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Bar News - October 20, 2000 President’s Perspective: Studying the Future By: Gregory D. Robbins OVER THE PAST few years, the New Hampshire Bar Association has been in the process of a reorganization with two major goals in mind: to operate more efficiently and with more focus, and to be in a better position to help lead our profession. This year we are attempting to focus more resources on the future of the practice of law — an issue, we believe, that ought to be a primary concern of any bar association. In trying to get a handle on our future, it quickly became apparent that we needed to look to the broader economy and the changes sweeping through it. This led me to read several books by non-lawyers on the nature of the changes in the economy and their thoughts on how to navigate an organization through them. The first was Competing for the Future by Gary Hamel and C.K. Prahalad (Harvard Business School Press, 1994). The authors explore the ways in which the competitive playing field is changing, and recommend ways that a business or other organization can position itself to take advantage of change rather than being run over by it. This book emphasizes that old lessons of competition have to be unlearned because change has been so fundamental that traditional methods of competition can be worse than useless. They state that any organization that wishes to compete must first determine what its unique skills – its “core competencies” – are, and then build its plan for growth around them. To compete in the future, they say, any organization must distinguish itself from its competitors and do what it does better than the competition. Another book discussing similar issues is Leading Change by John P. Kotter (Harvard Business School Press, 1996). Mr. Kotter sets out a specific, eight-step process for transforming an organization to compete in the new economy. He, too, emphasizes the dangers of relying on old methods and at the same time describes how powerful the forces of organizational inertia are. To overcome this, he claims an organization must develop a coherent and compelling vision, put together a powerful coalition to lead the change effort and see that the change message and vision are spread throughout the organizational structure. Then the author warns: buckle down, because the process of fundamentally changing the culture of an organization of any size takes years. A somewhat more readable and different approach to these issues can be found in Jennifer James’ Thinking in the Future Tense (Simon & Schuster, 1996). While she, too, notes the profound nature of the change going on around us and how rapidly it is occurring, she focuses on specific ways of attempting to predict the future — an obvious competitive advantage. Not surprisingly she devotes a considerable amount of space to the process of developing a vision, including a very memorable phrase on how to use that vision: “I’ll believe it when I see it” becomes “I’ll see it when I believe it.” The messages in these books clearly apply both to this association as an organization and to its members as individuals. The Bar Association is working hard to incorporate some of these concepts into our organizational structure and also to raise these issues for the consideration of our members. Many of you doubtless remain skeptical about all these predictions of profound change. You should be – no one really knows what the future will look like. Yet at the same time, you owe it to yourselves and to our profession to keep an open mind, because you don’t know the future, either. At a time when we can see that other professions and occupations are undergoing major change (business consultant Tom Peters predicts that within 10 years, 90% of white collar workers will be gone or at least doing something very different from what they are doing now), it makes some sense to explore these issues. So why not pick up one of these books, or one like them, and see what others who have been spending considerable time thinking about this stuff have to say? After all, to steal a page from Jennifer James, we could be entering a time when, professionally speaking, “Live and learn” becomes “Learn and live.” Gregory D. Robbins is the NHBA President for the 2000-01 year. He practices with the Portsmouth law firm of Shaines & McEachern. |
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