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CLE Leadership & Management
Ideas, Resources, and Techniques for
CLE Professionals
A periodic e-newsletter
By Chuck Bingaman - chuck@chuckbingaman.com
#8 September, 2003
Leadership
 One of the advantages of living in
a village in a small state is that we see our leaders very much “up close and
personal”. In the past few weeks
we’ve met our new Episcopal
Bishop-elect, Gene Robinson, and former Vermont Governor Howard
Dean, a contender for the Democratic Presidential nomination. Robinson led the worship service at
our small church and, over coffee, met with our parishioners. While he
offered to answer questions about himself in light of his controversial
personal position, he made it clear that his focus was on serving the church
in constructive ways as bishop.
Dean gave his stump speech here in Walpole and really connected with
his listeners. Both men showed
why they attract committed followers.
Both were clearly interested in and listened intently for our
concerns, our hopes, and our aspirations. Both expressed their gratitude for the people that had
supported them in their careers and inspired them to seek higher leadership
posts. And both presented their
leadership visions not as personal goals as much as efforts to serve us and
our highest aspirations. They
made me think about the balance leaders need between a strong ego that can
drive them to try for power and the humility it takes to focus a vision that
resonates with their constituents.
Have you really thought about your
customers’ total experience with your CLE organization or enterprise
lately? Have you broken down every
aspect of their experience with you? Providing an experience that customers feel is superior to
their experience with your competitors may determine your competitive
position and your success or failure.
Do your customers always get exactly what they want—and more—from
you? Do they feel appreciated? In fact, do they feel that they are the
purpose of your business? Do
they feel like they get a great return on their investment of time and money
in your programs? Are they
getting what they want as quickly as possible? Does this year’s experience with your
programs feel freshly updated, new and improved over last year’s? Are your customers having fun, being
surprised and looking forward to their next interaction with you? Practitioners can fill their CLE
needs and wants from an enormous array of choices in 2003. Maybe we should be making certain
that we can answer all of the above questions with enthusiastic affirmations!
Management
Al Ries has written a number of
must-read books, including The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing. His newest book, The Fall of
Advertising and the Rise of PR (HarperBusiness, 2002) is co-written with
Laura Ries and may be his most important book for CLE people. His basic theme is that advertising
has lost its credibility and that PR—public relations—is the only effective
source for building credibility in modern markets. He argues that we have become so saturated with and immune
to advertising that, to gain the attention we want from our prospects, we
must use other approaches. And,
he argues that a slow PR build-up to new products is now more effective than
almost any “big bang” advertising campaign. While many CLE organizations have strong credibility in
their markets and few can stop advertising, there may be ways we can employ
PR more effectively for CLE.
First, many CLE organizations have large numbers of highly respected
volunteers who might be able to spread the word on their efforts with great
credibility. Maybe we can create
ways to encourage that process.
We can give our volunteers suggestions for communications efforts they
can make within their firms and in lawyers’ organizations to which they
belong. And maybe we can do more
institutional advertising that builds on the credibility of our key
volunteers. Second, most of us
could get more news coverage by sending more news releases and story tips to
newsletter and newspaper editors about great things our volunteers are
doing. Every newspaper story
about an author, team of authors, an instructor, a new Board member, etc., is
a great credibility builder for them and for their CLE sponsor. And when we do get a good newspaper
story, we can distribute copies at courses and by mail to key members of the
bar and quote them in our advertising.
Third, we can seek out other public relations professionals who are
working for lawyers and piggyback on or support their efforts. Many large firms—those from whom we
often enlist volunteers—employ outside PR firms to promote themselves. Routinely ask volunteers if their law
firms have PR firms and whether you may contact them to share information on
their CLE work. This can produce
a win-win-win opportunity for your volunteer, his or her firm and your CLE
organization. Fourth, set aside
some time now to research PR opportunities for your organization, hold a
meeting of your key staff to discuss the opportunities, and form an action
plan to upgrade your PR efforts.
Clearly we cannot abandon advertising; it’s still the best tool CLE
has to attract seminar attendees and publications buyers. But neither can we ignore the potential
power of PR for promoting our products and services—power that few CLE
organizations have begun to tap.
Resources &
Strategies Do you have one
of those carefully crafted strategic plans that was stored away on a shelf
somewhere and hardly looked at after it was printed? Many organizations do. In fact, companies often hire
consultants two or three times over the years to analyze the same
problem. Even though the
consultants make similar recommendations, nothing happens. I recently came across an excellent
book on the problem called The Knowing—Doing Gap: How Smart Companies
Turn Knowledge Into Action by Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton
(Harvard Business School Publishing, 1999). The authors explore the reasons why companies so
often fail to turn what they know into effective action
and suggest ways to avoid the usual impediments. Lawyers, it turns out, are among the craftiest at figuring
out what needs to be done with an organizational challenge…and then failing
to DO it! In fact, lawyers seem
to have a special facility for substituting talk for action. The authors also suggest ways of
avoiding the “gap”, including forcing oneself to get started immediately with
at least a small piece of what needs to be done. As we all know half-consciously, getting started is half
the battle! For
a really inspiring read—and possibly some great ideas for your CLE programs—check
out There Are No Shortcuts by Rafe Esquith (Pantheon Books,
2003). Esquith is an incredible,
outrageous, brilliant, totally committed, humane and amazingly effective
middle school teacher in an inner city Los Angeles school who has won many
awards over the past 18 years for his work and his results. If you feel that your courses are in
ruts, some exposure to what Esquith accomplishes with 6th graders
might stir you up! With the
resources and students we have in CLE, we should be able to do even more than
he does with few resources and administrative resistance at every step! This year’s 2003 TechLearn
Expo is November 2-5 at Disney’s Coronado Springs Resort in Orlando,
FL. More than 2,000 people will
attend four days of programs and trade shows on “using learning, training and
technology to develop workforce skills, engage customers and provide
educational programs” and there will be more than 100 major learning and
technology sponsors. Full
information is available at www.techlearn.com.
Following an award-winning 20 years as Executive Director of
Illinois Institute for Continuing Legal Education, Chuck now consults
full-time on business opportunities and management challenges with CLE
organizations, legal publishers, and law firms. Chuck also teaches a course on law practice marketing and
writes a monthly marketing column for lawyers. You can contact him at chuck@chuckbingaman.com, at
603-756-9268, or at P.O. Box 390, Walpole, NH 03068
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