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September 14 2009

intra

If Sharepoint is the solution, what is the problem? Part I/II

First off, apologies for the break. I’ve been on holidays, recovering from jet-lag, and suffering social activity fatigue. Also, Twitter (you can follow me at twitter.com/neilrichards) makes for a quick way to participate on-line without the burden of writing a blog post.

On with the show.

Quite a long time ago, my friend Mark Gould posted a comment in response to a post about Sharepoint. Mark’s queried why firms should consider adopting Sharepoint as it is fraught with risks (such as unmanageable group growth).  I had a similar exchange with Mary Abraham on Twitter, but am unable to recall the log from Twitter at the moment.

“Why Sharepoint?” is a worthy question and I’ll look to management guru, the late Peter Drucker to help me answer it.

In his book “The Effective Excecutive” Drucker classifies four types of problems:

  1. Truly Generic (individual occurrence of a problem is a symptom of a common issue)
  2. Generic, but Unique for the individual institution (i.e. merger)
  3. Truly exceptional, truly unique (coping with a Black Swan event)
  4. Early manifestation of a new generic problem (responding to toxic assets)

Today, I’ll outline what these “problems” look like in law-firm speak. Tomorrow, I’ll share why I feel Sharepoint is suitable in addressing some of these.

Of the four types of problems, only the Truly Generic is relevant to our discussion. However if you are interested in reading more about the other classes of problem, Sources of Insight provides a quick breakdown.

Truly Generic problems

A “truly generic” problem is something that comes about frequently and is not dealt with as a one-off, but instead is dealt with as part of day to day operations. Consider the following example:

Whenever Acme Partners LLP needs to hire new trainees they go to the law schools. Sometimes they find themselves hiring well after the end of the year, with all the top students having already signed training contracts. Other times, they are mid-year, with students still months away from being ready to begin their legal career in full.

With such an ad hoc approach, the firm rarely gets to speak with the top students and even more rarely, is able to hire one. After years of only hiring students at the lower-range, quality is poor, profits are low and partners are unable to afford that second Ferrari.

Then one year, they happen to be hiring just as the law students are seeking their Training Contracts. With exposure to more students, Acme Partners land some high-quality prospects. Reflecting on their success, one astute Partner asks:

“Why don’t we just hire at this time every year? We might not be able to get the very best just yet, but we’ll get better than we normally do.”

And so a policy to only hire as students complete their law course is born.

The very specific problem “I need to hire a single student as of 12 September, 2009″ is merely an instance of the generic problem “I need to hire a student”. By taking a step back, the generic solution allows the firm to achieve better, more consistent results.
Law firms encounter dozens if not hundreds of these generic problems. A firm that fails to systematise these would soon find themselves out of business. Some examples:
  • Sharing documents
  • Researching legal questions
  • Tracking credentials / major deals
  • Managing relationship information about each client
The solution to a generic problem can be found through the adoption of a policy, a procedure, a strategy, a piece of software, or combination thereof.
Tomorrow, I’ll share why I think Sharepoint is an appropriate tool to use when solving some of these problems.