Maroons & Grays: Part 2
At the end of installment #1, we promised you we’d discuss what happens if you apply Porter’s famous “five forces” to the Maroons and the Grays. Shall we? Insight from Porter’s “Five Forces” In 1979,...
View ArticleMaroons & Grays: Part 3
Let’s open this third and final installment with the #1 question we’re most frequently asked about this model: Can one firm excel at being both a Maroon and a Gray? No. Or in the very best of...
View ArticleOn Being a Splendid Gray
In our third and final installment of the Maroons/Grays segmentation analysis, we presented this: Here’s a simplistic way of thinking about the two types of firms and the consequences for each of...
View ArticleWhat is the Purpose of Your Firm?
Has our first (and really only) answer to the question, “What is a corporation’s purpose?” been wrong for the last, oh, 40 or 50 years? The answer, pace Milton Friedman [see note at end], has of...
View ArticleLetter from Lima
The following column is by Antonio Leal Holguin, Director of Latin America for Adam Smith, Esq. I recently spent three days in Lima. A metropolis of close to 10 million people, Peru’s capital is one...
View ArticleQuestion of the Month
Returning from a hiatus, our Question of the Month appears refreshed and in the pink. You know what to do. Use the comments box for editorial embellishment. Thanks for being a voter!
View ArticleHow to Stand Out in a Crowded Marketplace
We would flatter ourselves to believe that even occasional readers know we believe fervently in basing our work on data and research, not just hunch and intuition. So we warmly welcomed it when PwC’s...
View ArticleQuestion of the Month Report: Why Don’t Lawyers Play Nice with Others?
The following column is by Janet Stanton, Partner, Adam Smith, Esq. Maybe lawyers didn’t go on play dates when they were little. (Maybe they didn’t want to.) And, once they get through law school, any...
View ArticleWho’s Your Chief Innovation Officer?
Ten years ago (five?) the role of “Chief Innovation Officer” was almost unheard-of. Now hardly a week goes by without a firm announcing the appointment of so-and-so to that role and title. But what...
View ArticleAin’t Misbehavin’
Not to name names, but does it strike you as it does me that we’re in the midst of a global surfeit of senior leaders behaving badly? Almost every domain of human endeavor seems tarnished, or worse, by...
View Article2020: The Year of Law Land Segmentation
This article is co-authored by Bruce MacEwen, President, Janet Stanton, Partner and Antonio Leal Holguin, Director – Adam Smith, Esq. Lots of folks have their “Year of….” custom, often retrospectively,...
View ArticleWho’s in Charge Here?
Legal Business‘s retrospective on the 2010s (“The Vision Thing”) opens thus: The last decade emerged with the shockwaves of the banking crisis still making themselves felt on the profession. Having...
View ArticleBuild Back Better: Be a “Non-Anxious Presence”
The following column is by Janet Stanton, Partner, Adam Smith, Esq. “If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs…” – Rudyard Kipling Ever wondered why clergy seem almost...
View ArticleBuild Back Better: Manager or Leader? Right Now, You Better Be Both
The following column was published on Thomson Reuters’ Legal Executive Institute site on April 20, 2020. We reprint it here by their courtesy. This 2-part series was written by Bruce MacEwen &...
View ArticleBuild Back Better: In the Current Crisis, Your Firm Needs You to be Both a...
In the second part of this two-part series, Thomson Reuters’ Legal Executive Institute published the following article we wrote at their request. We republish it here by their kind courtesy. In the...
View ArticleBuild. Back. Better.
This column is by Bruce MacEwen and Janet Stanton What do we know now that we did not know in January? Obviously, we know we’re in the grip of a global pandemic, which has precipitated a worldwide...
View ArticleBuild Back Better: Welcome Back to the Office?
We’ve written that it’s not quite true that we know nothing about “the other side” of this global pox, and currently holding the pole position among things we abruptly realized will look different is...
View ArticleBuild Back Better: How to Learn from Coronatide
A premise of our “Build Back Better” focus du jour (actually, du l’annee) is that we’ve already drastically changed many things about how we conventionally worked, so we can change more. McKinsey has...
View ArticleLetter from New York
Regular readers are familiar with our periodic custom of penning “Letters from…”when we’ve spent a meaningful amount of time in “…” and want to offer some observations, insights, and commentary on that...
View ArticleBuild Back Better: What Associates Need to Know
The other day we were presenting a webinar (what else?) on “The Lawyer of the Future” to a firm’s summer associate class, now in the midst of their remote (what else?) June and July program, and the...
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