Metrics Again (Ugh….)
A recent “Facts and Figures” in Inside Counsel is a great example of meaningless metrics.(As far as I can tell with a couple of minutes of investigation, the chart is included only in the print...
View ArticlePaying for Useless Advice
The Freakonomics guys write this morning about an experiment in which participants paid for transparently useless advice.(The participants were betting on the outcome of a fair coin flip and could pay...
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Why Things Aren’t as Simple as We Want Them to Be
(This post comes out of a combination of an interesting article this morning and a conversation yesterday with someone who was trying to assign oversimplified cause-and-effect on a project...
View ArticleThank You, Neil
What do you want to remember Neil Armstrong for?Flubbing his first line on the moon (“One small step for [a] man…”)Calmly piloting the Lunar Module as fuel was running out, searching for the best...
View ArticleWSJ Says Lawyers Spend Too Much Time on “Paperwork” (Nonbillable Hours)
Here’s the WSJ story (which may be behind a paywall; if so, I apologize).Legal Project Management is not a cure-all for these issues. For example, the WSJ mentions the need for secretarial personnel in...
View ArticleHow Do You Know if You’re a Bad Project Manager?
In-house counsel Susan Moon, in her Above the Law column, reflects this afternoon on what it means to be a below-average lawyer.Here in summary are the traits she lists:You CYA all the time.You hide...
View ArticleCompliance Metrics
Mark Hermann (Aon Chief Counsel) writes this morning about compliance training.What’s compliance training for?No, that’s a serious question. I’ve asked that question of a number of Chief Compliance...
View ArticleThe Twinkie Defense
In the fingerpointing over who’s to blame for Hostess Brands’ demise, one thing is clear.They were no longer creating products people wanted.When was the last time you purchased a loaf of Wonder Bread,...
View ArticleOT: Firing the Maps Guy Isn’t Leadership, Apple, It’s Blamesmanship!
Apple yesterday apparently fired the senior director of the troubled iPhone maps program.Either he did something truly wrong, or he made a mistake for which he’s becoming a scapegoat.If he did...
View ArticleSherlock Holmes or Dr. Watson? Focus, Focus, Focus
There’s a good article in Slate this morning about the value of single-tasking, with some concrete examples of how the author did more by doing less. Key paragraph:I downloaded Freedom, a program that...
View ArticleManaging and Analytics at Google
If you’re at all interested in the value of management (or of data), go read this article in Slate about Google.(Side note: I took part in a group at Microsoft that tried to improve middle management....
View ArticleA New Low in Thought-Out Customer Service
I just received an interesting mail from my bank that’s, well, dumb on a couple of levels.Concerned About Security? Click This LinkFirst, consider the heading above. Can you imagine anything dumber...
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NY Times on Law School Admission Stats
It’s hardly news in the legal world. Still, sometimes news isn’t news until the Gray Lady covers it.The NY Times reports today on declining law school applications, tying the decline to rising law...
View ArticleWhat Lawyers Can Learn From the Failure of CIOs
A recent Gartner report states, “Enterprises realize on average only 43 percent of technology’s business potential.”Here are the top ten things businesses think about, according to Gartner:Increasing...
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“What We’ve Got Here Is Failure to Communicate” Between Legal and the Business
Yesterday I mapped a recent Gartner report about IT onto Legal, noting the similarity of IT’s and Legal’s separation from business goals.Part of the problem is a communications breakdown. Legal has a...
View ArticleThe CEO’s Top-Ten List: Houston, We Have a Problem
The past two days I’ve discussed a recent Gartner report on the misalignment between business and operations priorities, here and here.I was looking at that list writing yesterday’s article and two...
View ArticleHow Can Smart People Get Simple Stuff So Wrong?
David Pogue, the NY Times tech reviewer, is undoubtedly a very smart guy. Today he reviewed the new version of Microsoft Office – a mostly favorable review, by the way – but in passing said this:Office...
View ArticleGoing the Extra Mile for a Customer – Literally
Interesting story about a pilot going the extra mile for one of his passengers.(Tip o’ the hat to James Fallows for pointing this out.)
View ArticleGood Article on Micromanaging From an Ex-Microsoft Senior Exec
Steve Sinofsky had a variety of posts at Microsoft for 20+ years, including leading the Windows division during the difficult transition from Windows Vista to Windows 7.1Here is a recent article of his...
View ArticleBuilding Great Employees/Great Teams: Steve Ballmer and the Microsoft...
(Occasionally I like to share some ex-insider insight1 about Microsoft here, usually trying to relate it to Legal Project Management in some way.)All the articles the past few days about Steve...
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