Anticipating change, for example change
in the landscape of what practice areas are
hot, can seem a fool’s errand, but I’d like
to suggest that it’s not. We all know
that "chance favors the prepared mind," and
I’d like to try to elaborate on that and
make it a bit more concrete.
Courtesy of Harvard Business School’s Working
Knowledge, we have "Scanning
for Threats and Opportunities," which
nicely encapsulates the difference between
"active" and "passive" scanning of the
competitive and marketplace horizon. The
example they take off from involves a medical
device company asking itself if emerging
drug therapies could take over the market
for its devices, but the learning is of
wider applicability, to be sure. This
is how they describe passive scanning for
information:
"Because most of the data
comes from familiar or traditional sources,
this mode of scanning tends to reinforce,
rather than challenge, prevailing beliefs. Because
these metrics are tightly specified and focused
on current operations, they are the antithesis
of active scanning. There is no room for
exploration. This passive stance narrows
the scan and dulls the curiosity. Unexpected
and unfamiliar weak signals will probably
be lost."
In contrast to passive is active scanning,
where one poses a question to oneself (or
one’s firm) and proceeds to look for answers
in whatever one normally comes across: For
example, an ad agency might ask everyone
to start reading and viewing things from
the perspective of what
the impact of Tivo will be on the traditional
30-second ad.
For a law firm, the "active scanning" question
might be: What macroeconomic trends
are emerging that suggest practice areas
we want to develop in preparation for the
next 3-5 years? For example, who saw
private equity and hedge funds coming? If
your firm didn’t—especially after the
passage of Sarbanes-Oxley in 2002—what
were you thinking?
Then there’s serendipitous scanning, where
you purposefully expose yourself to material
you wouldn’t see otherwise. Famously,
when Buckminster Fuller was travelling, he
would pick up a magazine at the airport bookshop at
random and proceed to read it cover-to-cover
on the plane, looking for new perspectives
on life he was not otherwise exposed to. This
may seem a bit far out for you, but what
if you made a point of packing your carry-on
with reading material from the bedside tables
of your spouse, your kids,
and a random selection of your partners (trust
me, they’ll be flattered you asked!)?
The fundamental point is simple: You
and all of your firm-wide colleagues constitute
an enormous collective antenna, a tremendous
resource of "listening ability," which you
can exploit wisely and well. Empower
people to listen, to "scan," as our HBS friends
would have it, on critical issues to your
firm. Ensure they’re listened to when
they report back. And it does, in the
end, come down to this:
"People must engage in frequent
and free dialogue for the necessary connections
to occur spontaneously. This, in turn, requires
a culture of trust, respect, and curiosity,
plus the recognition that information sharing
is crucial. Too many companies still operate
in a mode where information is shared on
a “need-to-know” basis only."
"Need-to-know" sounds like altogether too
many law firms I know.
Think different.
