This blog entry was originally published as an article in the November 2011 edition of the ACSeS magazine, "A Passion for Leadership & Going Beyond Austerity".

Iken Business is a growing technology company, so change is guaranteed on a continuing basis - and where there is change, there is a need for leadership. During 2010 I realised we had been focusing on management structures, with insufficient emphasis on leadership, so I took myself off on a leadership development course to better understand what I needed to do and, by extension, what the team also needed to do. Thus began a continuous journey and here are some of my reflections on that journey so far.

These days, in most professionals' working lives there seems to be less of everything: time, budget, resources. And when you ask the entirely reasonable question "well, how am I supposed to get everything done when I have more work than ever and fewer people to do it with/money to spend on it/hours to devote to it?" the answer that typically comes back is "well, you'll just have to work smarter".

Sounds great, doesn't it? The problem is, taken in isolation "working smarter" is just a label: all it tells you is that you need to find a clever way of getting more from whatever resources you have at your disposal. There are obviously many different ways of doing this in practice, but here are my 3 top tips:

One of the things I have recently been asked to help with is our company Vision and Values.   This has proved to be a very interesting albeit thorny subject to get my teeth into with many more questions raised throughout the process than there were at the beginning.  It got me thinking…

What is vision?  What will the effects of that vision be?   What will change?  Will that change be good (or bad?)

Without vision where would we be?   Somewhere along the line, someone has decided, at some point, to implement procedures, processes and thoughts into successful business practice.   But is that enough?   For any business to continue growing and diversifying in today’s strenuous economic climate, there must be a clear and concise vision, developed by the company, for the company and most importantly of all, believed in by everyone who works there! 

There is a lot of talk today about ‘knowledge workers’ and the dependence of our economic growth on the ‘knowledge economy’. But what is a “knowledge worker”: what do they do? And most importantly: are you one, and if so what does this mean for you?

If your day-to-day working life has led to your needing to ponder this question in the first place, then the simple answer is likely to be yes, you are a knowledge worker! But on a more practical level, in our experience knowledge workers will require the capability to do some or all of the following as part of their roles.

(For the purposes of this blog, I am using the word “project” to describe a tranche of work: you can substitute this for case, matter, file etc as is appropriate for you.)

Given the current economic conditions, it’s not surprising that many corporate counsel are looking to bring legal work back in house (some are, rather more catchily, referring to the process as “insourcing” or “backsourcing”) in a bid to save money. Viewed from a purely financial angle, the decision seems like a no-brainer: The Lawyer reports that “magic circle” associates now charge more than partners did in 2005, whilst hourly rates for city law firms are now between £180 and £645 an hour – far above the cost of an hour of legal work undertaken by in house lawyers.

Often the first step that any organisation will take in becoming more environmentally friendly will be to reduce its paper consumption. And rightly so, as there are many benefits in adopting a digital solution such as Case Management where emails, documents and scanned physical materials can all be stored electronically.

A recent interchange on Twitter referred to ‘Eternal Goals’.  Instinctively I felt that eternal goals would (by definition) be unachievable and I began to wonder whether there was a rational basis for my gut reaction.  I also began to ponder the qualitative differences between concepts involving ‘eternity’ and those involving the ‘infinite’.  Here are some of my thoughts.

Shortly after I joined Twitter I started #PoetryTuesday so that people could share their favourite published poems. If you would like to contribute one, first find a legitimate published copy of it on the internet, then copy and shorten the url (using www.bit.ly or similar) then tweet the link on a Tuesday and add #PoetryTuesday to the tweet.

Here are the poems submitted during the first month ...

I have been exploring multiple dimensions of Twitter and LinkedIn.  I am following news relevant to my industry.  I am in closer touch with some of my clients.  I have made contact with professionals in my business area from different parts of the world.  It’s been fascinating to hear news directly from students in Iran.  I see that my daughter tweets early in the morning so we can enjoy short exchanges as we both prepare for the day.

My objective is to explore how social networking can be applied to driving real business improvements.  Forget marketing for the moment (the media is swamped with advice about this).  My clients and I share management challenges in running our respective businesses.  We want to know whether we can use the new tools to: