Staff Meeting Success: Must Do & Definitely Don’t!
#1 “Must Do!” Hold regular, pre-planned and productive staff meetings. #1 “Definitely Don’t!” Without adequate preparation and the right facilitator to ensure employee meetings are productive, positive and efficient, don’t go there. I could stop writing now as the most critical points of my message are listed above. A checklist is offered below, however, with [...]
Making Fertilizer from Office Poop
As our awesome grandkids would tell you, we scoop lots of poop on our mountainside horse and donkey ranch. If we had a nickel for all our scoopings through the years, we’d likely be more than financially set for life. I’m retained by professional firms to serve as their investigator, coach, consultant or temporary administrator. [...]
Successful Law & Other Professional Firms: Shared Characteristics
Successful law firms — and actually all professional firms and successful businesses — seem to share many common characteristics regardless of their size, areas of practice or location. A few months back I posted a“shared characteristics” list for 2009 firm success stories. I’ve updated and posted below a somewhat updated mini-article and checklist: Seminar attendees [...]
Office Sharing: Maximizing the Benefits & Minimizing the Risks
For those considering office sharing (or already doing so), here are a few of my recommendations for minimizing the risks and maximizing the benefits: Tips on office sharing and executive suites (from chapter in ABA/Law Practice Management’s Flying Solo, Edition 4 Publication) Other questions? Either leave a comment or email me at nbj@nbjconsulting.com and I [...]
Sampling of 2009 Characteristics Shared or Ignored by Successful & Not-So-Successful Law Firms
Sampling Characteristics of Successful Firms in 2009: An ongoing effort to improve management and leadership skills including having the most qualified (vs. most senior, etc.) leaders at the helm Creating written action plans, monitoring them regularly and holding everyone timely accountable to do their part Taking the need to market the firm seriously and doing [...]
Verbal Violence & Bullying in the Workplace
Click here for one of my articles on these two runaway problems in today’s law firms and other offices. Workplace bullying and verbal violence poison (dilute at best) any other steps taken to reduce office stress and they are serious productivity and morale thieves. Sadly, too many leaders allow these destructive behaviors to continue without [...]
Law Firm Leadership
By clicking here, you’ll pull up a copy of one of my articles on effective law firm leadership – an often talked about subject, but not as often practiced. This article also includes my simplistic self-audit for privately evaluating our own leadership characteristics. And, I suggest an easy way to immediately start honing any leadership [...]
Morale Busters and Boosters
Many things can bring workplace morale spiraling downward. Some all-too-common Morale Busters in law offices (and other offices as well) include: Rules applied sporadically and unfairly among employees (e.g. starting time, length of lunch breaks, # of vacation days) An ongoing frantic pace — day after day — caused primarily by a supervisor’s poor planning [...]
What's Your Brand?
Below are the initial sentences of a succinct and excellent blog post at www.biziboom.com by attorney Scott Gibson. I encourage all my readers and clients to read and reread this well-written post on such a critical subject for us all. If you’re on Twitter, don’t miss Mr. Gibson’s great tweets as well (@tradesecretlaw). Everybody Has [...]
Greed & Unresolved Disputes
I’ll be writing more on this down the road, but recently heard of yet another family that split apart for all the wrong reasons. This is a family I would have NEVER expected to splinter or to allow greed or desperation or any unresolved other issues to trump family love, commitment and loyalty. Far too [...]
Employee Considerations in Law Firm Mergers
I just sent the suggestions copied below to an attorney looking for merger tips to pass along to a client law firm about to merge w/another firm. Doing so made me realize how often in mergers (whether law firms or other businesses) there’s too little attention paid to our employees and what they are going [...]
More on the Management of Telecommuters
Greetings! I’ve previously blogged about telecommuting in regard to handling in-house employees who may be disgruntled over remote working employees (http://lawbusinesstips.com/2009/06/24/telecommuting-disgruntled-co-workers/) and experiences shared by other companies (http://lawbusinesstips.com/2009/07/08/telecommuting-cost-savings-cisco/). Today, I found this blog post that is also worthwhile reading about the management of telecommuters: http://bit.ly/3NxO3N. In addition to the tips and discussions found in the [...]
Lawyers USA Online:Nancy's Crusade Against Word,"Non-Lawyer"
Just got the link for my most recent column for Lawyers USA (click here) which I first wrote about in my blog. Wishing everyone a great day in spite of any one or thing that may try to louse it up for you! Don’t let’em!
Respecting Employees: Do You Talk It, Show It or Both?
Ongoing business success stories can only be achieved with certain cornerstones in place. One of these critical foundations is feeling and showing respect for your employees. If it’s genuine (and not just the politically correct thing to say), leaders and managers consistently demonstrate this in many ways including: RESPECT IS 24/7 ….. you appreciate, value [...]
Law Office Mental Health Policies for Well Known & Our "Other" Addictions
Alcoholism, substance abuse and depression; these three afflictions usually receive the most attention at CLE programs and in legal publications. This makes sense in light of the continuing (and alarming) rise in the numbers of attorneys suffering with these impairments. What we don’t hear as much about, statistically or otherwise, are the more subtle impairments [...]
