An Operational Wow

I was at the Olympic Games yesterday. As an ex-Ops manager and as someone who delights is seeing a good system working, I was fantastically impressed.

My daughter and I managed to get tickets to the Hockey yesterday and decided that, since the first match started at 8:30am we needed to be there early (we both hate to be rushed). We arrived at the main venue just before 7:30 and already the volunteers (sorry the 'Games Makers') were there, cheerfully guiding us along and getting us ready for security. There seemed to be hundreds of security staff ready to check us and get us onto the site and we didn't seem to stop moving at any time. Alright, we were very early, but even at that time, there were plenty of 'in case it gets busy' people. The organisers certainly seemed to understand that the best way to avoid queues is to never let them start.

In the site itself, the organisation was staggering. Thousands of people (and there is absolutely no exaggeration in that number) - all in the right place at the right time with the right things to do their job. Most impressively, they had all been trained well. They knew why they were doing the job they were doing, they knew the answer to most questions, they knew who to speak to if they didn't know an answer - and all the time they were polite, cheerful, and interested in us.

By the afternoon, there were tens of thousands of people on the site. All seemed to be moving in the direction they wanted, all seemed to get food and drink when they wanted and seems to find any queues acceptable. I did hear one fellow spectator saying to a friend that it had taken her an hour to get to the hockey stadium and wondered if the system was slowing down under the weight of numbers. It turned out, however, that it had taken her less than an hour to get from Stratford tube station to the venue - say 10 minutes from the tube to the park, 30 minutes walk from Stratford Gate to the hockey venue which is at the other end of the park, 5 minutes to get into the venue and 10 to find her friend. So  about 55 minutes in total - I'm not sure that there was a queue in there at all. Impressive.

Anyone who has worked in Operations understands that it is, and it should be, a forgotten field since if it is working well it is invisible. If you have gone to the Games, please just take a moment to look around you and to think about the complexity of your experience - the people, the venues, the technology, the cleaners, the signs. Everything. I salute the Operational Managers of the Games - well done!

And continue...

I've had a busy few months. Since January I have been working exclusively for a set of Chambers in London. It has been a mad, busy time, but with the arrival of August, I am done.

I have restructured the staffing and helped to facilitate significant changes of personnel - something that the Chambers management had wanted for a while. That took about six months, but then staff issues have to be very carefully handled and since I respected the people I was working with I wanted to make sure that it was handled as well as possible. I believe that we managed to get the best result for everyone - including the member of staff who ultimately left (and who looked much happier last time I saw him).

I also project managed the complete change of all the IT systems. We moved platform for Chambers Management System (to Lex from Iris - and I'm sure I will go into more detail in a forthcoming post about the mess that Iris made of the transition); we moved hosted systems platform (from Iris to CBSIT); we moved versions of Office.

It is right and proper that most of the barristers in Chambers saw little in the way of inconvenience and have no concept of how difficult that all was. If you have been part of a transfer like that I'm sure you can sympathise. There was a huge amount of planning and then quite a few weekends and over-nights to get things working. The hard work of the two project leaders (Damien Briengan for Lex and Mike Sutton for CBSIT) was invaluable and contributed to the success. We were a bit of a victim of our own success - because the process was, for most people, painless, they assumed it was simple.

Those were just the 'big ticket' items. We sorted out a number of suppliers and replaced a copier contract (these things are notoriously easy to get in a mess with). We introduced some formal risk management. Communication is better, policies are in place, documentation is up to date, financial reporting is much improved, etc etc...

With all that done, the focus has now changed to Sales and Marketing. While I have run successful Marketing teams, I am not a Marketing specialist and am certainly not a Salesman. So the time has come to move on and see what new challenges and new organisations are out there.

Looking forward to it!

Action, please

Spring is sprung, the grass is riz... and it's time for law firms to roll out a new strategy.

My eyes were drawn to a story in "The Lawyer"  entitled "FFW protects new strategy moniker". The main thrust of the article is that Field Fisher Waterhouse LLP have announced a new three-year strategy and have trademarked their name for that strategy (and since it is trademarked and I have no permission to use the term, I won't. That is presumably what they wanted to happen by trademarking it...?)

I wondered how the new plan would fit with their last published strategy "2012" (I don't think they can have trademarked that one, surely...), or whether it replaced it given that it was adopted the other side of a financial meltdown. The online article was very brief, so I had a look at FFW's web site, but could find no mention of it. I have no real problem with that - it is much more important that every one inside the organisation knows the detail of the strategy and how it fits with (or replaces) other stated plans. There might even be a benefit to the firm in keeping aspects of the strategy secret.

FFW are not the only law firm talking strategy at the moment. I've spoken with a number of lawyers recently all of whom talked (off the record, on the qt, and very hush hush) about changes to strategy or strategic reviews taking place. I'm sure, too, that the legal press will see a good few announcements concerning new strategies over the next few weeks.

I have two simple points I'd like to make. The first is that a strategy which is reviewed too regularly or frequently (and annually is too often) is not a strategy - it's at best a plan. The second is that more effort should be expended (in every firm) in putting the strategy into action.

Three to five year strategies will, of course, be reviewed. It is vital, however, that the long term remains the focus and that tactical planning changes are made with the overall strategy in mind. The firm must know itself and its environment very well - and must have a thorough understanding of its own strategy and of how that fits into its context. Without that overview, the danger is that the firm will lurch from plan to plan, all the while thinking it is acting strategically. Without the overview, it is entirely possible that each new "strategy" is pulling in a different direction which simply serves to confuse the firm and waste resources. Much of what is referred to in law firms as strategy is in fact operational excellence (i.e. operational issues which can be readily copied rather than considered thinking offering the firm an advantage in the medium to long term).

Having done the analysis and spent some time achieving a real strategy, firms must ensure that time is spent actually putting the plan into action. I have seen too many firms adopt a strategy with a great fanfare after which everyone in the firm returns to their desk and business-as-usual. A three year strategy must be worked on consistently throughout the three years - not to change it, but to ensure that a strategic shift has actually happened and that people are actually performing the strategy.

I'm not suggesting that FFW is in this "all show and no action" category at all - they have achieved solid and consistent growth (as per strategy) over the last few years. Every firm, however, should be aware that setting and announcing the strategy are actually the easy bits - putting it into action is where the great firms are separated from the rest.