Following on from my October post, as you know I am all for firms being creative and innovative.

After all you market for growth but innovate for profit.

But lets face it many organizations, especially professional firms, struggle with innovation despite just about every firms website mentioning just how innovative they are.

When I ask some firm leaders to give me examples of what their firm does that is truly innovative either the silence is deafening or the examples provided relate to efficiency gains, are pretty underwhelming and moreover are usually things practiced (often better) by their competitors. This is not to say such examples are bad or a firm should not have them- merely that they are not innovative per se.

Most professional firms like to benchmark themselves against their so called competitors to either feel good about themselves or to establish just how far they still have go to copy those they perceive as leaders, but this is hardly being creative or innovative. The real leading firms, those that are truly innovative, do not waste their energies benchmarking themselves against the more average firms. Most firms also tend to benchmark themselves against others in their profession – despite the fact that competition is increasingly coming from outside. Such benchmarking at best creates a race towards mediocrity.

Been a big few weeks one way or another for exposure to innovation.

In late September in Melbourne we hosted the ALPMA 2011 Summit the theme being “adapt innovate inspire“. We heard from a number of speakers on what this means to them, how this applies to some firms and how some of it could possibly apply to your firm.

It was great to hear from the likes of Patty Keegan, on just how social media has transformed and will continue to transform the way most of us do business and network; John Petty on why quarterly rolling financial forecasting is so much more effective for firms than the old monthly/annual budget scenario; Bruce Ross’s problem and opportunity trees; and Dr Ken Hudson had us all in the speed thinking zone. Not to forget John Dee the founder of Planet Ark and Director of Do Something reminding us all what we can and what we must do to save this planet of ours.

Then last Friday, my wife Karen & I attended for the first time a TEDx event in Melbourne. We have, as I assume many of you have, long been watchers of TED videos (if you are not, can I strongly recommend you subscribe now and watch at your leisure short videos of inspirational and riveting talks by remarkable people free) but this is the first time we had attended a TEDx speaking event live. Again the theme was innovation. It surpassed our expectations with some wonderful “home grown” speakers each of whom are innovators in their own right.

Here is a link to yet another thought provoking and challenging article from Professor Richard Susskind ( who gave us “The End of Lawyers?: rethinking the nature of legal services”) once again predicting enormous changes in the profession and our relationship with our clients over the next 5 years or so

susskind 5 years until legal market faces endgame

Although Professor Susskind focusses on the greater use of technology and outsourcing of some legal services it is difficult if not impossible to outsource judgement calls which ought to be the real value lawyers provide to our clients. However to a large degree as a profession we only have ourselves to blame if we have become too reliant on focussing on- and charging for- many of those services Susskind refers to. His comments though that ” …agents of change may not be the lawyers” should still be particularly worrying.

The general theme of constant change and yet more and more disruptors to the market is consistent with numerous posts from many other commentators and observers- a couple of which are also linked below

kowalski-the clock is ticking in five years traditional law firms maybe extinct