The session was right after lunch, and was sparsely attended, to say the least, but I think it went pretty well. At least a couple of folks seemed to get something out of it, so there’s that.

I wanted to share a little bit of the idea for my section of the discussion. I drew inspiration from the quote “I’m a name, not a number” that was in the description, choosing to focus on the individual, instead of the overall organizational culture, because I firmly believe that it doesn’t really matter what your organization does, you owe it to yourself to grow your career. So, I answered the “I’m a name, not a number”, complaint with a simple statement. “So act like it.” Learn how to build relationships and trust, learn how to effectively communicate, and continually educate yourself on your business, clients, and the industry as a whole.

In this economy, you either prove you bring value to the organization, or you risk being replaced. It’s that simple. If you continue to grow, learn new skills, and bring new ideas to the table, you’re going to appear much more valuable than the folks we have to ask what they do around here. My one line takeaway from the session was this:

Your Career = Your Responsibility.

Don’t wait for the firm to decide what skills you need, that will always be reactionary, and based on their needs. Go out, connect with others in your field, and see the skills that will serve you well in the future. Take the initiative to grow, that is a skill that will serve you well in and of itself.

Well, technically Sunday was day one, but Monday was day one of the educational sessions, so I’m calling it day one.

Jason Jennings got things going, with a great keynote where he discussed the “5 Secrets to Put Strategic Unity on the Fast Track”. Among the many good points made by Jason, one of the things that really caught my attention was his description of the shared traits of the leaders of the best companies in the world, and how those traits affect the rest of an organization. For example, these leaders were happy to share their plans, their knowledge, and their strategy. They wanted everyone in their organization, and everyone they did business with, to understand the purpose of their work, and their place within the overall purpose. Given that, I couldn’t help but wonder if those of us who are practicing this whole idea of sharing and learning from one another in the online world, are in fact, practicing leadership?

We are, after all, on the forefront of sharing ideas and knowledge openly. We’re open to new ideas, and also open to letting go of old ideas as we acquire more knowledge. We’re accountable to the folks we share with, they’ll know if we start passing off bad information, or straying from the truth, and they will call us out on it. I also like to think that those of us living in this space, who really want it to benefit our careers, are also good stewards, both of the information we have and share, and also of the attention and time spent by those who follow us.

Social Networking as part of leadership training? Maybe, it’s worth thinking about anyway.

The rest of the day for me was spent in the Litigation Support track, and the one thing that really jumped out at me in those sessions, and also from a breakfast discussion at a Cowen Group event this morning, was the things that need to be in place before we can even think about implementing project management disciplines. Simply put, legal project management depends on measurements and workflow processes. You have to define the processes and document the work well before you can think about what to measure, and how it fits into a project management process. Same thing goes for making technology and strategy decisions, you have to understand how you work, what work you do, and what your end result looks like before you can make the correct decisions. It’s an idea I’ve been working on quite a bit, and one I’m determined really takes quite a bit of time. Others are further along this process, but it takes work, and it takes buy-in from management, which can only come from having good measurements to show the value. So we measure and document and try to spot the trends and the patterns that will inform us of the best way to plan for the future.

Good data can only help, right?

As always though, above and beyond all of the educational sessions, having the chance to catch up with old contacts, meet some online friends in person, and make new connections is the biggest benefit to being here. Again, it’s that network of folks who are willing to share what they know that is the best resource we walk away from at the end of the week. I look forward to building it even more!

This post by Michelle Golden is actually referring to dress code policies, but I think the sentiment certainly applies to what I’ve been saying around here. Just imagine this quote when it comes to employee’s use of social networking tools:

When can we treat our team members like the judgment-applying knowledge workers that they we need them to be?

A few people who don’t get it shouldn’t cause us to be big policy-making meanies to the majority who are fine. Again, the education and classes are fine, but the policies are really getting quite out of hand.

If we treat our people like babies, that’s all we’ll have left because the smart ones will leave.

As I’ve said, many, many times, if the people who work for you can’t be trusted to get their jobs done without you blocking every possible distraction or risk, you don’t need better firewalls, you need better people. Your time would be much better spend finding people you can trust, and getting on with your business. On the flip side, if the people who work for you can be trusted to do their jobs well regardless, and you don’t show them some trust and respect, someone else will.

Updated to add another great quote from a Sunday Columbus Dispatch story talking about different ways companies are allowing or blocking social networking:

Some companies and organizations embrace social media and, in certain circumstances, encourage their employees to use them to “get the word out.”

The Ohio Chamber of Commerce is one. Its employees aren’t blocked from accessing Facebook or Twitter and are encouraged to talk on the site about things they’re working on to get information out to the business community, said Julie Wagner Feasel, vice president of communication for the group.

“We discussed what would happen if something goes up that shouldn’t go up (on a social-networking site) and came to the conclusion that if we hired these employees and trust them, then we should be able to trust them to put appropriate information on Twitter,” Wagner Feasel said.

“We haven’t run into anything that’s been inappropriate, but that’s because we went into it with a level of trust with our employees.”

According to the AJC, Small perks carry weight around the office. That got me thinking about what I hear from friends and acquaintances about their workplace, and how they’ve handled the current economic recession. In the midst of budget cuts, it’s important to find ways to show your employees that you value them.

It seems like everywhere I turn companies are cutting out benefits, dropping perks, freezing salaries, and maybe even laying off some of their people. And in the midst of all of that they are going back to their best performers, the people they rely on to keep things running, and telling them they should feel lucky to have a job.

Now, don’t get me wrong, with this economy we are all lucky, to some degree, to have jobs, I admit that. And budget cuts are certainly needed. On the other hand, if you really expect your best people to simply sit and accept that while you continue to offer them nothing, you’re crazy. These people know they are good at what they do, and they know they have a job not because of luck and your generosity. You’re running a business, not a halfway house. They have a job because they bring value to your business. If you don’t offer them any incentive to stay, don’t engage them, and don’t show them some loyalty, someone else will. Granted, the opportunities open to folks in a recession are limited, but it only takes one for them to be gone. Can you really afford for your best folks to go to work for your competitors?

Maybe you should do more that tell them how lucky they are. They’re not lucky, they’re good, and you need to find some way to appreciate that.

Since It’s Wrong to Friend Your Boss on Facebook, I guess that makes me sort of an idiot, huh?

Yes, one of my Facebook “friends” is my boss. No, that doesn’t really bother me. Not because I would want my boss to know everything about my life, (I don’t want anyone to know everything about my life for that matter!), but because anything that I didn’t want my boss to know, I wouldn’t post on a social networking site!

I use Social Networking tools to connect with family and friends, yes. I also use them to connect with folks who read my blog, or who are involved with the child abuse survivor community online. I also count among my contacts coworkers, former coworkers, professional contacts, peers from other firms, vendors and consultants and probably a couple of people that I don’t even remember how we know each other. In fact, it’s a pretty varied group on Facebook.

That variety doesn’t mean I’m being “irresponsible” in who I share details of my life with. In my case, it actually serves to remind me to stay responsible in all of my online interactions, no matter who I’m interacting with. I’ve been involved in the earliest forms of online networking through blogs, since 2001. I’m comfortable with what I write on all the different subjects I write about. I recognize that some will find one, or more, of the topics I write about more interesting than others, which is why I do sort of separate those out to some extent, and why only one of my blogs feeds to my Facebook profile, but as far as I’m concerned, if I put it online, I’m ok with it being public knowledge and having my name attached to it. If I wasn’t, I wouldn’t post it anywhere.

Of course, with Facebook, that also means keeping up with what others post on my profile, which I also do. I try not to associate with people I don’t trust enough to respect my desire to keep my page fun, educational, interesting, yet still professional. I regularly remove miscellaneous stuff from my Facebook Wall that makes it look less than that. Yes, that’s why, if you are sending gifts, hearts, angels or what have you to all your friends, I more than likely removed it from my wall. Nothing personal, it’s just not what I want all over my profile when people look at it. It’s my profile, my choice, and I choose to connect with coworkers, and my boss. Not because I’m naive, quite the opposite, in fact.

In an otherwise maddening post about his experience with a law school student, Craig Ball makes an interesting “throw away” comment:

We look to the crop of eager young lawyers to be inherently more adept at e-discovery than we who preceded them. After all, they have iPhones.

Craig (who I assume was being facetious), is confusing the comfort level of using technology, with an understanding of technology. They are not the same. Younger attorneys may have an advantage when it comes to using their PC or smartphone to get work done, by virtue of having grown up in a world where this is the norm. Much the same way that older folks used to joke about getting their 9 year old to program the VCR, that doesn’t mean the 9 year old knows how the VCR works. She is just comfortable using the menu to program it because she’s never not had one. Expecting that, because this young girl can program the VCR means that she will, undoubtedly, also understand how video tape gets written to, how the VCR adjusts for different playback speeds, how the broadcast is received by the television, etc. is folly. The ability to use an iPhone has nothing to do with knowing how to create a data-map, a deep understanding of PST files, using hash values to locate duplicate files, an understanding of metadata and forensics, or the hundreds of other things an attorney may run into in the course of an eDiscovery project.

It reminds me of the many organizations who’s use of social media is being directed by a 20 something employee fresh out of college who happens to have 500 friends on Facebook or Twitter, as if that somehow magically qualifies them to direct marketing strategy. It’s simply not the same thing.

Both of these examples bring to mind something else that has bothered me for a long time about the “generational diversity” presentations that I know you’ve all heard over and over, and which was described so well by Manager Tools just last week. In this case, just because an associate is young, doesn’t mean they are better with technology. Some are, and some aren’t. They are individuals, not an composite of the “average” for people their age, or from their culture.

For example,  if you meet another 41 year old, male, white Litigation Support Manager, chances are, they are a lot different than I am, you might want to take notice of that. Heck, they are probably less grumpy, if nothing else!

Kevin Eikenberry posts some interesting thoughts in video form about what will happen when the job market starts to recover, positing that your best and brightest will be the first ones out the door.

I actually tend to agree. I’ve been thinking, for quite awhile now, that when the job market bounces back and people start to feel a bit more secure in looking around, there’s going to be a mass exodus, especially from the legal industry. You can’t go a week or two without reading about law firms cutting staff, cutting associates, limiting pay, and cutting all sorts of expenses, and legal is hardly the only industry getting hit with cuts like this.

So the question is, in the midst of all these “cuts”, what are you doing to keep your best people engaged and on board? If nothing, do you really expect they won’t be looking to leave at the first sign of openings?

That’s the idea that was presented a few days ago by Confused of Calcutta, and one that I kept finding myself considering after reading about it.

You might recall over a month ago that I wrote about non-lawyer staff and the marketing of a firm, and the importance of bringing more to the table than just doing your job, because any good employee can do your job, a great employee becomes a resource for the firm in many more ways than just doing the assigned work.

That could explain why I see much to like in this idea of coming in to a job and bringing your own identity, using the tools you choose, etc. You don’t stop being you between the hours of 8-5, and you don’t stop being an employee of the firm at 5. That’s not the way the world works any more. Certainly there is much to be said for work/life balance, and I am a big believer in having a healthy balance between work and fun, but at the same time the best source of customers for any enterprise are the people your employees are talking to and interacting with. I know my impression of many companies has been based on what the people who work there have said about it, or experienced while working there, but it’s something I don’t think many companies think about, and dare I say, it’s something very few law firms have stopped to consider. Oh, many will take great pains to not get a negative reputation among lawyers, but don’t stop to think about all of the potential clients their support staff is also connected with. The wild world of Web 2.0 is starting to change that perspective, but slowly. It’s now easy enough to see how connected many of the people who work for you are, and not just the potential damage that can be caused by disgruntled employees, but also the opportunity that having truly engaged employees brings.

Staff members who are proud of the firm they work for are, generally, more than happy to tell the people they know about it. That can’t be a bad thing, can it? Unfortunately, too many places will never know, because they live in abject fear of what their employees might say if they were given the freedom to do so. That’s too bad, and just might be an indictment of how they treat these non-attorney staff members. Not so much as people, with rich, full lives, relationships, and many things to offer, but as cogs in the machine, there to do your bidding for 8 hours per day and nothing more.

I know which kind of environment I enjoy working in more. I’d bet I’m not alone.

Well, it’s been an interesting year, that’s for sure! Like most years, 2009 didn’t turn out the way I expected. Last year at this time, I really had no idea what was headed my way. The biggest surprise, obviously, was being promoted to management. Not only did I not expect that to happen, but I also really had no idea what that would mean for my every day life.

I’ve mentioned before, management is different. It’s no longer about going to the office, doing the work, and going home. I spend so much time planning strategy, evaluating ideas, brainstorming, preparing training materials, reaching out to other areas of the firm, etc. that it can be very difficult to turn that off at the end of the work day. That’s not always a bad thing, sometimes I can accomplish much more of that stuff away from the distractions of the workplace, but it has caused some other things to suffer. I find myself with less time to write very meaningful posts here or on the child abuse blog, and I’ve not managed to blog at all over at Friends in Tech. I simply don’t have as much spare mental energy as I used to!

On top of that, it’s been more difficult to go home and do the social, personal things I’m used to doing. Oh, I may still spend the evening with Angela doing things we’ve always done, but I may not be 100% mentally there when we are. I may be mulling over an idea I had earlier, or fleshing out details of a plan while also watching The Office or eating dinner. That’s not good.

That being said, I suspect that much of the problem lies not so much with a lack of time as much as an undisciplined approach to time. Not that I’m unorganized, I probably have more lists than any three people you know, but when I sit down to write, or brainstorm an idea, it doesn’t always keep my focus, and winds up taking much longer than it should. My mind goes in tangents instead of opening up an Evernote page and outlining an idea right then and there while I’m thinking about it.

So that’s the plan for 2009. I’m going to be trying to figure out ways to be more disciplined with my time, and learn how to focus on getting all the way through a plan, or activity, then focus on the next one, instead of starting, writing a few ideas, then remembering that I need to email someone about another task, or check the hockey score real quick, etc. Any tips you’ve gleaned from your own lives are always appreciated!

I know I said that I loved the entire post I pointed you to earlier from Stop Blocking, but there’s one line that really resonates outside of this particular issue.

Who died and put CIOs in charge of worker productivity anyway? I’m not sure when supervisors and HR abdicated this responsibility to IT, but IT is simply not qualified to address employee productivity.

It immediately reminded me of something that I hear often from the Manager Tools guys, that there are so few people in management who really understand and work at being a good manager. This task of addressing productivity fell to IT because no one else has any idea of how to address productivity. Actually taking the time to set the expectations to the people who work for you, figuring out how to measure their performance and holding them accountable for meeting the goals you set out for them is quite a bit of work. I know, as a new manager I’m still struggling with figuring out how to do it! So, it’s awfully tempting as management to start blocking things that would cause distraction, as if you could block every potential distraction!

It also reminded me of a post from this past summer about dropping billable hours and how you would measure the work of associates:

“Then how do you know if your associates are working?”

I lean in, like I’m going to let them in on my secret formula.

“By managing them.”

As I look down the list of reasons not to block social media, I’m struck by how many of them fit this very point. If you are effectively managing the people who work for you, they understand the consequences of failing to meet expectations and not being productive, they understand the appropriate ways to interact online, and what sorts of things are frowned upon by the organization. They know better than to disclose confidential information, and they know with certainty what will happen if they do. They understand that being careless with malware will hurt their productivity because they’ll be without their PC while it’s getting cleaned.

As I look back on 20 plus years of working myself, and all of the conversations I have had with others, there’s something that really runs true here. There really aren’t very many good managers. I find that many, not all, managers are in management just because they were the last one standing when others moved on (ed.- he says fully self-aware).

Most people are thrust into management because they’ve been good at a job, and a manager left, so they got the promotion. Not because they showed managerial skills, and they probably weren’t given any managerial training either, they just happened to be good at one thing, so they got the spot. Is it any wonder then, that they surrender responsibilities to the IT Department? They don’t know any other way to deal with the risks of something like social networking. They don’t dare rock the boat by trying to be innovative, because being innovative requires confidence, and people who have never been groomed to be managers, yet find themselves in that position, lack the confidence to do things differently!

Seems to me that, instead of constantly worrying about what your people might do, with any tool, organizations might be better off training their managers to be effective, and innovative. That innovation will trickle down and take care of many of these issues. Right now, we’re not seeing a lot of turnover in many industries, and it may be harder to spot bad management, but I guarantee you, when the economy shows signs of turning around, and people start to feel more confident in their job prospects, you’ll see scores of unhappy, and very talented, people moving elsewhere. Finding quality and innovative management might keep a few of them around.