How Can You Know What's Next?

Anticipating change, for example change in the landscape of what practice areas are hot, can seem a fool's errand, but I'd like to suggest that it's not.  We all know that "chance favors the prepared mind," and I'd like to try to elaborate on that and make it a bit more concrete.

 Courtesy of Harvard Business School's Working Knowledge, we have "Scanning for Threats and Opportunities," which nicely encapsulates the difference between "active" and "passive" scanning of the competitive and marketplace horizon.  The example they take off from involves a medical device company asking itself if emerging drug therapies could take over the market for its devices, but the learning is of wider applicability, to be sure.  This is how they describe passive scanning for information:

"Because most of the data comes from familiar or traditional sources, this mode of scanning tends to reinforce, rather than challenge, prevailing beliefs.  Because these metrics are tightly specified and focused on current operations, they are the antithesis of active scanning. There is no room for exploration. This passive stance narrows the scan and dulls the curiosity. Unexpected and unfamiliar weak signals will probably be lost."

In contrast to passive is active scanning, where one poses a question to oneself (or one's firm) and proceeds to look for answers in whatever one normally comes across:  For example, an ad agency might ask everyone to start reading and viewing things from the perspective of what the impact of Tivo will be on the traditional 30-second ad.

For a law firm, the "active scanning" question might be:  What macroeconomic trends are emerging that suggest practice areas we want to develop in preparation for the next 3-5 years?  For example, who saw private equity and hedge funds coming?  If your firm didn't—especially after the passage of Sarbanes-Oxley in 2002—what were you thinking?

Then there's serendipitous scanning, where you purposefully expose yourself to material you wouldn't see otherwise.  Famously, when Buckminster Fuller was travelling, he would pick up a magazine at the airport bookshop at random and proceed to read it cover-to-cover on the plane, looking for new perspectives on life he was not otherwise exposed to.  This may seem a bit far out for you, but what if you made a point of packing your carry-on with reading material from the bedside tables of your spouse, your kids, and a random selection of your partners (trust me, they'll be flattered you asked!)?

The fundamental point is simple:  You and all of your firm-wide colleagues constitute an enormous collective antenna, a tremendous resource of "listening ability," which you can exploit wisely and well.  Empower people to listen, to "scan," as our HBS friends would have it, on critical issues to your firm.  Ensure they're listened to when they report back.  And it does, in the end, come down to this:

"People must engage in frequent and free dialogue for the necessary connections to occur spontaneously. This, in turn, requires a culture of trust, respect, and curiosity, plus the recognition that information sharing is crucial. Too many companies still operate in a mode where information is shared on a "need-to-know" basis only."

"Need-to-know" sounds like altogether too many law firms I know. 

Think different.