I don’t think anyone could have predicted the year we have had and I think most people will agree it has been pretty rubbish.

To say this year has been interesting is an understatement, but even prior to the pandemic, questions were being asked by senior partners, general councils, COOs and lawyers in general. ‘Why do we spend so much on new IT systems, tools and applications, yet the benefits are so minimal?’

Digital Transformation is all the rage these days – as businesses try and deliver customer centric value to the market quicker than their competitors. However, it is often done without consideration for the cultural impact of these changes to your business.

Many law firms have wisely, and with some success, deployed Legal Project Management (LPM) but, more often than not, as a stand-alone function. This limits its value to the firm and the opportunity to deliver what clients are demanding – consistently better, simpler and cheaper cases/matters.

It is well known that Agile and Scrum emphasize personal interaction and in person teamwork in a very organic and dynamic way. Most organisations will have in-flight projects that have been succeeding in their delivery since inception – based around these core Agile principles.

When building a new product - too often it is easier to start with What, When and How rather than the Why.

During this period of uncertainty and concern for our families, friends, colleagues and clients we need to acknowledge that this is an awful situation and it’s fine to feel concerned, uneasy and even scared. As difficult as it may be, we need to try and stay positive and think to the future!

The pandemic and our response to it means that the norm is no longer the norm. Organisations need to respond by focusing their efforts around three areas: (1) Dealing with today, (2) Planning for the future, and, (3) Transforming for the new norm

Stand more to improve personal engagement and cognitive performance

A few years back when we were all caught up in the Agile euphoria, the phrase “Fr-Agile” was coined to describe projects where Waterfall and Agile delivery were combined. This was initially called “W-Agile”, but then some bright spark said “don’t you mean “Fr-Agile!”.

The term Psychological Safety was coined by Amy Edmondson in 1999 after a study she was involved in unearthed an interesting surprise. Researching mistakes by medical teams in the US, she discovered that the teams seen as the high performers were the ones with the highest mistakes, and in turn, the lower performers had the least…

Law firms are spending millions on change programmes, yet they rarely lead to successful change…

The biggest mistake many organisation make when seeking efficiency savings is to implement process and governance improvements that deliver efficiencies in one area which creating greater inefficiencies across the whole. This is called sub-optimising. For example, you could streamline the processes for one area by removing certain quality checks. This then leads to additional costs further down the food chain when another department has to deal with the knock-on effect of low quality.

Designing a new operating model should be an opportunity to realise step changes in performance. It should be about reducing unnecessary waste that has built up over time, finding ways to help people be more effective, and to get that extra edge over the competition. However, this goal seems to get lost in the inevitable Op Model process, resulting in poor Op Model design, excessive costs to produce and, even worse, op models that are not fit for purpose.

Agile is a highly confusing term because it refers to more than one thing. For business leaders wanting to embark on ‘Agile transformations’ this is problematic. To help clarify needs and intent, at Enfuse Group we think of ‘agile’ as having three distinct definitions with notable overlaps.

This is something that has been playing on my mind since I started looking at innovation and was asked to define what innovation means. Fundamentally is there a difference between innovation and strategy?

Innovation by its very nature is dealing with new untested ideas. Due to the unruly and unpredictable nature of innovation it would be wrong to set ground rules, however there are three core ingredients your organisation needs to tap into when innovating:.

Putting a man on the moon looked impossible, certainly when you consider that the US wanted to do it first and they wanted to return the man to earth safely. The feat is even more impressive when you realise that for nearly 50 years we haven’t managed to do it again. It was the power of the goal that made it possible. It was insane and, most importantly, awe-inspiring.

Blockchain is a technology. It is not a solution on its own, in the same way as electronics, coding languages and the world wide web on their own are not solutions. The solutions come from how the technology is applied. There has been confusion on this point. Too much has been written about how blockchain is the answer, rather than a technology which could be utilised to come up with a potential answer.

Sans Forgetica is probably not a typeface you have heard of before, but it is certainly one you are less likely to forget now you have.