CLE Leadership & Management
Ideas, Resources, and Techniques for CLE Professionals
A periodic e-newsletter

By Chuck Bingaman - chuck@chuckbingaman.com

#13 April, 2004

Leadership    I’m not sure whether to put this item under Leadership, Management or Resources, but Jack Huberman and his colleagues at the CLE Society of British Columbia have certainly scored a coup with their recent foray into online offering of their practice handbook library.  You can review the case study that Microsoft did of them at http://www.microsoft.com/resources/casestudies/CaseStudy.asp?Case_StudyID=14171.  And you can see this week’s full-page ad in the Toronto Globe & Mail, at http://www.globeandmail.com/partners/microsoft/gmw/co2.html. Jack and colleagues participated in the launch of Office 2003 in New York last fall, and their new system builds on the new release’s XML capabilities.   Roger Nierenberg, Music Director of the Stamford, Connecticut Symphony Orchestra offers leadership training by using a conductor’s eye-view of music making. Nierenberg says that a “leader defines for the team what kind of moment they’re in.  Is it a transition? A dangerous moment? An opportunity? So the musicians know how they must work together.”  Maybe it’s the same for all leaders and their teams, including CLE teams.  Nierenberg continues, “No one wants to underperform, yet so many people do. Why? Because there are enormous numbers of parameters for judging performance, and most people don’t know what aspect to work on.  But, as the leader, you stand on a podium and therefore have access to the big picture.  Things that are obvious from the podium are not at all clear from the chairs.  Your job as a leader is to communicate a sense of how things could be—and to show people how to achieve that vision.  How do you do that?  By giving direction, not criticism.  Direction points out the way things could be.  Criticism, on the other hand, points to the way things were.  It doesn’t enlighten people.”

Management    Does your organization have in place a written strategic plan or even a set of goals and objectives for the next one, two or three years?  If you’re planning your budget for the next fiscal year, as many CLE organizations are this month, maybe you should budget funds for a planning retreat with your staff or Board to make such plans.  Every CLE organization, law firm or other organization I know that HAS tried to sketch a strategic plan has been happy it did so.  The effort energizes the Board and staff, focuses its efforts and directs attention to organizational issues that need it.   The Canadian Centre for Professional Legal Education’s new regional bar admission program, blending in-person training with online learning, launches this summer in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.  The program will last five months with a live, in-person one-day orientation and eight learning modules, three of which will be classroom based and five of which will be offered only online.  Seven learning modules are common to all three provinces and one is tailored to unique matters in each province.  Based on research identifying exactly what young lawyers need to learn, the whole program will use a “competency based” approach and focus on helping participants solve problems of “virtual clients”.  This innovative approach should be watched and evaluated by all bar authorities and CLE organizations.  Information is available on the web site of the Legal Education Society for Alberta (LESA), www.LESA.org, and from Joan Copp of LESA’s staff at joan.copp@lesa.org.

Resources & Strategies    Some time ago I recommended Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…and Others Don’t by Jim Collins (HarperCollins, 2001).  In the past several months I’ve had occasion to re-read it with care, and I am even more impressed with the research, suggestions and practical ideas Collins and his research team share.  Briefly, Collins identified those few companies that, over time, raised their performance from good to great and sustained it for at least 15 years. And he compared their key characteristics with comparable companies that started at similar places and failed to reach “greatness”.  In the process, he found valuable and surprising lessons in leadership, personnel management, product/service choice, the role of technology and business focus—lessons that ALL of us can relate to and implement.  Collins emphasizes getting the right people “on the bus”—and in the right seats—and getting the “wrong” people off the bus, focusing on work that you can do better than anyone else, and eliminating projects, product lines, or other activities that do not fit with the core work.  That’s a criminally cramped summary, but I hope it’ll whet your appetite for delving into the full book in detail.  Altman Weil Inc. has been using Good to Great as an in-house discussion starter for all of its consultants over several months.               BTW—or maybe leading the way—let’s design a CLE course called Moving Your Law Firm from Good to Great and adapt Collins’ research to law firms.  If you’re interested, give me a call.   Are you reading the magazine called Business 2.0 published monthly (except January/February) by Business2.0 Media, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Time Inc.?  In the four or five years of its existence, it has become increasingly interesting, practical and filled with really stimulating articles, many of which suggest ways that CLE leaders can add creative and bottom-line strength to their activities.  Check it out at www.Business2.com and try a free issue.  It and Fast Company, www.fastcompany.com, are the two business magazines that I read cover to cover every month. 

Please keep in touch!  CCB

Following 20 years as Executive Director of a major CLE organization in the USA, Chuck now consults on strategic planning, marketing and management challenges with CLE and other legal organizations, law firms, and law schools.  He does management appraisals and coaching, facilitates strategic planning sessions, and develops and critiques marketing campaigns for CLE organizations.  He is an affiliated consultant with Altman Weil Inc.  Chuck welcomes your inquiries.  You can contact him at chuck@chuckbingaman.com, at 603-756-9268, or at P.O. Box 390, Walpole, NH 03068.  Past issues of this newsletter are archived at www.chuckbingaman.com.