Archive for the ‘resilience’ Category

Entering 2012

Tuesday, January 3rd, 2012

A Happy New Year to everyone. Usually people start a new year with a sense of looking forward and expectation.  This year however forecasts are that personal bankruptcies will continue to rise and commercial property is still trying to re-align demand and supply, especially in the high streets.  There continues to be too many law firms in the UK so it is inevitable that the reduction in property related work in particular is causing internal tensions.  Merger activity continues to be seen as a way of providing a wider reach or clients and/or allow exits of partners wanting to retire. For more detail on recent merger research see http://www.lawconsultancynetwork.co.uk/index.html and click on the link on that page.

New entrants into the legal services market are focussing on IT and potential economies of scale using a less top heavy model of solicitor input. With so many law graduates unable to find training places, their job pool for ‘call centre’ staff who are familiar with legal concepts such as contract and liability is high.

It seems likely that people will buy their legal services in a variety of ways. Just as most of us now book our routine holiday breaks and flights ourselves on-line, and only use travel agents where we are trying to do something expensive or complicated, so will our clients source more routine legal help through Tesco or the Co-op in so far as they are easy to access, cheap and are user-friendly.

So what is there to look forward to for 2012?  Comfort can be had from that fact that all of recent research into how new clients find a solicitor confirm that people prefer to use personal connections.  For example, the Legal Services Board 2009 research with 2000 individuals found that 83% of respondents had not shopped around and that 25% had sourced by personal recommendation, 20% from previous experience and 15% by referral arrangement.  Similarly the Ministry of Justice 2010 research with 1000 individuals reported that 75% found a solicitor through word-of-mouth or personal recommendation.

Life for everyone is more complicated and difficult than it has been in the past decade.  As a result, people need practical help and legal advice that deals with their own particular situation or combination of situations.  It seems unlikely that the new entrants will want to deal with difficult, complex work with its associated higher risks.  It will also be interesting to see how ‘satisfied’ some of their clients become with on-line and call centre advice once the initial ease of purchase moves on to individual questions and demands.

Good lawyers enjoy dealing with interesting and complication work where they can use their skills and abilities to provide clever solutions. It makes sense to concentrate on this rather than try to defend areas of work that are no longer profitable and rewarding.

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Knowing what you are good at and doing it well

Sunday, September 25th, 2011

With so much continued uncertainty about the next few years of economic activity, every business should concentrate on what it is good at and do it well. For a professional firm, this means that it needs to ask its clients why they chose the firm to provide a service for them over its competitors and more importantly, why they continue to use it.

Such questions will produce a lot of important information about:

  • what went well and why the client thought that
  • what could be improved and why
  • areas where the client felt that too much information was provided
  • areas where there was too little information
  • tone and preferred type of communication
  • time delays that could have been avoided
  • information the client would have liked in advance
  • what other support could have been provided.

Having asked clients these questions, it is important to respond to them in a tangible way so that they can see that they have been listened to.  It is possible to do this in such a way as to reduce operational costs at the same time as improving client satisfaction.  To manage change positively it is important to concentrate only on changing those aspects of your service that clients have told you that they do not consider essential to their choice of using your firm. For example, it is important to routinise those parts of handling a piece of work that the client does not actually see, such as generating pro-forma documents.  Firms need to be building client loyalty with the result that direct contact with clients should never become ‘impersonal’. With every change you make, it is important to find ways to improve clients’ service experience, rather than reduce it.

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why use podcasts?

Thursday, June 2nd, 2011

Can I put the case for professionals to use podcasts to bring their websites to life and help clients get to ‘know’ them, what they care about and what they do?

Research continues to confirm that clients choose us because they relate to us as people. Yet, when our business is about providing services, it is difficult to demonstrate to clients what we can do to help them.  Clients need to trust us to do the best we can for them and that trust is based on building strong personal relationships.  Some professional firms’ websites seek to address this by putting up photos and short bios but others seem to hide their people and provide only a general enquiry email address.

I thought that making a podcast about my most recent book would help readers hear what why it is important to me and get a feel for me and how I work. I wanted to capture some important messages that my clients could identify with.   I liked the way it could bring my book to life and I found it easy to do and enjoyable.

The feedback that I have had is that people like it.  They find it pleasant to listen to and light relief from the usual e-bulletins and mailshots.  They have commented that linking it to my website means that my marketing message is more cohesive – people can read about the services I provide and then listen to me.  They feel that they ‘know me’ already and this helps build relationships.

If anyone is interested in developing a podcast for themselves, I would recommend Ian Skillicorn at www.mybusinesspodcast.com.

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Personal Action Plan

Monday, January 10th, 2011

Happy New Year!

People tend to start the New Year with the best intentions to do something about their weight, fitness, work-life balance and then the pressures of returning to work distract them.  There continues to be a good deal of negativity around the UK economy with some professional firms dependent on public sector work anticipating that this will soon dry up.  There continues to be a limited supply of quality work with too many good professionals chasing it.

When we focus on what we are good at and enjoy, we develop our skills and confidence.  If we spend our days working with people who undermine and criticise us, we will struggle to remember why we chose this profession.

So it is important to think about what is important to us and what we want to achieve in the long term.  January is the time to develop a Personal Action Plan.  This will allow you to:-

  • play to your strengths in your current role,
  • cope better with the areas of your job that do not focus on what you enjoy doing,
  • develop the areas that you feel you need more help with,
  • tackle clients or colleagues you seem to clash with, and/or
  • identify where you want to go with your long-term career.

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kindness and reflection

Wednesday, October 20th, 2010

I am pleased to report that sales of the new book are going well, with people telling me that they are enjoying reading it.

Just to summarise a few points that are important to remember:

• This book is aimed at helping the ‘good guys’ succeed in what can at times be the maelstrom of professional life
• It is important to be kind to ourselves as we will all make mistakes at some point in our careers
• Taking a couple of hours out every 6 months or so to reflect on what we have achieved and what we enjoy doing will help us keep ‘errors of judgement’ in proportion

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Why is personal resilience so vital for professionals?

Monday, September 27th, 2010

Personal resilience is particularly vital for professionals for a number of reasons. They need to be robust to help their clients deal with the emotional problems and challenges they are facing that often result in confrontation, worry and stress. Professionals care about what they do and the quality of their services, so when mistakes are made, they are upset. As we have discussed already, they have to make difficult and complex judgements where there is no ‘right’ answer or absolute or predetermined solution, but only the ‘best answer’ for that particular situation. Even the most proficient professionals cannot always deliver what their clients want, with the result that they get blamed for this ‘failure’. Their clients often demand 24 hour access to them with increasing pressure being placed on their speed of response. They often have a working environment that can be noisy, disruptive and exhausting, with distractions from phone calls, emails, meetings and colleagues, resulting in them being overwhelmed and stressed with no time to think quietly or the energy to do their most difficult and complex work.

They may make mistakes due to having too much to do, being tired, as a result of inattention or being given responsibility for something outside their sphere of knowledge or ability. Because of the importance of their work, such mistakes can have severe repercussions. In addition, they may be blamed for mistakes that are not their fault and/or spend time and energy sorting out a problem that they would not have created in the first place. They can sometimes work in a competitive environment that creates an unwillingness to admit when they do not know the answer, so they fail to ask colleagues for help, leaving them to cope on their own with a resultant loss of perspective when problems arise. In the most serious situation, they can face the pressure of dealing with a formal complaint or claim against them, and become defensive and hostile to non-professionals attempting to make judgements on the quality of their service provision.

This may seem a long list and it is. Professional practice is not easy and I feel that too little emphasis is placed on developing ways of coping with it. A lot of attention is paid to intellectual ability and skill development, but a lot less (if any) goes into the emotional side.

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New book is here!

Wednesday, September 8th, 2010

My new book, Developing resilience – the key to professional success has arrived! Rather than my previous two books that focussed on business development, this one is about personal development.  I wrote it because I was all too aware of how much good professionals, who care about the quality of the services they provide have been knocked off course in recent years.

For more information, please contact me on faw@westwood-associates.com.

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