon. Go begin reading and thinking broadly. Endeavor to free information from organizational silos. And explore the world outside your comfortable office.

Maybe, just maybe, this revolution could be fun.

5 Things Science Tells Us About Motivation

What does science tell us about motivating people to do good work?  Here's an interesting ten minute video combining illustrations with a Daniel Pink lecture, and discussing five key findings:

1. For rewarding simple straightforward tasks, money is a good motivator.
2. When a task involves more than rudimentary cognitive ability -- some conceptual, creative thinking -- monetary rewards actually result in poorer performance.
3. If you don't pay people enough, they won't be motivated to do a job.
4. The best way to motivate people is to pay them enough to take the issue of money off the table.  Allow them to think about the work, rather than the money.
5. Three factors lead to better performance and personal satisfaction: (1) Autonomy, (2) Mastery, and (3) Purpose.

Watch the video for a full explanation of the three factors and some examples involving real organizations.  This reminded me of the ideas underlying Google's "20-percent time."  And for a great example of these ideas in action, I highly recommend checking out Netflix's presentation on its "Freedom and Responsibility Culture."

(txs, Elan!)

Presenting on Ethics and E-Discovery at U.S. Open

(updated) I'll be presenting at the U.S. Open golf tournament today.  The topic is ethics and electronic discovery.  My thesis is that lawyers need to adapt in two ways in the age of electronic discovery:

1. Better understand technology, because evidence today is likely to be in electronic form. (the duty of Competence)
2. De-emphasize the adversarial duties of Diligence and Confidentiality and re-emphasize the cooperative duties to Expedite Litigation, Candor Toward the Tribunal, and Fairness to Opposing Party and Counsel.

(cross-posted at California E-Discovery Law)

Update: Monica Bay over at EDD Update (Electronic data discovery news and analysis) and The Common Scold read my post and writes:  "OK, I guess I'm clueless but what's the nexis between golf and EDD? Perhaps he'll jump into the comments and 'splain it all to us."  My attempt at an explanation in comments over at her sites here and here.

Turn Failures Into Breakthroughs

Is that unexpected result a stupid mistake, or an expression of the truth?  Don't resist anomalous information because it might lead to an epiphany. Jonah Lehrer has the the following advice:

Check Your Assumptions: Ask yourself why this result feels like a failure. What theory does it contradict? Maybe the hypothesis failed, not the experiment.

Seek Out the Ignorant: Talk to people who are unfamiliar with your experiment. Explaining your work in simple terms may help you see it in a new light.

Encourage Diversity: If everyone working on a problem speaks the same language, then everyone has the same set of assumptions.

Beware of Failure-Blindness: It’s normal to filter out information that contradicts our preconceptions. The only way to avoid that bias is to be aware of it.

Or as Stephen Covey might say, if things aren't working well, consider whether your paradigm is incomplete on incorrect.

(via Above and Beyond KM)

An Overflowing Inbox Is Not A Kanban System

From David Allen (no link available):

It is a residue from the industrial and agricultural world, I think, when the things to be done were much more physically self-evident. The "piles" in most offices nowadays seem just meager attempts to reproduce the self-evidence of the crops, the machinery, the things to be made and moved of bygone times. But self-evidence is not forthcoming without more discrete focus and more self-directed thinking.

From a lean perspective, I think what people are looking for is a kanban system and visual controls to manage their work in the office. When the inbox starts to overflow, time to sort through it. When the mailbox gets overloaded with email, and the anxiety level gets high enough, time to scan the messages.

But these are emotional rather than rational cues.

Better to have cues built on an optimal worklow.  This means emptying all the buckets on a daily basis, and using your organizational system to cue when to take action on items. Get the mailbox down to zero three times daily, even if this means putting some of those emails in an @Action folder, until you have time to fully process them. Then cue up the work based on deadlines (i.e. customer demand) and maintaining continuous flow.

Overflowing buckets also indicate excessive inventory and poor processes. Time to rework your system.

And your inbox usually operates as a push system, rather than a pull system.

The point here is to use real cues instead of the artifical and misleading physical cues that emerge in an office environment.  The height of paper stacked on your credenza doesn't (or shouldn't) tell you what to do and when to do it.

When Does Choosing A Better Computer Become Wasteful?

No, I'm not referring to green computing devices. Though, apparently computers account for 2% of the world's carbon emissions. I'm swapping my nearly four year-old PC notebook for a new 15" MacBook Pro. Can you say upgrade? Like many buyers, I'm tempted to get the fastest possible machine with the most memory, given my budget.

But I keep thinking about over-processing. It's wasteful to get a tool that's more powerful than what's needed for the job. Here's some of my thinking.

• How fast? I do minimal multimedia work. Mostly, I access databases and documents on a local network and remotely, create text-based documents, and work on the web. But time is money (my time ends up being my clients' money, to be precise). So, I decided to get the fastest available processor along with a solid state drive. I can always upgrade RAM, but predict 4 GB will be plenty for 95% of my work.
• How much memory? With a 500 GB hard drive I can save data for years to come without worrying about usable disk space. But I've only got 65 GB of data now. So I decided to get the 128 GB drive. I can always upgrade when I near capacity. And who knows what cloud storage options will look like then.

The hardest decision was whether to get a solid state drive. Ultimately, I chose one because they're more reliable (no moving parts) and run cooler (no motor). The result is a more efficient machine, with the related benefit of a longer battery life. I decided to go with the Apple OEM drive rather than with a third party upgrade. There may be better after-market drives out there, but I'd rather avoid any potential problems with warranties and service. If there's a problem, it's Apple's to fix. Period.

Now, it wasn't that hard to identify the right machine for today's work. The over-processing analysis would have been easy from that standpoint. But predicting the appropriate tool for two to four years from now? Given the extraordinary rate of change in consumer electronics and the web -- who knows what we'll all be doing then. That's what made this a challenge.

Has anyone else experienced this challenge when buying a computer? From an enterprise IT perspective, our firm certainly has, and larger organizations must have it even worse.

Toddler Mode For The iPhone

If you've got young ones around, you really need this to share your device without risking your data and identity:

You know how iPhone and iPad have “airplane mode”, which turns off all connectivity? Right under that, I want “Toddler Mode”. When switched on, you’ll get a dialog letting you know you are entering Toddler Mode, and an explanation of how to get out. Unlike Airplane Mode, you can’t get out of Toddler Mode through settings, because there’s no way Toddler Mode should allow access to the settings panel. I haven’t figured out the best way out of Toddler Mode, but I’m thinking a quick triple-click on the home button, followed by a swipe, should work.

I confess: our household once fell victim to such an "early adopter."

This really should be a standard feature for mobile devices. And you'd think the emergency services folks would have lobbied for this by now.

(via Kottke)

Guest Post At Lean Blog

I'm honored to have a guest post up today at at Mark Graban's Lean Blog.   My post is on seven ways lawyers can use Lean in their practices.  Please stop on by!

5 (Other) Reasons To Go To The Gemba

The gemba is the place where the work is done. Lean managers "go to the gemba" to see it for themselves (genchi genbustu). This might be done during a continuous improvement (kaizen) project. Recently, I've had the pleasure of spending many hours in the gemba with our support staff. We are going firm-wide with a new document workflow, which we've been testing with a pilot group for the last six months. During our sessions, we've identified a lot of waste and generated great ideas for improving our processes.

I've also discovered -- or maybe rediscovered -- five other reasons for going to the gemba.

1. Reaffirm respect for people. As a manager, it's easy to get preoccupied with your own work demands and forget about the day-to-day contributions others make to the organization. Seeing your people in action reminds you of their talent and dedication.
2. Communicate. Organizations usually use email, intranet posts, and large meetings to communicate their goals and plans. But one-on-one meetings and small groups allow for more frank and focused discussions. And some people aren't comfortable talking at formal meetings. The gemba might be just the right context for a critical interaction. It also gives people the chance to ask questions, in person and in real-time. Sometimes the gemba is the first chance you get to really explain why you are doing a particular project.
3. Remind people that you care. This might sound overly sentimental, but spending time with your people reminds them that you genuinely value their work and talent. It also reinforces the message that you appreciate their ideas and contributions to designing work processes.
4. See other important issues. You might observe a problem that demands an immediate response. Perhaps it's a major form of waste with a quick or even an on-the-spot solution. Sometimes a person's worklife can be radically improved just by realizing they need a new $6.00 tool. And though hopefully there aren't any safety problems, but if there are, this is a chance to correct them before someone gets hurt.
5. Learn something new. By watching and discussing the work with your people, it's guaranteed you'll learn something unexpected about your organization, your industry, and the work.

It's hard to take time away from your work to go to the gemba. But these reasons make it well worth it.

Over-processing: Too Much Of A Good Thing

Bruce MacEwen at Adam Smith, Esq. has an interesting post on how the views on quality held by corporate in-house legal counsel diverge from outside counsel. Referencing McKinsey, he divides quality into three segments and explains how he thinks corporate America views them:

• Good enough: Sufficient for almost all purposes almost all the time.
• Excellent: Occasionally needed when germane to reputation, marketplace perception, or positioning.
• Superb: Very rarely required, perhaps only when genuine organizational threats are in play.

He contrasts this with the perspective of outside legal counsel:

• Superb: Why you come to our firm, what we do, and who I am. (Don't for a second underestimate that third element; it's why you get up in the morning and how you hold your head high.)
• Excellent: When we try to execute a representation with some degree of sensitivity to costs, based on a longstanding relationship.
• Good enough: Who do you think we are? You've come to the wrong place.

Assuming outside counsel does the work at a "Good enough" level, Bruce poses the question: "who's to blame-your firm or the client-for the fact that merely sufficient legal advice has come back to bite?"

Good question. And one I'm not prepared to answer.

But let me add a comment from a Lean perspective. The problem with outside legal counsel's view is the willingness to engage in over-processing, one of the seven traditional forms of waste (muda). Over-processing is doing more work, or higher quality work, than is desired by the customer, or using tools that are more expensive or precise than needed.

Outside counsel sees the high quality work as an unqualified good thing (who would want lesser quality?) In-house counsel sees the work as "wasting" their finite budget for legal services. The company wanted a Corolla. Its attorney just built a fully loaded Lexis LS600hl.

The key here is open communication between the client and outside counsel.The client should be clear about what it needs. Counsel should be clear about what it will deliver and at what price. Also, counsel needs to explain the risks of opting for work of lesser quality. And to the extent possible, the client needs to sign off on any such risk.

We also should be careful to distinguish between the quality of work product and the quality of representation. Work product almost always should be high quality. It's the amount or type of work product that should vary depending on the client's needs. For example, a legal brief should be very well written -- no matter what. But whether the brief should be filed should be considered at the outset.

Given the current economic climate, there's sure to be a lot more discussion about the appropriate level of quality, for legal services and virtually everything else we have to pay for.

New Apps Lawyers Should Try

Nicholas Gaffney recommends 21 apps to make you more effective. My favorite on his list -- though not so new anymore --  is Google Voice, which gives me excellent control over my incoming calls, with visual voicemail, transcription, and text and email notification.  For free.

On my list of apps to try is Slideshare.  Slideshare lets you share your presentations over the web, assuming you want that, much like YouTube does for video.  Here's one of my favorite such presentations, courtesy of Netflix.

What's on your list of apps to try?