The Learning Law Department

I've written about the importance of having a "teaching" law department, but equally necessary is the development of a "learning" law department. By that I mean a team that is open-minded enough to seek lessons and ideas from everyone.

A few years ago, a rather retiring colleague came to my office, and made a very good case why our intended course of action was wrong-headed. The planned action was entirely my idea, so he was concerned that I might take offense. In fact, I deeply appreciated being told how and why we were going off course. Too often management of a team becomes a monologue, but I strive to build teams where dialogue reigns.

When the excitement of a goal or an idea transcends egos, that's when a learning enterprise is born.

This process starts in the quote from Thomas Carlyle, "Every man is my superior in that I may learn from him." Every day I go to work, I learn something new from my colleagues, and I hope that, on occasion, they might even learn something from me.

Your Lucky Day

Sorry not to have posted in February. It was a short month with many demands. The groundhog made his annual appearance, then went back into his den. Maybe I followed his lead and was hibernating too.

Anyone, I've been reading a slew of business books and it strikes me that one of the failings of most of these efforts is the failure to recognize the role that luck plays in an enterprise’s success or failure. But in most fields, be it business, the military, sports or otherwise, chance has been known to play a crucial role.

Perhaps this omission is because to acknowledge luck might seem anti-rational or fatalistic. After all, if fortune can be capricious, what use is planning and goal setting? What use is writing a book of business advice?

I would suggest, however, that acknowledging the forces outside our control emphasizes the need for diligent effort and flexible planning. Expecting the unexpected, developing contingencies, and having ready-made Plan B’s, all provide a competitive edge.

Acknowledging the role that fortune plays keeps you humble and vigilant when you are experiencing success, because you know that your luck will change. Understanding the presence of providence allows you to persevere in difficult times, also knowing that your luck will change.

My Daily Poison

No one likes to do unpleasant tasks. What constitutes an unpleasant task may vary from person to person, but we all encounter disagreeable items on our to do list. It’s tempting to try to avoid these unlikable jobs, but the more we delay, often the worse they get. One good strategy I’ve read about is to “eat the frog” first thing in your day. That is to say, do the most difficult task early on and the rest of the day will be easy by comparison.

So I have embarked on this frog-eating plan and will advise how it turns out. So far, most of the unpleasant tasks have not been so bad after all, and in any case they are done. Also, dealing with the difficult actually makes subsequent difficult tasks easier. Sort of like King Mithridates, who sampled a little bit of poison each day, so as to build up an immunity to concoctions that might be slipped into his meals by his enemies. His plan worked, and was immortalized in A.E. Housman's 1896 Book of Poems, A Shropshire Lad:

There was a king reigned in the East:
There, when kings will sit to feast,
They get their fill before they think
With poisoned meat and poisoned drink.
He gathered all the springs to birth
From the many-venomed earth;
First a little, thence to more,
He sampled all her killing store;
And easy, smiling, seasoned sound,
Sate the king when healths went round.
They put arsenic in his meat
And stared aghast to watch him eat;
They poured strychnine in his cup
And shook to see him drink it up:
They shook, they stared as white’s their shirt:
Them it was their poison hurt.
—I tell the tale that I heard told.
Mithridates, he died old.