ILTA 12 Keynote: Frans Johansson on The Medici Effect

The keynote speakers on the first day of conference have been routinely excellent.

This morning, Frans Johansson is talking about "The Medici Effect:  Groundbreaking Innovation at the Intersection of Disciplines and Cultures in Law Firms and Law Departments."

The formal description:

The world of technology is changing faster than any other area of business. How can IT develop insights that will propel your firm or law department in the midst of all these changes? In this highly dynamic and energetic talk, Frans Johansson will apply the lessons from his international best-seller, "The Medici Effect," to vividly showcase how the best chance to innovate lies at the intersection of different fields, departments and industries. IT is connected throughout the organization and can leverage a wide array of knowledge and perspectives to develop new insights. IT can also dramatically increase collaboration across the enterprise in order to unleash both innovation and efficiency. Finally, the IT professional can super-charge their own creativity by drawing inspiration from completely separate fields. Understand why and what you can do about it. Frans will clearly and persuasively show what happens when legal and technology cultures collide and ignite an explosion of extraordinary new ideas and discoveries. See how technologists and attorneys can work together to create the perfect “intersection” of cultures.

See video at http://conference.iltanet.org/MainMenu/EducationalProgram/Keynotes

Below are my notes on this session.

What drives innovation?

Technology increasingly  drives new operational and buisness models.

He created a magazine "Catalyst" to bring stuff together, started a software company that "went really well until it didn't.".

He investigaters how intersections lead to innovations.

We have the best chance to innovate when we connect across our differnces.

Innovation is important because the world is changing very quickly.

Example:  Spanish fashion company Zarra can go from design to selling a dress across the world in 7 days.

A more sobering example;  only 68% of recent law school graduates are working in a job that requires a J.D.

Yet our ability to innovate constricts as our firms get larger.  Innovation tends to come from newcomers, upstarts.

One reason is that we tend to use logic as the only guidance for reaching success.  For instance, Audi and Volvo might both to decide to address their minor deficiencies, then end up with cars that look quite similar.

Architect for a large building in Harare used the ventilation approach found in termite mounds.

"The Medici Effect" is named after the Medici family that ran Florence in the 15th & 16th centuries.  They sponsored creative and effective people from all kinds of backgrounds.

New Ideas Are Combinations of Other Ideas

Frans proposess that all new ideas are combinations of existing ideas.  But not all combinations of ideas are created equal.

For instance, a Muslim woman had the idea of using bikini material and combining it with a burqa-style swimsuit.

Some People Have More Ideas

We are horrible at predicting what will work.

Jimmy Wales initially tried to develop a large online free encyclopedia.  He initially tried a model that had experts vet all proposed content.  We consider him a genius now because he tried again when this model didn't work.

Diverse Teams Can Make More New Ideas

Intersection of classical and rock / pop music created a big hit for Richard Branson at Virgin Records.    He does math on ideas within rock.  Normal rock approaches would lead to about 2,400 different approaches.  If there are comparable numbers of combinations in classical music, combining the two leads to over six million different ideas.

How can we use this?

1.  Leverage the diversity of our own organizations.

The designer of "Battlefield3" and "Mirror's Edge" video games brought programmers and designers into the same room and got collaboration out of email.

We can drive collaboration in our firm by enabling it in our organizations and by connecting with people who are different from us.

2.  Use technology to drive and not just serve new business models

If we are at the intersection of technology and business we are in a position to drive new business approaches.

He talked to Meredith Williams.  Baker Donelson developed a technology toolkit for one health care client of theirs that was valuable enough that the firm captured all of that client's work.

He talked to me.  Goodwin Procter has worked with PBWorks to create a space where clients, cocounsel, experts, and lawyers in the firm can work together better.

Interactive Element

He asked us to find inspiration from a picture of a bunch of workers fixing a fancy car at a pit stop.

He asked three people who had various ideas about monitoring client performance, watching and learning from matter teams, and the like.

Do we have time to innovate?  It's hard to find the time.

3. How do we make ideas happen?

Directional ideas often are executed in step-by-step fashion.  More innovative ideas can take longer and get developed less directly.

We use up energy, money, and reputation in getting to a goal.

He addresses the idea of the "Ice Hotel."  He started out with ice sculptures, then made an exhibit hall out of snow, then made an event hall out of ice, then he realized people would pay to sleep on a bed of ice.

Driving change within a firm starts with the "smallest executable step." It's not about the end goal, it's about taking the next step.  Start with the easiest part of your idea that you can execute, and then adjust.

Innovating may be risky, but doing the same thing over and over again is riskier.   We can be the people in our organizations driving innovation.

Liveblogging from ILTA 2012: AC2DC

I'm testing out a new method of posting--my fairly new iPad with a brand new "Zagg" keyboard. The new equipment comes at a propitious time, for blogging at the International Legal Technology Association is especially rewarding. Partly that's because there's so much great content shared there, and partly it's because there's a lot of related social media activity and people paying attention.

This year, as last, I may be splitting blogging between this platform and the ILTA KM Blog, which I continue to manage. Generally on the ILTA blog I'm trying to have fairly polished content that I'm sure will be relevant to most of the legal KM community. Here I don't feel quite those constraints, especially on the polish when it comes to live-blogging.

So far by the way the new equipment is working well. It's certainly much faster than typing on the screen. I'm limited by Google's lack of a Blogger iPad app, but the iPhone version is working OK. Wordpress is further along with this as with so much else, this blog may not be around on this platform much longer.

This year the location is Washington DC, and the theme is "AC2DC." People have been coming up with various backronyms. I think that, rather than backronyms, the real theme of ILTA, as always, is connection. It's where I go to get reconnected to a community of peers and to connect with people doing the kind of work I do, facing the same kinds of challenges, and coming up with all kinds of ingenious, thoughtful, and effective solutions.

I hope that if you see me there you'll feel free to connect with me.

One last thing--as I have advocated on other channels, let's stick with #ilta12 as the hashtag, OK? Thanks!

Socialize Your Business Processes--Report From Enterprise 2.0 Conference

An Li of Yammer presented breathlessly on integrating enterprise applications with Yammer, an enterprise social network platform.  Integrating a social network with enterprise application does not seem to me like something that could be done initially on launch of such a platform, but the prospect of doing so could be a selling point, particularly with departments like human resources that track and rate employee contributions.

71% of employees don’t feel engaged because they don’t feel like they are part of a larger community. Organizations have become siloed.  Different business functions and different offices don’t talk to each other.  (Gallup poll 2011).   Yammer projects to have 8 million users by the end of the year. Even industries that aren’t technology companies such as oil & gas companies and heavy industry are paid clients of Yammer.

Building relationships is very hard with multiple offices, and enterprise software normally only reinforces those silos.  Yammer works to bridge gap across offices and departments.

Supervalue is a Yammer customer.  They are large grocery chain.  They had one user conference once a year, over three days.  Continuing conversation over the year was impossible before Yammer.  Then they launched Yammer and every store manager got an iPad.  They shared beach display photos, showed what’s going well.  They saw growth of revenue from sharing ideas that worked across organization. 

Integrating social within each application is resource-intensive.  Yammer is doing data-level integration.  Zendesk application shares an idea into Yammer.  Everyone in the organization can see it, so people from engineering, marketing, customer service can all see the problem.

They have integrated with:

·         SharePoint

·         Box

·         Salesforce

·         Ultimate software

·         Netsuite

·         Zendesk

Etc. etc.

They use the “Open Graph” protocol to get data into Yammer.  They use “Connect” to push data into enterprise systems.

Universal search lets you filter by people, groups, applications, pages, and topics.
 
Aggregation is really important.  An intelligent algorhythm delivers the most relevant updates. 
Integration is not pushing raw data into Yammer.  It provides transparency around other’s work in other application.

Lisa Sterling of Ultimate Software talked about their integration of Yammer with their instance of their own software product, an HR management tool called Ultimate or UltiPro (disclosure:  my firm has purchased UltiPro). 

At Ultimate, employees don’t use UltiPro as much as they use Yammer. Managers can see contributions and collaborations within UltiPro so they can see what people are doing to be successful.  Yammer also gets a feed of internal job opportunities.  The interface both consumes information and broadcasts information.  Yammer also provides a way to reward people for good work; UltiPro consumes Yammer badges, leaderboards, and rewards.   

They are moving to a single sign-on capacity.  Also tying completion of work milestones within Yammer into UltiPro.  They will also be using UltiPro to share communications, as around birthdays, anniversaries. 

Ultimate's story is a good example of leveraging information obtained through enterprise social networks.  It shows some of the benefits that might come to management from employees "working out loud", exposing their work, interests, and project activities.

Securing Social Business for Compliant Collaboration

I'm at the massive Enteprise 2.0 Conference in Boston over the next two days.  This post is my notes from Sarah Carter's presentation on “Securing Social Business for Compliant Collaboration.”

She’s a British former taxi driver and provided an all-too brief (due to time limitations) and funny (!) overview of compliance issues related to social business tools.

Actiance has 260 employees and 3 U.S. offices. 

Technology is the easy part of social.  They work with 9 of 10 top US Banks, also IBM, Cisco, Jive.

Organizations have much more complicated communications channels.  They are using email, webex, unified communications; users bring in IM, BitTorrent, public social platforms. 

Enabling an enterprise social platform requires consideration of other communication platforms.

Social media has four key areas of risk:

1)      Data Leakage.  Sharing things such as personally identifiable information, the next board meeting minutes. 

2)      Inbound Threats.  We trust the people we’re connected to, but shouldn’t always trust the content from trusted sources.  Spoofing of LinkedIn and Facebook requests is rising.

3)      Compliance & eDiscovery.  Social is just another form of electronic communications.  If you’re recording customer compliance on email, you need to do the same on social channels.  10,000 US laws and regulation address electronic communications.

4)      User Behavior.  Are users using the bandwidth the enterprise need to pull down YouTube videos and the like?  Should people be sharing vacation plans on Facebook?

What’s Needed In Enterprise Social Solutions?

Compliance;  Monitoring, pre & post-review, archiving. 

Integration:  Social needs to be integrated with content management, marketing, workflow

Convenience:  People will use the most convenient tool.

Relevant:  The tool needs to allow people to find and share the most relevant content.

Requirements for Security & Compliance

1. Technical Components

·         Identity Management—link and understand integrations between different online identies such as Yammer, LinkedIn, Twitter

·         Activity Control / Granular Application Control

·         Ability to turn features on and off

·         Anti-Malware Controls

·         Protect Users from Themselves—Control where people share information

·         Moderation—ability to flag an objectionable comment and so forth

·         Logging/Archiving—Record everything a user said in all channels

·         Export of Data—Need to have data exportable regardless of which channel it was made in

2. Components of Effective Use of Social Business

Give users help with measuring who influences, help people understand when their network wants to have information shared.  She shares information with her British friends at 5 AM Pacific.

Help users focus on those people who are important to you today.

Innovation Engine--Belated Post From ILTA 2011

I was looking back at ILTA Conference 2011 and at Mary Abraham's good post on Chris Trimble's August 22 keynote, and I realized it didn't lay out quite as clearly as my notes the central "performance engine" vs. "innovation engine" dilemma.  So, this extremely belated post to correct the issue covers that keynote (and also provides an opportunity to note that Mr. Trimble just published "Reverse Innovation:  Create Far From Home, Win Anywhere" with Vijay Govindarajan, also of the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, on April 10 2012.)

The keynote was on the subject “What are the best practices for executing an innovation strategy?” While Mr. Trimble had a great topic, he did not entirely succeed in engaging his audience. He had a very important main topic, however, that ongoing operations and serious innovation inevitably conflict within organizations; the corollary is that you won’t get major change without changing the organizational model.

 

Through innovation we improve the economy and lives. Information technology has been the most innovative sector over the last 20 years.

 

He knows how much of our time is spent dealing with everyday battles, “keeping the trains running on time.”

 

There is a “Mt. Ranier-like” story in every innovation journey. When you finally get the big idea, it can feel like a victory. The breakthrough from big idea to innovative product can be very challenging.

 

Trimble’s First Law of Innovation: Innovation and ongoing operations are always and inevitably in conflict.

 

Finding a way to navigate through those conflicts is an art.

 

He defines innovation as any project that is new to you and has an uncertain outcome. How do we execute high-degree-of-difficulty projects?

 

Only three models of innovation work. Model 1 addresses easiest innovations; Model 2 slightly more challenging; and Model 3 for hard innovations.

 

In Model 1 (Innovation=Ideas + Motivation) , every employee can be innovative, and just needs some encouragement to pursue innovation on their own initiative. It is limited by individual slack time.

 

In Model 2, (Innovation = Ideas + Process), innovation is treated like any other business process. It gets scripted, made efficient and routine. An example is the auto industry. It is limited to situations where every innovation is similar to innovations that have gone before.

 

In Model 3, innovation breaks or changes ordinary business processes.

 

Companies struggle with an innovation myth. “Innovation Man” struggles against the bureaucratic octopus, “one person fighting the system.” He is brilliant and clever and determined to get things done. Improve innovation by defeating this myth.

 

We have to put less emphasis on creativity, more emphasis execution of ideas. We need less on individual achievement and more on organizational excellence.

 

Organizations were designed to be “performance engines” not on innovation.

 

Performance Engines focus on: 

• Today’s customers & competitors
• Efficiency
• Accountability
• Getting things done on spec, on-budget, and on time
• Profitability

 There is great power in repeatability and predictabilities. Innovation is fundamentally incompatible with that. Breaking the rules doesn’t work, because innovators need the “performance engine”; it sounds too much like “no rules.”  Strive for mutual respect between performance engine leaders and innovation leaders.

 

Innovation leaders have to remember that conflict with the performance engine is normal.

 

Performance engine leaders should remember that no performance engine lasts forever (e.g., Blockbuster).

 

Too often innovators and companies skip the planning and strategy requirements for execution.

 

In Model 3, you need a special type of team and a special kind of plan. Model 3 always needs a dedicated team. There needs to be a partnership between shared staff and the dedicated team.

 

Special Team

 

Anything more than adding more people will disrupt shared staff’s responsibility for the performance engines.

 

Managing the partnership is quite challenging. The project leader of the dedicated innovation team will be in conflict with the general manager. The general manager will win every time. The senior leader needs to intervene and adjudicate those conflicts.

 

He turns this approach to legal issues.

 

Under the Law2020 Innovation Challenge, clients want more help with IT. They want efficient legal processes, and they want full and easy access to all of their legal information.

 

You won’t get major change without changing the organizational model.

 

The most experienced lawyers typically manage the business, have the most authority, and manage relationships, because that works (in his terms, makes the performance engine run).

 

With innovation, you need to run experiments while doing no harm.

 

Are there some clients or projects where the normal organizational approach does not work? Do we need informational professionals comfortable partnering with clients? Do we need to consider client IT when building our own systems?

 

Trimble sets up the Grey Lady’s attempt to go on-line in the late 90s as a very challenging innovation problem.

 

The New York Times had smart people with lots of money and plenty of time. They had set up a “little performance engine”, a mirror copy of what they had been doing. They brought in an executive from outside, but early on, everyone who reported to him was an insider.

 

NYT spun off the web site. Martin Niemeyer (?) set up a new compensation plan, new job descriptions, changed product development process, moved to a new location, and built a new IT infrastructure. They treated it as building a new company from scratch. It was working really well, except for the relationship with the newspaper. There came to be conflicts about client relationships, branding, and use of news. That had to be resolved by a senior executive task force.

 

There were three phases in the relationship; cautious growth as an integrated organization, rapid growth as a separate organization, and finally profitable growth as a carefully managed partnership.

 

Every innovation initiative is an experiment. If you run a disciplined experiment, you learn fast. Learning is about turning guesses into estimates into forecasts. This is the learning curve you need to focus on. Better predictions lead to better decisions (which lead to better results).

 

A quick and inexpensive failure can be a learning experience.

 

For a special plan, recognize that every experiment deserves a custom plan, don’t use standard templates. A separate forum should discuss innovations and meet frequently. Review plan. Focus on what you don’t know and your assumptions. Spend a little to learn a lot.

 

Performance evaluations for innovation leaders are challenging.

KM Meeting In Boston, Sponsored By ILTA & Recommind

As readers of this and the ILTA KM blog know, I have really enjoyed getting to know other knowledge management professionals at conferences and meetings, public or otherwise.  As people who lead firm knowledge efforts, we're generally good at sharing, easy to get along with, not to mention (*ahem*) smart and fun.

I'm pleased then that ILTA and Recommind are helping me organize a meetup in Boston next Wednesday, March 28th, here at Goodwin Procter's offices on State Street (a/k/a "Exchange Place.")

Recommind will briefly present on their enterprise search and email filing solutions.  We'll then take time to talk about each other's roles, projects, and interests.  Details on the ILTA web site.

The Recapitulation Theory and The Lifecycle of Legal Knowledge Management

I attended a meeting of legal knowledge management professionals earlier this week.  By tradition, the speakers (except consultants) are anonymous.

The first topic was "Ontogeny recapitulates Phylogeny," a concept from biology also known as "Recapitulation Theory" that refers to the parallel between the embryonic development of organisms (specifically mammals) and evolution. 

The speaker has started knowledge management systems four times.   He addressed the bumpy "curve" of interest, excitement, and profile that naturally occurs when knowledge management programs progress.

First the law firm recognizes that they have a problem.  They see that they'll need to talk to people and develop something.  You slay the sacred cows, enlist the aid of people previously concerned with knowledge management, and then conceive of a grand plan.  After a lot of hard work, an "immortal" result is achieved, and people are astonished.  Most were unaware that the work was going on.

From here the slope of interest and ability to make remarkable changes is downward.  People suggest changes that may or may not be useful or easy to accomplish.  The amazing achievement becomes "background", expected, and credit or recognition slacks off. It's a hard slog to regain the level of immortality again.

Has the field of legal knowledge management followed the same curve?

For instance, enterprise search in legal was a moment of immortality, "god's gift to legal knowledge management."  The next hoped-for trick was the "best practice," which is not a simple add-on but an entirely different approach.  Does KM seeking to solve "everything" lead to KM risking becoming nothing?  Ideas like social media and document assembly may have a low probability of success and clearly require much more work and structure than the earlier successes.  KM staff are helping with project management, financial analysis, task-based process management, and so forth, but legal kmers not necessarily the best people to do that.

So how can legal KM practitioners get back to the moment of immortality?  Switch jobs?  Repeat the process at organizations that haven't navigated the curve?  It's up to us.