First Friday Book Club
August 5, 2005 | Filed Under Organization
Since this humble weblog is on a Monday - Wednesday - Friday schedule, I thought I’d start providing a short review once a month of business-related books I have found interesting.
One book that fits this description was beach reading last summer: The Seven Day Weekend, by Ricardo Semler.
An excerpt courtesy of Inc. magazine is here. Mr. Semler describes his unique company, Semco:
Semco has no official structure. It has no organizational chart. There’s no business plan or company strategy, no two-year or five-year plan, no goal or mission statement, no long-term budget. The company often does not have a fixed CEO. There are no vice presidents or chief officers for information technology or operations. There are no standards or practices. There’s no human resources department. There are no career plans, no job descriptions or employee contracts. No one approves reports or expense accounts. Supervision or monitoring of workers is rare indeed.
(And probably no GC –ed.).
Mr. Semler also praises the concept of down time which seems to be sacrilege in an era of the always-connected knowledge worker:
Freedom is an empty word without “free time.” I don’t mean chore time, errand time, homework time. Free time must be unencumbered by a to-do list. It is epitomized by idleness, otherwise time is not free if it belongs to something or someone else. Robbed of idleness, free time is stripped of its restorative powers.
Work is so intense these days, so all-consuming that it is the arch enemy of free time. It looms like a dark castle on the distant horizon, symbolizing oppression. My workshop question taps an instinctive awareness of that fact and generates an almost romantic longing for free time and a preference to be somewhere else even if it means also forfeiting idleness in the form of a weekend off that is actually a weekend on steroids.
Something tells me Mr. Semler has never wrestled with timesheets or billable hour quotas.
This book provokes thought about work and work life. Many of the ideas about restructuring both can be dismissed as impratical. But if an idea is interesting in the Midwest and in Bangalore, perhaps it’s worth a second look.
Ricardo Semler asks tough questions about central business concepts like management control. He has had the courage to implement change that initially appears risky, but ends up improving the bottom line over the long run.
And since this book runs about 250 pages in a smaller format, it won’t weigh down your beach bag too much as you make your way to that perfect spot.
Rees’s Pieces
August 3, 2005 | Filed Under Organization, Managing
One great thing about the law.com Legal Blog Network family: you may quarrel, but it’s because you care and you still have each other’s back.
One of my cyber-colleagues is Rees Morrison, who directs the law department consulting practice at Hildebrandt. He also authors the excellent Law Department Management weblog–but then you probably already knew that.
Mindful that these posts may be the work of a clever troll, I am unable to resist biting the bait and responding to Brother Morrison:
1. Be wary of GCs who try their hand at consulting.
My view: If I were considering engaging a consultant as a GC (and Rees was busy), the fact that someone had actually played the game would be an important factor. Phil Jackson and Larry Brown are the best coaches in basketball in part because they were players, know the game from the inside out, and therefore have enhanced team credibility.
2. GCs should disclose the compensation (salary + bonus) at each level in their department.
I have an idea: try this at Hildebrandt first and let us know how it goes. My $.02 on the money issue starts with an agreement with Rees on benchmarking and balancing salary and incentive components. That said, too much of a focus on pay can be distracting, and feeds the native concerns of some people who never seem satisfied–even when they are at the top of the range. On a day-to-day level, how you treat people and communicate can be as important to elusive concepts of morale and trust, neither of which is easily benchmarked.
3. Many GCs are “disengaged”.
When you can’t beat ‘em, quote ‘em when they’re on a roll: “I haven’t heard of or consulted to professionally depressed (disengaged) general counsel, but the law departments of this company must have their share, if the Gallup findings are generally valid and hold specifically for the subset of CLOs”. Whoa! I can’t respond to that logic except by noting that I know a goodly number of GCs. And the last thing I’d call any of them is disengaged. If anything, they are too engaged at times, and have difficulty stepping back from situations and reflecting before taking action.
All that said, Rees is extremely productive, always interesting and reliably informative. He’s almost extra-terrestrial in his corporate legal intelligence.
Preparation Dep
July 27, 2005 | Filed Under Organization, General
We recently saw that a GC may be called as a witness. Now the Wall Street Journal is reporting ($) that depositions may require skills most executives do not routinely possess. A few of the major recommendations are:
To survive being deposed, attorneys and executives say, it helps to keep four things in mind. Make answers brief and tightly focused, avoiding the temptation to expand beyond what was asked. Prepare diligently beforehand. At the deposition, stay calm and truthful. And understand your side’s legal strategy well enough that you don’t undermine your value as a witness for the company if the case goes to trial.
I think a big challenge is that many executives may think depositions are an argument to be won; the article quotes Dallas attorney C. Vernon Hartline Jr., a partner in the firm of Hartline Dacus, who says:
… his first priority in advising executives is to get them to understand that this isn’t another business meeting to be attacked and conquered.
Additonal thoughts on defense deposition preparation are available from the Nixon Peabody firm. An even more detailed view of “Keeping Your Executives Out of Hot Water” is available from Hogan & Hartson.
I’ll stretch protocol and admit that I have been deposed, and found it to be a learning (and humbling) experience. I am amazed at how few lawyers I meet have ever been so sworn.
On second thought, if you get too good at giving depositions, it’s probably a sign of bigger problems.
The CEO View of Legal - #1
July 20, 2005 | Filed Under Organization, Managing
I hope to offer the occasional insight into the CEO’s view of the corporate legal function. Today, two different voices:
Innovating rather than litigating.
Good Technology CEO Danny Shader was recently interviewed on CNET’s news.com. Mr. Shader was asked about licensing patents from NTP, who is waged in pitched litigation with BlackBerry maker Research In Motion:
(Interviewer): Patent-holding company NTP says you license their technology. I’m curious if you had any thoughts on how the patent dispute and contract negotiation between RIM and NTP is going to shake out.
Shader: I can’t speculate. We took a license because we think it’s better to spend our time and energy innovating on behalf of our customers rather than litigating at the end.
Based upon that comment, Mr. Shader appears to be a CEO focused on the best way to achieve business objectives and not one to litigate because you may have a case. The cost, distraction and uncertainty of litigation is easy for some CEOs to underestimate, and it is up to the GC to educate on these points as well as advocate a potential position. Companies sometimes move into litigation like a tropical storm builds into a hurricane. A bit of cold water helps both situations.
I can’t believe how much of your day can be taken up by legal.
While not a CEO (yet), Limited Brands COO Len Schlesinger gave a first person account to Fast Company in their clever “What I Know Now” feature:
I can’t believe how much of your day can be taken up by legal. Everything has legal implications. The governance issues all have legal implications. When you have 4,000 outlets, something happens in the stores every day that has legal implications. We’re in almost every state, so there are those regulatory authorities. Something’s always happening. And of course, I waste the most time on paperwork.
While this remark seems to describe a GC’s dream environment, it reveals a real challenge: if much of what we do appears to “take up” the day of the CEO/COO, we must do only what is required in the most effective way possible. Anything more–and there is always something else to do, or some other angle to address–is too much. Such a GC risks making the corporate legal department a boat anchor in the aforementioned hurricane.
So Lesson #1 of the CEO View of Legal:
Drive innovation and not just litigation.
And a bonus corollary:
Take the time needed–not a second more.
P.S. I found it interesting that Mr. Schlesinger is a former professor at Harvard Business School. I don’t know why he would want to leave the cutting edge academy that is HBS and join a stodgy company like Limited Brands.
Easy for You to Say
July 18, 2005 | Filed Under Organization, In the News
Sometimes something you read invites a closer look.
It was widely reported last week that Hewlett-Packard is considering significant staff reductions. Reuters notes that new CEO Mark Hurd is considering a wide variety of options, including cutting as many as 25,000 jobs.
The WSJ quoted ($) a mutual fund manager on H-P last week:
Hugh Mullin, a portfolio manager at Putnam Investments, said any restructuring would be welcomed by investors. “There’s lots of potential for cost reduction,” he said, adding that a simpler, streamlined structure at the company would better enable it to grow. “I’d like to see it done and quantified,” he said.
“I’d like to see it done and quantified.”
Any GC who has worked through a workforce restructuring knows the complex legal, financial, HR and communication issues that come into play. There are many traps for the unwary (or hasty). (See a short issues list from Hughes Hubbard & Reed). It is important for H-P long-term to do it right. For the GC and senior management, these are fellow employees who are being talked about, not just headcount to be “quantified.”
I’m sure that doing things right is important for Putnam.
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