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July 28, 2005
Lunch with Gerry
Yesterday Gerry Riskin, of Edge International, invited me to lunch at The Cornell Club while he was passing through town. Suffice to say that if you have a chance to meet Gerry (I had not, previously), and if you've ever given a lick of thought to law firm management, you're in for an intellectual feast. Just a small sampling from our conversation:
- How to persuade uptight, analytically over-endowed law firm partners to let it all hang out in a brainstorming session (and it's not free beer).
- What having a background as a lawyer will get you in the role of consultant (try: not being thrown out in the first 30 seconds).
- The attitude of altogether too many marketing directors at law firms (it could be better, shall we say).
- What "killer apps" on the Internet have in common (they do not mimic what previous media can do).
- Why, in the Caribbean, you better be prepared to order as soon as you sit down in a restaurant (the waiter won't be back for an hour).
- Mandatory rotation of associates through different practice areas (just do it).
- Denying unhappy associates the chance to transfer to a different practice area, even if it would entail a demotion (you are out of your mind).
- Whether lawyers can articulate what makes their firm distinctive in the marketplace (no).
- Whether marketing directors can articulate what makes their firm distinctive (three guesses).
- The percentage of typical executive committee members who know what "blog" means (you get to guess on this one, sorry—and same exercise for "RSS" and "wiki").
- His idols David Maister and Tom Peters.
- The percentage of typical executive committee members who recognize those two names (both: 5% one or the other [probably Maister]: 10%).
Then he was off to the Apple Store in Soho with his under-the-weather Macintosh—there are no Apple stores in the British West Indies, where he lives.
Posted by Bruce at July 28, 2005 12:43 PM | TrackBackPosted to Leadership | Marketing | Partnership Structures | Strategy Printer-friendly version
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