To Change The World, Start With You
Lead your personal revolution with a Lean System
Mahatma Gandhi, a lawyer, knew how to use a movement to create change. He became one of the greatest change agents of the 20th century. He knew that any movement starts with one.
“We must become the change we wish to see in the world.”
Changing the legal industry may appear less inspirational than changing a country. But, changing the legal industry will have tremendous impact beyond a few large corporations and law firms. As the cost of legal services decreases, the number of people and corporations that can afford legal services will rise.
Making legal services available to a wider population helps clients and lawyers. It also reduces anger against those who have power. Reduced anger in society makes for a better functioning society.
The demand for legal services has never been higher — the problem is on the supply side. Gillian Hadfield has written persuasively that we need competitive markets in the legal industry to address that gap.
Competitive markets would help, though I do not believe they are the panacea. We already have market segments within the legal industry where competition exists and it has not moved the needle far. The fewer the restrictions, the more competition. So perhaps the level of competition today is not sufficient. But, we have many barriers to overcome to get to those competitive markets. Until those barriers fall, we should pursue other paths.
The Personal Lean System
Traditional approaches to improvement through lean thinking and its relatives, such as design thinking, lean startups, and scrum project management, focus on teams. Teams offers many benefits. In this essay, however, I will assume that for whatever reason you will approach change with a team of one — you.
Perhaps you have a solo practice. You may be a lawyer in a large law firm, but your firm has not embraced any of the lean ideas. As a lawyer in a law department, you may want to experiment with the ideas before pitching them to the general counsel. As a prosecutor, public defender, or legal aid attorney, you may work as part of a group but handle matters by yourself. Whatever the reason, you first efforts at change will be through your one person team.
Talk to lawyers about what they should do next, and you will see a look cross their faces that includes a mixture of fear, confusion, and that “deer in the headlights” expression. The suggestions for what you must learn evokes images of a tall book stack. Do you start at the top, the bottom, or reach in and grab one hoping the whole thing doesn’t collapse on you?
We can organize that stack a bit. The bottom four books cover the essential parts of what I call the “Lean System”.
Those parts are:
- Lean Startups;
- Lean Processes;
- Lean Design; and
- Lean Project Management.
The other books in the stack fill in pieces of the System. Some, of the pieces you should get to know in detail. Other pieces you can learn as you go, gaining as much expertise as you need for your practice. At the start of your journey, you can ignore them.
[HEADING]
To start, I will give you an introduction to each of the four parts. My introduction is where you start, not all you need to know. It is a teaser lesson, the one you get when you get at the tennis club for joining. I hop to get you interested. But, you have to go much further to develop basic proficiency.
Another comment about your personal Lean Law System. It is good for those who want to improve their technical proficiency. Jumping into technology without processes, without discipline, and without control over your practice’s workflow is like jumping into the lake before taking swimming lessons. It doesn’t mean bad things will happen. But why not start from a point where good things can happen?
Learn these four skills and you are off to a good, lean, start:
- Make and use a kanban board.
- Start mapping processes.
- Keep going with continuous improvement.
- Measure what you do.
In future posts, I will explain how to get started with each of these four skills. Remember that reading how to do each sill is different than doing it. Doing it will get you started, but you will reach stall points. To go further, you will need to expand your team. You will want a coach.
Expanding Your Team And Adding A Coach
You hear the word “coach” and you think “aha, another word for consultant.” And then you cringe. Lawyers have negative reactions to consultants. Get over it. As with everyone else, lawyers have limited knowledge. If you want to perform at the level clients expect, you need help. A good coach, as in sports, will make your team outperform.
As a team of one, you will miss many things. We all become blind to the familiar. By expanding your team, you will accomplish several things. You will have fun. Humans like to interact with other humans (even introverts). Improvement should not be synonymous with dreary.
Before You Start, Clean Your Office
Until I post my essay on how to create a kanban board, you need something to do. Clean your office. In lean thinking, we call this doing the “5S’s.” Don’t worry about learning the Japanese words or their English counterparts that comprise the the 5S’s. Do what you already know you need to do.
Put away closed files. Make a checklist of tasks you need to do and update it (the checklist will help with the kanban board). Dust. Put away the things you don’t use. Better yet, if you don’t use them get rid of them. De-clutter. Organize what remains. If you have files, label them. If you have documents on your hard disk, put them in folders on the disk.
Now that your office is clean, set the following goal: “I will keep my office clean throughout my personal Lean System journey.” For many lawyers, this is a difficult goal. But, it is your first step to discipline. If you struggle with this small step, think back to what Gandhi said. If you want to thrive, then you must become the change you want to see in our world.
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About: Ken is a speaker and author on innovation, leadership, and on the future of people, process, and technology. On Medium, he is a “Top 50” author on innovation, leadership, and artificial intelligence. You can follow him on Twitter, connect with him on LinkedIn, and follow him on Facebook.
