The Bottom Line
September 2003 VOL. 25, NO. 1
Statements or expressions of opinion or comments appearing herein are those of the editors or contributors, and not necessarily those of the association or section.
(Notice to librarians: The following issues were published in Volume 24 of this newsletter during the fiscal year ending June 30, 2003: October, No. 1; December, No. 2; March, No. 3; June, No. 4.)
Contents
* Dealing with poor performers and are they really that way?
Dealing with poor performers and are they really that way?
By Paul J. Sullivan
Dealing with the problem employee is one of the most frustrating and time-consuming functions of being a manager. You know who they are. They come to work late, take long lunches, visit around the office, and spend lots of personal time on the phone.
They try to minimize their workload by pushing it off on others. When confronted about their behavior they get defensive, don't seem to understand what the problem is and even though they promise to do better, they eventually fall back into the same old patterns.
How you deal with the problem really depends on what stage you are in. If the employee is exhibiting this behavior and has never been approached about it, then the fact there have been no negative consequences is why this behavior continues. Wishing the employee will conform to your expectations is not a solution to the problem. Likewise, ignoring the problem and hoping it will get better is worse. The only way to deal with this behavior is to confront the employee directly.
I'm continually amazed that lawyers who are trained to be adversarial run the opposite direction when it comes to dealing with problem employees. When confronting the employee, the best approach is to list out on a piece of paper all the things the employee is doing that frustrates you. Then list what your expectations are. Here's an example--If the employee is continually late for work, then you state they are usually late for work. Your expectations are that they arrive at a specific time, and leave at a specific time. Both you and the employee should sign off on the document and place it in their personnel folder. Doing it this way leaves no room for misinterpretation.
This then brings you to stage two. If the employee continues the behavior, you have another meeting and restate your frustrations and expectations--once again in writing. This time, however, you add consequences to their continued behavior. The consequences can range anywhere from demotion to a lesser position, or elimination of consideration for promotion or raise. You may even want to inform them that continued behavior will result in them losing their job. Once again, having them sign off on the document leaves no doubt that the consequences will occur if they don't change their ways.
Stage three, if it becomes necessary, is the level when you enforce the consequences laid out in stage two. If dismissal was not one of the consequences, then now is the time to bring it into the discussion. At some point in time you have no choice but to terminate an employee who does not follow your expectations.
Following are some simple rules in dealing with these types of employees:
1. Don't ignore a poor performer by generalizing performance among all employees. An example would be to send a memo to all employees indicating that there seems to be a slippage in arriving to work on time. Deal directly with the offenders.
2. Don't chase a poor performer. Escalate the consequences for continued poor behavior.
3. Don't tolerate up and down performance. If someone improves for awhile but falls back into their old habits, set the consequences at a higher level right away.
4. Don't reward poor performance by giving their work to others just so you can get it done.
There is no doubt the type of employee above is a problem one, but there's more to this topic that needs exploring. In most cases, employees are dedicated, honest, loyal, and hard working. Sometimes even these employees seem to "self destruct" in a manager's eyes. It seems everything they do isn't the way you want it, mistakes seem to magnify, and you and the employee are just downright frustrated with each other.
This may be enlightening to some, but have you ever considered that in these instances the problem may be you?
Paying someone a wage for doing a job isn't merely enough. The really good employees thrive on being able to make a difference. Knowing they are an important part of an overall team effort is many times more gratifying to these employees than earning the dollars you pay them. Having increased responsibility gives them a sense of self-worth and importance. They become more dedicated, more loyal, and more willing to go the extra mile when asked, than if they are considered just another disposable tool that can be replaced at any time.
Following is a list of key frustrations I have gathered from staff members over the years in their dealings with attorneys and managers:
1. Failing to recognize that employees have personal lives too.
2. Leaving a rush project until the last moment, which makes the deadline everyone else's problem, and then leaving the office.
3. Being consistently late for meetings, hearings, depositions, etc., and always asking the employee to make up excuses.
4. Being made to feel inferior by not considering employee's ideas or suggestions.
5. Receiving feedback when something is wrong--but never when something is right.
6. Installing new technology without consulting the people who use it.
7. Expecting the employee to read your mind--no communication, but lots of criticism if the employee guesses wrong.
8. Not taking the time to learn how to use the technology you have.
9. Revisions, revisions, revisions. Final revision was right back where we started.
10. Failing to communicate necessary information, particularly to an assistant or secretary about daily tasks, scheduling, assignments, etc., etc.
Getting positive employee performance is the most demanding part of any manager's job. Just ask anyone who is in business where their biggest headaches occur and they'll tell you dealing with employees and their problems. Granted, there are some who work just for the check and have no dedication to the organization, but that's the 20 in the 80/20 theory. It's the 80 percent who are willing to go the extra mile and who are dedicated to your success. Positive performance within both groups requires some adjustment from time to time on everyone's part. Take a look at your office. If you have a poor performer, now's the time to deal with them. If you have a valuable one, let them know how much you appreciate them, and review your attitudes and performance so you can continue to work as an effective and efficient team.
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Paul J. Sullivan is an adjunct consultant with Olmstead & Associates based in St. Louis, MO and a Legal Administrator with the law firm of Quinn Johnston Henderson & Pretorius Chtd. in Peoria, IL.
Surviving the e-mail avalanche
By Dan C. Felean
In a matter of a few years, electronic mail has quickly become the core application for almost every lawyer and business client. Most lawyers who previously never even touched a computer now find e-mail indispensable to their business, practice and personal life. Although e-mail was never designed to be anything more than a message communication technology, it has quickly become a "mission-critical" enterprise application, and that has created some problems.
The explosive growth of e-mail has resulted in an overflow of unsolicited, unneeded or unresolved messages and scattered information. Rather than streamlining communications and speeding workflow, the e-mail glut can distract users and reduce productivity. It is becoming increasingly harder for a lawyer to differentiate the truly important messages. This increases risk and diminishes service.
If e-mail has become the center of lawyer activity, then law firms must find more effective means to help them filter, manage and control the rising tide of e-mail clutter without disrupting the flow of business and practice. But the problem is not as simple as it looks. First we must identify the enemy--and sometimes he is us!
Three sources of clutter--but only one is external
Almost every discussion of e-mail clutter focuses on blocking the growing volume of external spam. However, if you look at any lawyer's overflowing e-mail folders, you will find three principal sources of clutter.
1. Undesirable external bulk solicitations (spam);
2. Unnecessary or duplicative messages from internal or trusted sources; and
3. Valuable case, client, and practice information that doesn't belong in mail folders, but accumulates there.
Unless the law firm recognizes and addresses all three sources, there is little likelihood of stemming the tide of e-mail overload. Mailboxes will continue to grow until they become completely unmanageable and eventually topple. Without some relief, individual productivity and client communications will suffer.
1. Screen the undesirable
To start, law firms must focus on controlling the growing volume of undesirable external solicitations, or spam. IDC predicts that spam will double the daily volume of worldwide e-mail to 60 billion messages a day by 2006. Without erecting barriers and filters to reduce this flow, external spam can overwhelm messaging systems, consume resources, and waste everyone's time.
Most major firms have already implemented some anti-spam systems; however, early efforts encountered the problem of false positives, i.e., screening legitimate e-mail. Statistically, anti-spam filters that use large archives of known junk e-mail to find patterns and properties have been more successful in screening the worst offenders. But, spam is a moving target. For every filtering innovation, there are spammer counter-moves, so the battle will likely be waged for years.
An external filter strategy is a careful balance between blocking the undesirable, while facilitating open communication with both known and new sources of information. Not all unknown or commercial messages are spam, and it is important to distinguish legitimate business inquiries and opportunities. Screening external solicitations alone will not solve your e-mail problems.
2. Reduce the unnecessary
While spam accounts for the highest volume of e-mail clutter, it comes as no surprise that the second highest source of unwanted messages is from internal e-mail. In fact, a recent NFI Research Study reports that after spam, the next three highest sources of unwanted e-mail were copies, unnecessary replies and repetitive or misdirected memos--all from internal sources.
When a lawyer receives external spam, it may be irritating, but it just takes a second to delete it or filter it and move on. However when that same lawyer receives an e-mail message from another member of the firm, the time and cost per message is higher. In fact, unnecessary internal e-mail may be costing law firms more than all the piles of external spam combined.
Courtesy, curiosity, or professional diligence compels each lawyer to open, identify and quantify the value of a message from another member of the firm. (Is this chat or business? What's in the attachment or what is the ruling she referred to? Does it identify a new opportunity? Does it change my advice to clients? Where should I save this?)
Because e-mail rarely designates the context, category or responsibility for the content, sending an internal message to several lawyers in effect passes along the same burden of comprehension, classification, and retention to each recipient. And, this same time-consuming process takes place whether the message is valuable or not.
So, how can law firms reduce the volume of unneeded internal messages within the firm without discouraging open communication? It starts by establishing e-mail distribution standards for memos and attachments, and eliminating "CYA" messaging that serves no apparent purpose. It should not focus on the normal continuing dialogue between professionals that is beneficial to leveraging knowledge and mentoring associates.
Excessive internal mail forwarding can be an indication that members do not have a clear understanding of responsibilities both as sender and receiver of content. Some firms have addressed this by devising e-mail action codes to designate importance or responsibility for action (e.g. NRR--no response required, RAL--reply at leisure).
Thirdly, law firms can establish training programs to "remind" people how to communicate efficiently and effectively. (Just because you can send your memo to the whole firm, doesn't mean you should).
These initiatives can help senders and receivers save time and reduce mailbox clutter in one step. This may help lighten the load, but it will not solve the problem, unless the firm addresses the core cause for duplication, the need for easy retention and retrieval of information.
3. Channel the essential back to the enterprise
E-mail has superseded all the other information systems to become the center of daily lawyer work. However, in bypassing the major enterprise systems, this simple communications tool has turned traditional information management on its head, and most law firms have yet to adjust.
E-mail is not an information management system, a case management system, a document management system or a knowledge management system, but it is often used as all-of-the-above. Mail folders are overflowing with scattered client and case correspondence, work product, and knowledge that has accumulated from past and present work. Key information often goes uncategorized and remains in mailboxes for the lack of filing elsewhere.
Since we know that lawyers pay attention to e-mail, we tend to send every important memo or reference by e-mail to all interested parties. As a result, there will be unclassified duplicates sitting in each recipient's mailbox, instead of one copy being categorized and safeguarded in an enterprise information management system. The net effect is overflow, duplication, inconsistent categorization and retrieval, and lots of clutter.
This represents a regression in enterprise information management. If we are all going to be responsible to save everything important in our own e-mail, what is the benefit of the enterprise? E-mail information silos do not leverage the collective strength and resources of the firm. They impose additional information management burdens (classification, storage, retention) on the individual as well as the organization.
Re-integrate and co-exist
Law firms need to devise a new strategy to accommodate the e-mail-centric law office, both to reduce clutter and to restore enterprise value. The most important consideration is that for the first time, lawyers have adopted one common technology. So, if e-mail is where the lawyers are, e-mail tools must contribute to the solution.
Instead of trying to divert lawyers from e-mail to other systems, each firm must find creative ways to extract, siphon or channel important content from e-mail folders to enterprise systems without disrupting the lawyer's practice.
This may be as simple as designating a person in each practice group to receive, classify and save all relevant e-mails in a practice group collaboration area. Or it may involve establishing a process for retaining e-mail as documents. Ultimately, the firm will have to consider creating an e-mail broker service to automatically post valuable messages and information to law firm enterprise systems. By using e-mail as a means to capture and re-route knowledge to other enterprise systems, all systems become more relevant and more useful. E-mail retains its role and value as a notification and transfer system.
Act now or suffer later
If you compare the growth in volume in your own e-mail inbox over the past two years, it is easy to see how serious the problem is becoming. Information and communications are at the core of legal practice, and e-mail has become the central focus for both. As long as clutter is allowed to accumulate, each lawyer's risk and stress will grow, as productivity diminishes. Installing filters to block external spam will not solve the problem, when most productivity losses are arising from internal processes and behaviour.
A comprehensive e-mail "hygiene" program can eliminate the clutter and improve use, without reducing the convenience and effectiveness of e-mail systems. By taking aggressive steps to eliminate the undesirable, reduce the unneeded, and re-route the essential, law firms can create a more productive e-mail workplace for the individual and leverage the collective strength of the organization.
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Dan C. Felean is a principal and senior consultant at PensEra Knowledge Technologies, a developer of web-based knowledge tools for law firms and corporate law departments He has more than 25 years experience in law and technology, both as a practicing lawyer and as a consultant to law firms and law departments.
© 2002 PensEra Knowledge Technologies
This article was originally published in the March 2003 issue of Lexpert.
By Maximilian M. Prusak
Most law offices have spreadsheet programs that remain largely unused by lawyers. In our office, we have Microsoft Office on each computer, which includes Excel. This is a powerful program and can be quite complicated. However, for my use, only very common functions are needed and are easily learned.
Abstracts of medical records
We use the Excel program for multiple tasks. Excel has been great for abstracting medical records. Attached as Exhibit A is an example of the abstract form. The medical records in litigation cases are given directly to the paralegal who abstracts the important information and puts it into our form. Please note that Excel has a space limitation for a cell of 256 characters. If the record summary is longer than 256 characters, a second record is made as a continuation. The order of entry of records does not matter because the spreadsheet program will sort the records in the manner that we direct.
This spreadsheet allows us to analyze records before attending the depositions of injured persons and treating physicians. In preparing for the deposition of the injured person, we sort the records according to date so that we have a timeline of treatment. Large gaps of treatment are easily recognized. Further, duplicate treatment is also easy to recognize. (For example, the injured person may be treating with a physical therapist and chiropractor at the same time using the same modalities of treatment). When preparing for the deposition of a doctor, we sort the records by medical provider. It is extremely useful to not only have the abstract of medical records by provider, but also a copy of the abstract in chronological order. In this way, we will be able to understand where a particular doctor fits into the overall treatment plan.
To-Do worksheet
A good management technique is to plan one's day before beginning the first task. For years, I have used a manual form where I would just merely write down my tasks. There were two problems with that approach. The first is that the To-Do List would sometimes be misplaced. The second problem is that the To-Do List would have additions and deletions during the course of the day. The To-Do List would then become rather messy.
Attached as Exhibit B is my To-Do Worksheet. I made a shortcut on the desktop of my computer so that I may start my worksheet with a click of the mouse. The To-Do worksheet runs constantly during the course of the day. Whenever I think of a task that needs to be done, I enter it on my worksheet. The worksheet is revised at various times during the course of the day. Each morning I assign priorities to the tasks on the worksheet and delete those items which have been previously completed.
Mileage chart
Our law firm does primarily insurance defense work. We travel by automobile on a frequent basis. Sometimes I have been guilty of failing to write down the actual mileage on a particular trip. To solve this problem, I have a