CLE Leadership & Management
Ideas, Resources, and Techniques for
CLE Professionals
A periodic e-newsletter
By Chuck Bingaman - chuck@chuckbingaman.com
#29 June 2006
Leadership  Want to measure your CLE organization’s health
using three easy metrics? Try employee involvement, customer satisfaction
and cash flow. How many of your offices have people working in them before
7:30 a.m. or after 5:30 p.m., and how many inspired suggestions are you getting
from employees each week? What are you hearing from customers, both solicited
and unsolicited? And how is your cash flow compared with last month’s,
with last month a year ago and with last year to date. Most accounting measurements
have some room to maneuver in them; cash flow doesn’t! Unlike many businesses that can focus their products
toward a single narrow age, gender or other demographic, CLE must serve a
wide variety of people. But we CAN learn a lot more about each group of people
we do serve and tailor our approaches accordingly. Did you know that there
is a whole developing field of ethnographic research being
used by companies in manufacturing, consumer goods, and financial services
seeking to gain deeper understanding of what their customers really
want. As a highly competitive,
yet rather traditional field, CLE might benefit from this kind of research,
perhaps organized, led and funded by ACLEA. Or perhaps done in focused ways
by individual organizations.
Management
We
all encourage innovation in our CLE organizations, but what practical tips
can make it really productive? Jan Rivkin of Harvard
Business School, writing
in the May 8 Business Week Magazine, suggests these five ideas: 1. Have a plan
for encouraging innovation and stick with it--a steady stream of innovative
ideas takes time to start flowing. 2. Innovation alone won’t make your
organization succeed—-you also need to shine in other ways including
top-notch customer relations and consistently excellent operations. 3. Push
organizational learning—treat every success or failure as a potential
learning lab. 4. Challenge conventional wisdom—just because it’s
always been done one way doesn’t make that way the best. Or even good!
5. Discipline your innovation process—new just for the sake of new merely
equals “so what”! Insist that innovation must be practical to be
valuable in the long term. And it must be aligned with customer wants, potential
wants and pocketbooks. Are
you sharing your priorities with others in your CLE organization on a regular,
operational basis? Sure, you have a strategic plan, probably a year’s
business plan, both of which list your priorities. But do you relate what you
are doing daily and weekly to those stated goals and priorities, and do you
share what your weekly and daily priorities are with those you report to and
those who report to you? What if you discussed priorities for the week on Monday
mornings and made sure everyone knows everyone else’s priorities for
the day and week? You might be surprised at the clarity it would generate for
everyone, the cross purposes it might expose and eliminate, and the assistance
others might be able to provide in getting each other’s priorities achieved. Tom
Mosley, marketing manager of Illinois Institute for Continuing Legal Education,
tried a new course selling approach at the beginning of 2006. Illinois’ new
minimum CLE scheme, set for launch July 1, allows for up to 10 hours of credit
for approved CLE taken between January 1 and July 1. Mosley created an oversized
brochure showing all spring 2006 courses, mailed it quite widely in late 2005,
and offered a discount of $100 if lawyers registered for at least two courses
(and thereby got their maximum allowed pre-MCLE launch credit). IICLE’s
investment of $18,000 in the brochures, postage, etc. returned $125,000 or
nearly twice its usual rate of return!
Resources Mark
your calendar for September 14 for a FREE one-hour tutorial I am giving
on writing powerful sales letters to key mailing lists for CE opportunities
whether they be courses, webcasts, publications or other items. Sponsored
by Premiere Global Communications and arranged by Annette
Leibl who
many of you know from past ACLEA meetings, the tutorial will be an
interactive session with written materials and showcasing the stimulating
features of Premiere Global teleconferencing capability. Registration
information to come. If you
are a working parent, you might appreciate www.businessweek.com/careers/workingparents/blog.
Seven working parent staff members of Business Week Magazine write
it. So you get a range of viewpoints, practical advice and even comments
from readers. Worthwhile resource! (This is the second reference in
this CLE L&M issue—they’re
doing a GREAT job right now!) Check
out Law Practice Magazine online at www.abanet.org/lpm/magazine/articles/v32/is3/an2.shtml.
You get the current issue articles in full at no charge. Nearly every
one is valuable for CLE administrators. I’ve
recently facilitated two successful planning retreats based
in whole or in part on three powerful questions designed to
stimulate new thinking for an organization’s present and future
activities. Two more such retreats for CLE and bar association staffs
are on the calendar
for coming months. The key questions are: 1. What activities, policies,
or projects are we pursuing now that are obsolete, counter-productive
or dead and that we should drop? 2. What activities, approaches, policies,
etc. are we NOT pursuing that we SHOULD BE pursuing? 3. What activities
or projects that we ARE pursuing should we be doing BETTER and HOW?
If you would like to discuss how we might structure a valuable, stimulating
and fun day of such discussions with your staff and/or board, give
me a call. I GUARANTEE a surge of valuable ideas to energize your organization!
Please
keep in touch! CCB
Following 20 years as Executive Director of a major American CLE organization,
Chuck now consults on strategic planning for CLE organizations and bar associations,
on marketing for CLE sponsors and law firms, on CLE executive hiring, and on
management challenges with CLE and other legal organizations, law firms, law
schools and others. He also offers economical in-house training through conference
call courses for CLE and bar association staffs. He welcomes
your inquiries on projects designed to enhance your organization’s effectiveness.
You can contact
him at chuck@chuckbingaman.com, at 1-603-756-9268, or at P.O. Box 390, Walpole,
NH, USA 03068-0390. Past issues of this newsletter are archived at www.chuckbingaman.com.
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