What's Your Sentence?

Recently, we held a breakfast event to talk with some of our clients about our vision of "Deal World" and how our clients could take the ideas we presented to remain relevant and profitable in light of the changed circumstances imposed upon so many businesses striving to keep going strong despite the persistently weak economy.

So what do we mean we we talk about Deal World? Simply put, there's more to almost any transaction than the four corners of the physical contract. These considerations include the following:

1. Metrics
2. Return on Investment
3. Implementation
4. The Next Contract
5. Relationships
6. Deal Review

 In asking the question about remaining relevant and profitable in the new economy, we reached out to others for their answers to that question. One of our favorite answers was from Dan Pink, author of A Whole New Mind and Drive. This was his answer:

“The key, I think, is to stop treating people (including ourselves) like horses and start treating them like human beings. Instead of trying to bribe folks with sweeter carrots or threaten them with sharper sticks, how about giving them greater freedom at work, allowing them to get better at something they love, and infusing the workplace with a sense of purpose?  The results might surprise you; indeed, they might change the world.”

In order to drive toward our ideal, we identified three key areas of consideration:

1. Mindset - You have to be ready to make the necessary effort.
2. Skills - You have to identify your strengths, your value-add.
3. Design - Great implementation doesn't just happen, it's the result of a great plan!

Finally, we asked our participants to take these lessons to heart. We asked them to identify within themselves a sentence to describe how they approach their work. Click the image below for an image with all the amazing sentences we got back.

Hopefully this inspires you to go and figure out your own sentence and move forward! Good luck!

Some things I've learned about Twitter (Part 2)

Ok, we covered some of the Twitter basics last week, now I want to talk a little about some of the more "advanced" features of Twitter. The beauty of Twitter is that it provides a wealth of information, but that's also it's curse. Without ways to narrow the stream of information to derive meaningful information you will end up wasting a lot of time. 

Trending Topics

Twitter tracks it's own "trending topics" which is a fancy way of saying these are the most popular topics being discussed on Twitter. There's probably a confusing algorithm somewhere that figures these things out, but for the purposes of this post, it's enough to say that this is the insta-buzz of what is happening in the world. A web-tool that I like to look at in conjunction with Trending Topics is What the Trend. This website attempts to briefly explain why a topic is trending and provides other useful information regarding trending topics. 

Recently, Twitter has taken steps to make this more relevant with the release of location-specific Trending Topics. Not every city is represented yet, however, you can at least specify a country if your city isn't listed. Going forward, this will be valuable tool for tracking what is going on in your own hometown without having to monitor thousands of twitter accounts and filtering international results that may not be relevant to you.

#Hashtags

Hashtags can be one of the more confusing pieces of Twitter. Many times, you'll read a Tweet and you'll see a hashtag embedded in the post.  A hashtag begins with the pound sign (#) and includes the word immediately following. For example - #learning #Twitter #TGIF and so on. So, why are they important? The most important reason I've found for using a hashtag is an attempt to organize Tweets from different sources around a topic or an event. For example, #sxsw is a tag to identifies a post relating to the annual South By Southwest conference. If you attended the conference, chances are you saw people pounding out Tweets on their handheld gadgets and one of the easiest ways to follow the conference was to setup a search for the #sxsw hashtag.  Otherwise, you would be looking for specific speakers, topics, location, etc., if you wanted to stay on top of the happenings down in Austin.

One of the major problems is figuring out what the hashtag even means. In a world where you have to communicate your message in 140 characters or less each character has to convey the maximum amount of information in the minimum amount of space. Let's just say that acronyms abound in this world. So how do you get the most out of this feature?

• Don't go overboard - not every Tweet needs a hashtag. 
• Give them some context - especially if you are using an acronym. (e.g., Can't wait for the Social Media Conference next week #SMC2010)
• Be sure the hashtag adds value to your Tweet - both to yourself and those who will read your Tweet.

In our business at WieseLaw, we are constantly on the lookout for trending topics and hashtags relating to Contracts, Negotiation, Mediation, Attorneys, Lawyers, etc. Utilizing trending topics and hashtags is a great way to manage and search the information coming in from all corners of the world in order to derive some meaningful connections.

There are literally thousands of tools, apps, widgets, etc. out there to take advantage of Twitter and to help you make sense of what's being said. I hope these two blog entries have given you a jumping off point for becoming part of the conversation. Good luck!

Some things I've learned about Twitter (Part 1)

OK, let me say, first and foremost: I am NOT a social media expert. There, that feels so much better. Having said that, I have been plugging away faithfully, trying to learn about what works and doesn't work so well in the realm of social media and I like to think I've learned a few things. I'm going to focus specifically on how I view and use Twitter to narrow the focus a bit.

Lesson #1: Find a Good Way To Manage What You See

One of the funny things about Twitter is that the basic interface provided is practically unusable once you start following more than a handful of frequent updaters. The problem is that you will see so many tweets pass by with each refresh that you will miss most tweets throughout the day. There are a couple of ways to deal with this problem.  First, you can keep your list of people that you follow down to a bare minimum. But, this pretty much defeats the purpose of participating in a social network. Second, you can use some of the functionality built into Twitter combined with the plethora of desktop applications available.  For example, I use the list functionality in Twitter to categorize people I follow. I have a list for other attorneys, people who live in the Twin Cities/Minnesota, writers, etc. I combine this with Tweetdeck in such a way that each list has its own column so I can easily find out what the other attorneys are talking about or what is going on in the Twin Cities.

The primary takeaway here is that you need to figure out a way to take the firehose of information and filter it down to something that a human can actually understand. Tweetdeck isn't your only choice either, find what works for you!

Lesson #2 Be Mindful of What You Say on Twitter

In the early days of working with Twitter I really didn't know what I was doing and it showed. I had a hard time figuring out what I could say that was meaningful in 140 characters. I still can't claim that I'm some kind of Twitter master, but I sure know what doesn't work. This feels more like a list, so here goes:

• Don't mindlessly repeat quotes from other people. Especially if they only tangentially related to what it is you do in the real world. This isn't to say that an inspirational quote or two is a bad thing, but definitely keep it to a minimum and, if possible, be sure it ties into your business and/or reason for being on Twitter. You and I know Ghandi was amazing, I just don't need to see every thing he ever said up on my timeline EVERY DAY.
• Don't let your first contact with a new person be a sales pitch. I'm not 100% sure where I heard this, but treat Twitter like you would a party, mixer, etc. Twitter is a great place to make connections, get interesting ideas and build friendships. If you met a person in an informal setting such as a party and the first thing they said to you was "Learn how to grow your Twitter following and make ca$h!" I'm pretty sure you'd think they were a bit off.
• Don't make the mistake of assuming that everyone is interested in you. Take an interest in others! It's a simple thing that goes a long way to boosting your reputation. React to what others are talking about and contribute to the conversation.

Stay tuned for Part 2, I'll talk a bit more about Twitter Search, Trending Topics, Hashtags and what I think works in the Twitter world!

Mysteries, Heuristics & Algorithms, Oh My!

I had a great opportunity last night to be a small part of a business book club meeting in Minneapolis. Before I go too much into this, how genius was this idea anyway!? I mean, we all have a stack of business books that we have been putting off reading and if you think about it, the purpose of such books is to spread ideas. So, what better way to knock off some of those books and be able to talk about the ideas presented in them with people who actually cared enough to read the book and show up? Like I said, genius. 

Now, on the to book: The Design of Business - Why Design Thinking Is The Next Competitive Advantage, by Roger Martin. The big idea is that there exists a natural tension between the analytical and intuitive approaches to value-creation. As a leader - whether in the role of a CEO or as an individual - your job is to reconcile the two approaches. Simple, right!? Not so much, but Roger doesn't leave us hanging, he gives us some hope with the Knowledge Funnel tool (that is much more fully explained in the book than I will get into).

The Knowledge Funnel has 3 primary stages. At the beginning, we have the Mystery stage! This is the funnel at it's widest point - the Mystery can be anything from what do people in Minneapolis want to eat to what the next genre of book 13 year-olds will fall in love with this year. The next stage is the Heuristics stage - don't worry, I didn't know what a Heuristic was at first either.  A Heuristic is a rule of thumb (be it common sense, intuition or an educated guess) that helps provide a a simplified understanding of the Mystery.  As these Heuristics are put into practice, you meet up with the Algorithm stage - where you turn your understanding into processes that actually do something. 

I really recommend picking up the book. It's a little dense because it seems to be written by a left-brain dominant person who has realized the power of combining left-brain realism with right-brain intuition and creativity, but still describes the phenomenon in a left-brain manner. Just my two cents there. 

Finally, one of my "ah-ha" moments from the book: The book discusses how, for centuries, people have hoarded the Heuristics as personal value levers to drive their own compensation and power.  These days, more and more, people are coming to expect the Heuristics will be FREE. I don't know whether that should be the case or will be the case in the future, but it sure seems to be true now. Read it and let me know what you think!

The Scarcity Mindset

You have probably been introduced to the idea of Abundance v. Scarcity from Stephen Covey's The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. In the book a Scarcity mindset is characterized as viewing the world through a lens of limitation. Opportunities are few, most options are impractical and it's a battle to see who can take the most from whom.

For example, I was speaking to a friend recently about the pervasive scarcity mindset that exists in her workplace - This Is Yours, This Is Mine, This Is Non-Negotiable. This mindset manifests itself in the daily office "turf wars" to see who will get their share of the budget. This has had a trickle-down effect to most departments which has led to a high degree of unhappiness and dissatisfaction among employees.

Entering into any negotiation situation, it can be easy to get into a mindset of Scarcity. There are a lot of "things" out that drive that thinking: limited resources, limited money, limited time. You can be pretty sure that not too many people are walking around these days saying "Gosh, if I only knew how to spend more of this surplus cash I have laying around..." 

On the other end of the spectrum is the Abundance Mindset. Abundance doesn't mean that you are irresponsible or careless with the resources and opportunities that exist, rather, it is a mindset that seeks to do more these resources and opportunities than "what we've always done." 

Often times, you'll hear negotiators talk about Expanding the Pie. This involves brainstorming ways to take "what we've always done" to "what we should be doing." In essence, we are talking about creating value in negotiation - not always an easy thing to do. It requires negotiation counterparts to work together, to communicate their wants, needs, and interests.  For some amazing ideas to help you develop a framework for creating value in your next negotiation, See Negotiation Genius, by Deepak Malhotra & Max H. Bazerman, Chapter 2 & The ICON Negotiation model (explanation here). The strategies discussed in these resources will help you begin to see value in negotiations that are marked by a Scarcity Mindset. 

When Better Becomes Perfect.

One of the thoughts we recently put up on our "Ideas" page (Better is Perfect) got me thinking about how to explain this succinct, yet possibly complex idea. When people are confronted with a new contract they are often a little apprehensive about what kind of work it is going to take to get a deal they can live with. You may be unsure what protections you need, how the ownership of the work product will affect your future business and what "gotchas" may exist to act as stumbling blocks in the future. Additionally, it may be difficult for people to feel like they can push back on their deals because they fear losing the business. 

So how do you get Better deals? Whenever we start working with a new client that will be executing multiple contracts which require the same basic format (e.g., master services agreements or independent contractor agreements), we forge a master template for doing those types of deals which takes into account your specific needs and problems. This has two primary benefits: (1) If you are able to get the deal signed as is, you can be sure you have a great deal in place; and (2) If you are in a situation where you have to negotiate a deal, you have a metric for measuring whatever deal is presented. Through use of your master template and negotiating from that template you'll have a concrete way of knowing when your deals get better.

Now the logical leap comes in: Better is Perfect. That might seem like a stretch, but if you are able to take a proposed deal that, in the past, you would have signed without any changes and compare it to a deal where you were able to get some of your Master Template changes incorporated, you have a deal that is not only better, it's perfect! Now, I'm sure it's not perfect in the sense that you got everything you could have ever wanted in any deal. But one of the key principles of doing any deal is that both sides should be able to walk away from the bargain ready and willing to do another deal together. If you are able to put all these steps together, you'll realize that Better is Perfect.

Contracts - Who needs 'em!?

I was reading a post over at AdamsDrafting's blog the other day called "Can Contracts Be Counterproductive?" which links out to an article in the UK's TimesOnline by Sathnam Sanghera entitled You can't write trust into a contract. I'm pretty sure most legally minded folks will probably cringe when they think about proceeding in any meaningful business relationship without some written understanding of the parties' think is supposed to happen. 

But to answer the question, can contracts be counterproductive? Sure. They tend to slow things down. I'm sure we've all heard at least anecdotal evidence of deals being closed on the golf course. But I'd be more than a little surprised if the salesperson whipped out a contract on the 18th hole after "closing" the deal. The fact is, coming up with a written memorial of an agreement can take some time. There are so many "what ifs" out there that failing to address them can be disastrous. It might be cheaper and easier on the front-end to simply shake hands and call it good, but that will only take you as far as the first problem you have.  At that point, it might be much more expensive to figure out the next step.

Deepak Malhotra of Harvard and Negotiation Genius fame aptly points out where contracts can go wrong in his article "When Contracts Destroy Trust."

1. Contracts that are too rigid can be problematic if they lock parties into arrangements that don't allow for adjustments as circumstances change.
2.  Contracts can erode trust and goodwill if the contract structure assigns roles and obligations without enough information to properly balance the parties obligations. 
3. Some contract terms can even signal mistrust: Performance based pay, earn-outs and vesting schedules may communicate to the other party that you believe they cannot deliver without some extra incentive.

Bear in mind these points when approaching your next deal and try to strike the balance between a handshake and an unreasonably rigid contract.