Why Behavioral Innovation Is the Next Competitive Advantage

[00:00] Lucy, how are you this afternoon?
[00:03] Hello, Teeth. I'm very well, thanks for you.
[00:05] I'm doing great. I'm doing great. I'm so excited about this conversation.
[00:10] I don't know if you remember, but I heard about you through one of a team members,
[00:15] so I'll you speak in was it Italy or it was at a cosmonaut event?
[00:20] Yes, it was you London.
[00:23] Okay.
[00:24] Is it you to lawyer? Okay, yes.
[00:26] Yeah, and he hit me up and said you got to get Lucy on the podcast. So here we are.
[00:31] That's very kind of him. Yes, so why don't we get you introduced so maybe take a few seconds and tell us a little bit about what you do.
[00:42] I think your background is super interesting and unique and it's your background lines really well to a theme that we've been
[00:51] having on the podcast lately, which is kind of the human side of legal and because that's where
[00:58] the hard work really in my opinion and I think in your opinion lives in this transformation.
[01:04] So tell us a little bit about yourself.
[01:06] Well, first of all, Ted, thank you so much for having me.
[01:09] It's such a pleasure to be here with you today.
[01:12] I love your podcast.
[01:13] I love the fact that you bring different narratives and narratives that are provocative and
[01:20] you know that open the conversation to more interesting discussions in my view and also congratulations
[01:25] and being recognized by the financial times.
[01:28] Love 50 recently here in London, well done. Massive recognition.
[01:33] Yeah, thank you very much.
[01:35] So, well, so I'm a lawyer by a trade and by background, I practice a saleteate for over 20 years
[01:43] And then I transitioned into full time into an innovation role.
[01:49] And I quickly realized when I started working on innovation, that innovation in law,
[01:56] let's say pre-pandemic was very much focused on tools, technology, features,
[02:02] and we were not talking or we were not talking enough about the human component
[02:08] or the human behavior component that unlocks innovation and that unlocks the useful use of technology.
[02:16] So as such I develop an interest in behavioral science. Behavior science is an intersection.
[02:24] It's a science that is an intersection between economics, psychology, organization,
[02:31] and all transformation sociology.
[02:35] And I started a new career and I studied the behavior science
[02:40] and now my behavior science is as well.
[02:43] And the work that I have been doing last,
[02:47] I would say, eight, nine years have been focused on the human
[02:53] side, on the human aspects of technology and AI adoption.
[02:58] But also, on what needs to happen from a human behavior,
[03:02] component with perspective, for innovation to happen in law firms.
[03:07] But everything I say and everything I will share with you today,
[03:11] when I talk about law firms, my experience has always been,
[03:14] how smoothly been in law firms, although I work five years as general counsel
[03:19] of a multilateral organization in Latin America,
[03:22] everything I say today could be applied either to law firms,
[03:26] of all sizes and also to in-house legal teams.
[03:30] So I would say that my role is, or what I bring to organizations is precisely the observation
[03:39] of how lawyers and business professionals work, how they behave, and what needs to change
[03:47] in their behavior under habits for AI to make sense, for technology to make sense, but also for
[03:54] actual transformate organizational transformation happen.
[03:57] We'd like to talk about how AI is going to disrupt these or that, but it's not AI that
[04:02] will disrupt these or that.
[04:03] These people using AI who will disrupt these or that.
[04:07] So yeah, sorry, that was a more than a few seconds.
[04:11] No, that's that's really good because again, what really attracted me to having you on as a
[04:18] guest was your title, which was, I've never seen in a law firm before, which is behavioral
[04:25] innovation. And I thought it was a very progressive sounding role and maybe you could just
[04:32] take a minute, like what is the remit for a behavioral innovation role inside a law firm?
[04:37] Like what does that look like? This is such a great, such a great question. So my, so let's say for,
[04:45] for the most part, for the last few years,
[04:48] most conversations around innovation and technology
[04:51] have focused on what the technology can do.
[04:54] Now, to me, the more interesting question
[04:58] is how organizations respond to AI and technology.
[05:02] And change in general.
[05:04] So my work sits at this intersection where I try,
[05:08] or I help legal organizations, law firms,
[05:12] of all sizes and in-house legal team,
[05:14] build it capabilities that they need to adapt successfully to change.
[05:19] In a way, everything I do, all the programs that I lead,
[05:23] that are of a different nature,
[05:25] it could be about developing creativity,
[05:30] capabilities in people, it could be about encouraging
[05:34] practice groups to develop radical ideas
[05:37] to reinvent their business,
[05:39] it could be helping leadership see things around AI from a different perspective outside the
[05:45] echo chambers that are very predominant in our organizations and in our industry.
[05:52] So my work might be my different projects that are of a different nature,
[05:56] bring, try to bring a perspective that is informed by behavior science and that in a way
[06:04] try to generate debates around in the organization and develop strategies and framework that
[06:12] the organizations kind of apply to make change effective. And I should probably say something
[06:19] right from the outset. I am coming from a rather unusual position. I'm not trying to build an AI
[06:27] product. I'm not trying to sell a platform. I'm not trying to even sell behavior science to
[06:32] organizations and you know there's this saying that I love that it says you know never ask a barber if you need a haircut because if you asked me
[06:40] I would say everything is it's informed by human behavior but what I think is that we all tend to see the
[06:48] world through the lens of what we know best and I'm conscious of that and I don't think behavior science is
[06:56] is something that should operate in our illegal organizations independently from technology, strategy,
[07:03] or legal expertise. I see the salents and what I have found out through experience is when
[07:10] we approach innovation and projects with this behavioral science lens. We tend to bring leaders
[07:18] more useful and effective strategies to make change happen. We tend to believe and I think we're
[07:24] We're going to touch on this later on.
[07:26] We tend to believe that by having a strategy and by buying technology, magically, everything
[07:32] will change.
[07:33] We're going to be much better.
[07:35] What we do, our clients are going to be happy and everybody's going to be happy.
[07:39] That's not how it works.
[07:42] Because we are forgetting a missing link there, which is for all that to happen and to be
[07:47] unlocked, we need to change the way people behave day in and they out.
[07:53] So what I say about my job or the work that I learn doing in my passion is that I love
[08:01] working with everybody in the organization from the most senior lawyer to the most junior
[08:07] business service professionals.
[08:08] I like to mix them together.
[08:10] My most successful programs like the Innovation Certificate Program that I launched at
[08:15] Deckard was the success of that program that ran for five years.
[08:19] mixing everybody intensively for three months and letting them collaborate without hierarchies,
[08:27] without titles, without thinking I'm better because I earn more money or because I've been
[08:33] in the industry for 20 years than you, everybody on the same level playing field, generating ideas
[08:39] and thinking, well, how can we do this differently and how can we survive in an environment where
[08:45] Only some of us will survive and few of us will actually thrive.
[08:49] Have that problem by asking a barber for a haircut.
[08:52] So I never need a haircut, which is great.
[08:56] But I have been since this whole kind of AI, whatever you want to call it,
[09:05] transformation, story has been discussed.
[09:09] There's been, I feel like a spectrum between the, you know, between the doomsday and the utopian perspectives and, you know, a lot, I feel like a lot of people in the doomsday camp are drastically underestimating the amount of human friction that's going to be
[09:28] need to be overcome in order for industries and organizations to transform. And the
[09:34] doomsday scenario really relies heavily on us not having enough time to adapt. Right? It's like people are out of work to
[09:42] tomorrow. You know, all knowledge work is going away. The only thing that's going to be left or the trades and manual work.
[09:47] And I think that is impossible because of all the human friction necessary. I spent years. I spent a decade
[09:56] it bank for America in process engineering.
[10:00] management, management, and you know, part of my job, I moved around a lot while I was there,
[10:06] but when I was doing process engineering work, a big part of my job was to go in organizations
[10:12] and retool how the work gets delivered like from first principles. And that is so incredibly
[10:19] hard, especially with a constituency like lawyers that are, you know, the ones that are more senior
[10:27] in their career, first of all, like Richard Susskind says, it's hard to tell a room full of
[10:33] millionaires they're doing it wrong. That is real. The work that you describe in your behavioral
[10:41] innovation role sounds really, really hard to me in a law firm because of some of the things
[10:45] that you just mentioned, like taking away the hierarchies, like the hierarchies are really embedded
[10:54] deeply in law firm culture and you know we hear terminology like non-loyers and
[11:00] yes. Which is I think slowly starting to change but it feels like I'm much more
[11:08] I don't I'm in the middle so I'm not dystopian or utopian I'm kind of in the middle
[11:12] I think this is going to be a big shift for our economies globally for knowledge work
[11:19] But I do think we're going to have much more time.
[11:23] The tech could be ready today.
[11:26] And it's not, by the way, like I feel very strongly that the tech
[11:31] is there's been some inflated assessments as to what the tech can do,
[11:36] especially in a legal context.
[11:38] You know, long horizon, a genetic work is still nowhere near where it needs to be,
[11:43] especially for a very high stakes industry like legal.
[11:47] But even if it were ready today, it would be years before we would be in a place where both inside
[11:55] legal teams. And I know there's a lot of like CLOs and GCs saying you're not moving fast enough
[12:00] law firms. Yeah. You know Ford Motor Company, the CLO had a post on I think it was Bloomberg recently.
[12:09] So there, you know, we're getting a lot of signals that it sounds like the inside legal teams want
[12:14] the law firms to move faster and on the law firm side, there is a tremendous amount of human
[12:22] work that still needs to be done. So I was so intrigued that your firm had the foresight to
[12:30] to invest there. So would you say that, well, first of all, have you ever seen somebody with the
[12:37] behavioral innovation title on the law firm? No, I haven't actually aching with aching my with it.
[12:43] I think it was like an interesting way to describe what the role was about.
[12:50] And I know I haven't seen a role such as that.
[12:53] And I wish there were more roles like that because they need this there.
[12:58] And what you're saying is very powerful because...
[13:07] I'm with you. I mean, the meal I don't think we need to be dystopian or utopian.
[13:12] And when we talk about AI, we just need to be more analytical
[13:17] and observe what's going on.
[13:19] And when we talk about AI, we often focus on what the technology
[13:25] is capable of doing.
[13:26] We talk about process mappings, workflow, tasks,
[13:30] automation, features, agents, and behavioral science
[13:36] or behavioral innovation shifts the conversation towards humans
[13:41] and what they are actually wayling
[13:43] and able to do with that technology.
[13:46] So those are totally different conversations.
[13:49] And sometimes I like to describe this
[13:51] as the difference between potential and realized value.
[13:55] Technology creates the potential.
[13:58] We have amazing technology with the potential
[14:00] to the amazing things.
[14:02] Now, only people are going to determine whether that potential
[14:06] is effectively realized or not.
[14:09] And that has led me to believe that behavioral capability developing in every organization of
[14:15] behavioral capability is a strategic capability and it sits within boardrooms to make that
[14:22] decision.
[14:23] And it's not simply about managing change well or change management.
[14:28] It's about building organizations that can develop the adaptability capability, let's say,
[14:36] that organizations that learn, adapt, and evolve as technology continues to change.
[14:42] And one thing that I noticed about AI and I love what you said about the
[14:48] human gloom and then the the the the the utopians and happy people is that one thing that
[14:56] has surprised me and I've noticed is every day is the way we talk about AI. We often describe it as
[15:02] though it's an independent force acting on organizations.
[15:07] We hear phrases like AI is reshaping the legal industry.
[15:11] AI is replacing lawyers.
[15:14] AI will kill the bill of our AI will transform the profession.
[15:18] It's interesting because that language kind of
[15:21] subtly removes the human agency from the story.
[15:25] You know, it makes AI sound like something that's happening to us,
[15:30] rather than something we are actively shaping through thousands of decisions, we make every day
[15:37] as individuals and leaders in organizations. And you know, this is a very important reminder that
[15:46] do man gloom or utopia depends pretty much on us, not on AI. It will depend on the decisions,
[15:55] leaders make in relation to their people, but also on how each individual shows up every day at work and
[16:03] whether the conditions for them to show up in the way we want them to show up.
[16:09] And AI doesn't decide how work will be done or redesign. Those are people and leaders need to
[16:17] to think how think and strategize, but also implement strategies
[16:23] that are years to work understanding
[16:26] how they are going to make people do things in a way
[16:31] where AI brings the value and releases the potential
[16:35] that it has within itself.
[16:37] So I would like us to all of us, like as an industry,
[16:40] stop giving AI to much agency
[16:43] and regain the agency that we as humans have in this process.
[16:48] And it depends on us.
[16:50] Nothing is going to be imposed on us.
[16:53] You will depend on human decisions
[16:56] and how we want to address that for our organizations.
[16:59] And as an industry as a whole.
[17:01] Yeah, you used a metaphor about a car in London
[17:05] when we had lunch a couple weeks ago,
[17:08] well, it was over there for the financial times.
[17:09] Maybe you can talk a little bit about it
[17:11] because I think that's a great way to visualize the paradigm that I think we're in.
[17:18] Yes, I mean, I love that metaphor because it's very graphic and the way I think about it in
[17:28] legal organizations is by thinking about two systems that are interact. On the one hand is the
[17:35] the technology system and the other hand is the human system, let's say, right? There are
[17:41] other systems and other other organization and levers that are important for this conversation,
[17:46] but if we just take these two systems, technology and people. Now, the technology system is advancing
[17:55] absolutely at the speed that we cannot even believe, right? It's advancing at a pace that is very
[18:02] difficult for us to even comprehend, right? Now that's technology and then on the other hand we have humans
[18:10] and humans the human system in organizations. It moves at a much slower pace and why? Because
[18:19] we as humans we behave based on values, on thoughts, on feelings, emotions, we are complex creatures.
[18:28] So if we want to change a habit, we don't like, think about our personal lives.
[18:34] If you want to change a habit, we don't like, if we smoke or read or don't do exercise,
[18:41] how long does it take for any individual human being to change that habit?
[18:46] It takes a long time.
[18:48] So there's a massive disparity when it comes to the pace at which humans can change and technology.
[18:57] and technology can change in an organization.
[18:59] There's a massive disparity in pace
[19:02] between these two systems within any organization.
[19:06] And the Ferrari or the Super Fascar in London
[19:10] is, well, if you think about technology and humans, right?
[19:16] And how humans are just also heavily influenced
[19:20] by the environment.
[19:22] When we talk about the human system,
[19:24] we need to remind ourselves that the way your people,
[19:28] to the info dash or the people at any organizations,
[19:32] they don't just behave the way they want.
[19:35] They also behave in a certain way
[19:37] because of the context of the organization you have built,
[19:40] because of the environment.
[19:42] So their behavior is heavily conditioned by context.
[19:46] So if we think about, if we translate that to Carson London,
[19:50] if you have the best car in the market,
[19:53] I don't know anything about that, but let's say you have the fastest car in them.
[20:00] market, right? I you buy it because it is the fastest car in the market. The moment that
[20:06] super fast car enters Central London, the car is not going to go at the maximum speed it can
[20:14] go according to its features. It's going to go at the speed of the context and the environment
[20:23] created in Central London by other hundreds and thousands of cars
[20:27] trying to get into Central London and creating traffic jams.
[20:31] So if we translate that to organizations, it's the same thing.
[20:35] You know, we are buying technology, we are developing technology.
[20:39] We are talking about how much technology is going to change us.
[20:43] But then when we bring the human system into the equation, we realize heck, hang on.
[20:49] This is not going as fast as we possibly can, because people are slow to change, and people are slow to be new habits, and people have fears and concerns about their identities being impacted by AI.
[21:02] So, when you have two components at different speeds that interact with each other, the whole system is going to go at the speed of the slowest one, not as fast as one.
[21:14] one. And the same thing happens inorganizations. And this is why you go to most law firms,
[21:20] most legally in-house teams, or most of professional services organizations, and things don't
[21:27] look very different, really, which is both more technology. Now I'm not so sure we get, we have,
[21:33] you know, we have found out what we are going to do with that technology to increase the pace of change.
[21:40] And this is where different lenses, different approaches to unlock that are important.
[21:45] You know, there's a book that was required reading when I was entered business school 20 something years ago, 25 years ago, and it was called the goal by Elliot Goldrat.
[21:59] What's wrong? Are you familiar with it?
[22:02] No, I haven't read it, but I'm writing it down to read it.
[22:05] Yeah, it's a really good book and it talks about the theory of constraints and how, you know,
[22:11] a system moves only moves as fast as it slowest moving component and they use a metaphor
[22:17] and I'm going back in my mental archives here.
[22:20] So I might get this a little bit wrong of like a marching band and however, however fast, the slowest
[22:27] drummer in that marching band goes is how fast the system moves.
[22:33] So yeah, that was like a very early teaching.
[22:37] I think that was an entry,
[22:38] whatever the entry level class was,
[22:41] that was required reading.
[22:42] So it's very real, it's very true.
[22:45] And something that you touched on is identity,
[22:49] which I think is really interesting.
[22:51] And I've been talking about culture in law firms
[22:55] for a really long time,
[22:57] having not spent my entire career there,
[22:59] having spent time, I was at Microsoft before,
[23:02] was at Bank of America, I was an entrepreneur before that.
[23:05] And there are so many cultural components in a law firm
[23:09] that are really foundational, like cornerstones.
[23:12] One of them is the KPIs that end up being the access
[23:18] around which the law firm rotates, which
[23:20] is the bill-blower and originations.
[23:24] That's how lawyers are measured.
[23:25] Those are the two metrics that determine your career path,
[23:29] your compensation, how you're viewed by your peers, really the identity of the lawyer are really
[23:35] wrapped up tightly or tightly coupled to those metrics.
[23:39] And we're now entering into an era where the bill below hour isn't necessarily, I'm
[23:46] also not one of one of these believers that the bill below hour is going away.
[23:50] Now, I do think it's going to lose ground to alternative pricing structures for sure.
[23:57] There's no way it can't.
[23:58] I think there's going to be a much longer horizon than it's not happening tomorrow.
[24:03] It's going to happen.
[24:04] It's going to happen.
[24:05] It's going to be an evolution, not a revolution.
[24:08] It is bad as there's so much pent up demand for alternative pricing structures that
[24:15] the market on the buy side is really chomping at the bit.
[24:19] The reality is not just, I mean, just take people out of it for a minute and just the technology
[24:25] itself, there's still so much human in the loop work required that it makes. And there's so many areas of
[24:32] practice within a law firm that really incorporate a level of variation or variability that,
[24:39] you know, that's a, I'm a lean six Sigma black belt and, you know, variability. People think
[24:45] lean and six Sigma are the same thing. They're not lean because they use the words together. Lean is about
[24:50] waste reduction. Six Sigma is about quality control. So if you're operating at six sigma,
[24:57] and I'm going to butcher this to exist, it's been forever, but it's like 4.3 million defects per,
[25:03] you know, 4.3 defects per million opportunities. So if you're manufacturing widgets,
[25:07] and you have more than 4.3 out of a run of a million go defective than you're not operating at six
[25:16] Sigma. So it's a very high bar and but get going back to the identities piece. How do you
[25:23] how do you see you talk a little bit about the double mismatch and rebuilding lawyer identity like
[25:29] talk a little bit about that. Yes, I mean I love your questions. I know we discuss we were we were
[25:36] preparing this conversation. I have some ideas and I have more ideas. Well, anyway, I tried to be brief.
[25:42] So, yeah, so I think this, when I referred to the WMIS manager or a gap is, well, there are two mismatches here, or gaps.
[25:54] The first gap is between the speed of technological change and the speed of organizational change.
[26:01] And this is similar to what I just mentioned about the car in central London technology, advancing very fast, but of course, changing organizations.
[26:11] organizations change very slowly because we need to consider governance, regulation, client
[26:17] expectations, organizational processes, but also because successes, past successes are sometimes
[26:26] a very important obstacle for change because we believe that if we've been doing something
[26:32] for the past 50 decades or 5 decades or for a long time, then we know how to do things
[26:41] why change. So that's the first mismatch. But the second mismatch and I think there's the second
[26:48] that second one we discussed less is between what technology is capable of doing and how people
[26:56] experience that change. Now if you talk to an AI person or a technology person or an engineer or
[27:03] people even like us, why in innovation. We perceive AI as a technical achievement, as something
[27:10] that is amazing, full of features you can do this, this and that. And this is why when people
[27:15] approach law firms or vendors or people who develop amazing technology come to us, they explain to us
[27:21] how amazing their tools are. Now, when we talk about human behavior and how people think about technology,
[27:29] And especially lawyers, we experience AI as a radical change, as a radical change to the way we practice, we develop expertise and we create value.
[27:43] So much so that AI is perceived as a threat to our professional identity.
[27:51] Especially for more senior people like us, we're in training a certain way.
[27:56] Now AI scraps all that and in a way forces us to think differently about the value we bring to the organization and to our clients.
[28:05] And you know, this, this double mismatch is something that creates a two different conversations that don't talk to each other or that don't relate to each other.
[28:16] One group or one group of people in an organization or one group in the industry is talking about AI capabilities and the other group of people who are needed for AI to make a change is thinking about themselves.
[28:34] the values they bring as professionals.
[28:37] So one thing that research has shown us
[28:42] is that people don't simply evaluate change objectively.
[28:47] When we tell people this tool is amazing
[28:49] because of these sort of that, information alone
[28:53] is not what change people's behavior in relation
[28:56] to that technology.
[28:58] When we receive that information, we interpret that information
[29:02] through our existing beliefs, experiences,
[29:05] and professional identities.
[29:07] So when you have a leader, you know, a group of leaders
[29:10] who want to introduce AI, they are not just introducing
[29:13] technology, they are introducing uncertainty,
[29:17] and uncertainty for their people.
[29:20] And then, certainly, about careers, about expertise,
[29:23] about progression, about where's my value.
[29:27] And this is something very interesting.
[29:30] And this is, again, this is a line of research that is very interesting.
[29:35] When you want, when there's a mismatch between the behavior you want to promote, and the behavior
[29:44] you reword, for instance, if you want to promote more use of AI, but you reword working long hours,
[29:53] that mismatch creates a problem for people.
[29:57] people solve the problem.
[30:00] by leaning towards the behavior that gets rewarded, not necessarily to the behavior that the organization
[30:07] expect people to expect people to have. So your point about Bila Rulaours, I think, is a great example.
[30:14] I mean, I don't even want to get into the decades-long conversation about whether there's a good
[30:20] system or a bad system, but because I think most of us know the, it was a prevalent view on that,
[30:26] But if we want our lawyers and business professionals to use more AI, and we don't change
[30:35] simultaneously the context in which that behavior will take place.
[30:41] The incentives, what gets rewarded, what gets recognized, what makes people progress their careers,
[30:48] then people are not going to adopt AI the way we want them to adopt.
[30:53] we need to change all that for this little thing to work for AI to work.
[30:59] So, and this is the last thing I'm going to say about because you mentioned KPIs and I love that because we constantly get asked,
[31:06] well, what's the ROI of innovation? What's the ROI of behavior change?
[31:12] What's the ROI of this and that? And, you know, I really would like us to push back on that question and as well,
[31:18] Well, I'm going to answer that question when you as leaders of organizations also start thinking
[31:24] how the rest of the organization's levers need to change to measure accurately a ROI of AI
[31:33] behavior change and innovation. That is such a good point. And, you know, I have been
[31:40] beating the drum for a while now about the risk of firms that overindex on ROI to early
[31:48] in this transformation because I think so much of the ROI is learning.
[31:53] Right? It's a experimentation and like in innovation, if you're not failing, you're not innovating. Right?
[32:02] It's a requirement in order, it's a process of trial and error and experimentation and that necessitates failure.
[32:12] failure isn't bad in that context.
[32:14] When we had lunch a couple weeks ago,
[32:17] you talked something that I thought was
[32:19] interesting concept, the IKEA effect.
[32:21] Tell me what that means.
[32:24] So the IKEA effect is a cool concept in behavior science.
[32:31] And it's all about research,
[32:34] finding researchers, finding that people
[32:37] place greater value on things they have helped build themselves.
[32:42] And I think this is an important lesson for legal organizations.
[32:48] Because we often treat lawyers and business special lawyers, but also business service professionals
[32:55] as the final stage of an innovation process.
[32:59] So traditionally a group of people within the organization who are not normally lawyers select
[33:06] technology, warplosar design, processes are developed, and then when everything is ready for lawyers to use,
[33:16] we bring them to the lawyers, give them all the information they need, and give them 100 trainings on
[33:24] how to use that technology, and then we cross our arms and magically expect that people start using
[33:31] the technology. And what research has constantly found in terms of how humans behave is that
[33:38] almost the opposite approach is the right one. Because if according to these
[33:44] ideas, effects, you should bring lawyers and business professionals into the process,
[33:50] whether it's technology, building, buying, or innovation in general, right from the very beginning.
[33:56] you have to ask them what the friction where the frictions are,
[34:00] which tasks they hate doing or drain their energy,
[34:05] which ones they love doing and give them a sense of purpose,
[34:08] you know, what their clients like, what they don't like, what matters to them.
[34:13] But also, there's a question that I always love to ask.
[34:18] Is, you know, I would ask people, what part of your job?
[34:23] If removed, we'll make you feel less important, less valued, less recognized, and less willing to show up and go to the office every day.
[34:35] Because those questions are going to give you very valuable insights to understand what you should do next, what you should do with with technology buyer or build, how the technology should be built, what features it should have.
[34:52] So how can we really find and reimagining everything that needs to be
[34:58] reimagining in a law firm?
[35:00] And you know, it's, this is something that is, is very,
[35:04] is, is very interesting because again, we think that we, if we give people
[35:09] information at some point at the end, you know, things are going to dramatically change.
[35:16] And that's not the case.
[35:18] This is why you can invest as much money as you want in technology and run as many training
[35:24] programs as you want, but then that's not an impact adoption at scale.
[35:30] And this is why I would say what's important in every innovation project, whether it has
[35:35] to do with AI or not, you need to involve lawyers right from the very beginning.
[35:42] you know, there's something that I found in law firms that is a bit of an obstacle.
[35:49] We don't like to ask for a deeper question.
[35:52] I mean, we even, even clients, we don't like to ask people to clients about our service
[35:57] and we tend to, you know, we tend to underestimate the power of asking people what they think about things.
[36:04] Because, and if we do, that we probably lead us to much more successful outcomes when we roll out that technology
[36:12] or where we try to push for a certain change,
[36:14] or when I say it's not changed.
[36:15] Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
[36:17] You know, in technology, in the 70s, 80s and 90s,
[36:21] there was a, what they call an SDLC
[36:24] a software development lifecycle methodology,
[36:27] called Waterfall.
[36:28] And Waterfall is a process where you bring a group of users
[36:33] together with a business analyst
[36:35] and you write down the requirements of the system.
[36:40] And then you go off the technology team,
[36:43] goes off in a vacuum, builds the solution.
[36:46] And then the first time that users get to see it
[36:49] is during user acceptance testing or UAT.
[36:51] And that has created so much friction
[36:56] in the world technology that in 2000,
[36:59] early 2000s there was a group of thought leaders
[37:03] in the technology space.
[37:05] And they signed something called the Agile Manifesto.
[37:09] And the Agile Manifesto was really the beginning
[37:12] of the Agile Movement in technology
[37:14] where the Agile Movement is,
[37:16] you know, if you had to sum it up in a one word,
[37:19] it's iterative.
[37:22] And it's the mantra is to deliver value incrementally
[37:27] and engage users early and often.
[37:30] So the users are seeing live working software
[37:33] and engaging with it, providing feedback
[37:36] and you have really short what they call sprints,
[37:39] development cycles before the next iteration is released.
[37:42] And that has proven to be massively successful in the technology world.
[37:46] And I think it's not just technology, it doesn't apply to just technology now.
[37:51] It's any sort of like massive change that you're going to introduce.
[37:55] So yeah, I feel like technology figured this out a long time ago.
[37:58] But to your point, I think there's still some remnants of the waterfall mindset in other areas of the organization.
[38:05] 100% and I think you're racing an amazing point there is I am a firm believer that we need to be inspired by other industries and people who do things better than us as lawyers and legal organizations.
[38:20] You know, this concept of analogous inspiration. I like I love to talk to, I mean, I love the examples you bring from the software world. I love to talk to people who are in the advertising industry or
[38:34] or you know who are in a professional, you know, like professional services industry.
[38:40] It's one event that I organized, I even invited my dentist because I thought he was the
[38:46] most as a speaker and he was a massive success. I thought this guy is one of the most,
[38:52] he's the most amazing service provider when he comes to client service. Every time I would go to
[38:59] his practice, I would feel happy to go to the dentist, which is something that you would never
[39:05] feel. And I found so many parallels with how people show up when they go to a lawyer and
[39:11] when they go to a dentist. And I learned so much from him and when I brought him to the firm,
[39:18] everybody was excited to hear his stories in terms of how he approaches a difficult service he provides
[39:26] in very innovative ways. So I do think you're absolutely right in the legal profession and
[39:34] legal industry. I think sometimes we haven't been so open to learn from others. I see what we do
[39:42] is very special and doesn't have anything to do with anything and everything has to do with everything
[39:47] really. And you know, this days that's very true, but in any case, it's it's it's part's curiosity
[39:54] see on it, it sparks new connections just to speak randomly with people who do things differently.
[40:00] things in my view sometimes even better than us. And we should kind of seek inspiration as much
[40:07] as we possibly can to flex that muscle of creativity, which again, I think everything that we're
[40:15] talking to today is defundation for making change happen is flexing the creativity muscle in our
[40:25] people they in and they out. Creativity is not a sweet, I mean, if you want people to start using AI
[40:31] creatively, that's not a sweet that you can turn on enough when you want, be it creativity something
[40:37] that is a compounded, it's it's created over time. It's cultivated. It's cultivated and the more you
[40:45] create an organization that as you were saying before allows for creativity to happen, allows for
[40:52] for mistakes to be made in the context of experimentation,
[40:56] allows for projects to fail.
[40:59] That is something that creates an incredible capability
[41:04] in people to think, well, I can try this.
[41:07] I'm not going to be perceived as less competent
[41:10] because I try this technology or this idea
[41:13] and it didn't go well.
[41:15] So everything is related and in a way,
[41:19] is this is something that connects perhaps to something we have time to discuss or not, which is,
[41:24] you know, the constant challenge that we have between short-sightedness and the long view when it comes to decision-making in organizations and how much,
[41:37] how able we are to see around, and how if we are able to see around the corner, we will be much better placed to face the challenges, not just related to AI actually.
[41:48] actually. AI is just one component, but there are so many challenges and we need to be prepared.
[41:53] But that will also happen only happen if we are able to see around the corner or not just react to
[41:58] the immediate. I love the analogous inspiration terminology and concept. I'm not sure if you've ever
[42:06] heard the story of Chick-fil-A and bringing in the Ritz Carlton to learn about customer experience.
[42:14] But they did and they they were laughed at by their peers in the fast food business
[42:20] You know whatever 25 years ago or maybe even 30 years ago when they did it
[42:24] You know because there's such different worlds, you know high end
[42:28] You know hotels and resorts and fast food who would ever think and look how incredibly successful they've been
[42:38] Well, let's talk we have like a few a few minutes
[42:42] And I want to hear your perspective on the short versus the long view.
[42:45] What is your take on that?
[42:47] You know, I think that, again, human nature is that we are great at reacting to the immediate,
[42:55] to what's pressing, to what's urgent, to what's in front of us.
[42:59] And leaders have a lot of pressure to show results within short time friends.
[43:06] Very similar to politicians, right?
[43:09] If you want to keep your voters happy, you need to show results in three, four years or whatever your mandate lasts.
[43:19] Leaders in organizations, in law firms, but also in organizations that have in-house legal teams, also need to show achievements and objectives and goals within relatively short timeframes.
[43:34] And the problem with that is that innovation, behavior change, transfer, organizational transformation, all that as we said before take take time.
[43:47] And the reason why that takes time, that all that takes time is because it's dependent on humans.
[43:53] And we already established that we don't change easily.
[43:58] Now, it's a, that's a constant tension there.
[44:02] And I've seen both types of leaders.
[44:05] I've seen the leaders who I would say are concentrated,
[44:09] are focused on delivering on the short term goals,
[44:12] that they need to deliver to keep their stakeholders happy.
[44:16] But also leaders who are very interested in their legacy
[44:20] in how they want to be perceived, not just in the three,
[44:23] four years or five years of or the mandates,
[44:26] but actually after that.
[44:28] And if you ask any leader of any type of organization,
[44:33] would you like to be remembered by a tool you implemented?
[44:37] Or would you like to be remembered by someone
[44:41] who established the conditions for the organization
[44:44] to be more progressive, more forward-looking,
[44:48] to see around the corner, to behave more like a true organization
[44:53] that doesn't just focus on the immediate,
[44:55] but actually focus on the long terms sustainability.
[44:59] I would say most leaders would say,
[45:03] you know, I would take the second option.
[45:05] I mean, no one is going to care if I was responsible for,
[45:09] you know, the adoption and roll out of X or Y technology.
[45:14] So, but you know, there's a massive
[45:17] also gap between intentions and behaviors.
[45:20] And you know, while some leaders would like to be perceived
[45:24] by their legacy, long-term legacy, I feel that short-term goals have a lot of waves.
[45:31] And that's problematic.
[45:33] It's problematic for to make change happen.
[45:36] And this is why in my view, we haven't seen the rapid change and the transformative change
[45:44] that we should have seen by now in most of our organizations.
[45:48] Yeah, especially considering that law firms are private, at least here in the United States.
[45:53] I know there are public law firms in the UK, but here in the US there are no public law firms.
[46:01] And it's all private capital even the ones that have accepted private equity due through,
[46:07] do so through a non-public mechanism.
[46:11] So I do think there's opportunity for it's really hard when you're publicly traded.
[46:17] Yes.
[46:17] You know, because investors are so focused on and analysts are so focused on short-term results.
[46:24] There's huge corrections in the marketplace happening right now in the tech world.
[46:27] Like massive, I mean, Nike's down like 70% over the last five years, IBM went down 25% in one day.
[46:36] Yeah, it's crazy.
[46:37] It's crazy the swings that we're seeing.
[46:40] And, you know, there's a lot of questions in the AI world about, you know,
[46:44] Kimmy just had a new release, which is a Chinese open weight model and it is blowing the doors off the legal benchmarks.
[46:52] But yeah, it's interesting time. It's interesting time to be in the space and I love that, you know, your leaders recognize the need for a role like the one that you built out.
[47:05] And I can't wait to hear what you're up to next.
[47:09] So maybe once that's announced,
[47:13] we'll have you back on at some point,
[47:15] because we didn't even get through half the agenda.
[47:18] I know, I know, but I knew this was going to happen.
[47:23] Yes.
[47:23] Because every time you and I start the conversation,
[47:27] we can't stop.
[47:29] Right.
[47:30] But yeah, I would be super.
[47:32] Yeah, I can't wait to tell you more what's coming and for in my career, but yeah, I would just like to say that it's going to be all about being deeper into behavioral change and, you know, developing or helping leaders develop organizations that are, you know, more progressive and more focus on the on the human beings and and they are not just thinking about AI as a way to replace their people, but actually.
[48:02] leaders who want to make better organizations with AI and their people.
[48:08] And I think the future is very exciting and I cannot wait to share more with you and your audience as well.
[48:16] Yes, that's great. So how do people get in touch or follow what you read right?
[48:20] Speak about are you on LinkedIn? Is that the best way? Yes. Yes, yes. I'm on LinkedIn.
[48:26] And yeah, I can share my email as well.
[48:29] If there's a place for you to edit in your website,
[48:34] but LinkedIn is the best place.
[48:36] And yeah, I really would love to hear from people,
[48:40] what they think about what we discussed today.
[48:43] And I think we need more people like us
[48:45] talking about this topic.
[48:47] So it would be exciting to have offline conversations.
[48:51] Absolutely.
[48:52] Yeah, we'll include your link, your URL in the show notes.
[48:56] So folks can get in touch and thank you so much for taking some time. I look forward to the next conversation
[49:02] Thank you so much for having me to it's been an amazing conversation and you made my day
[49:07] Likewise, dido all right. Well chat soon all right, bye bye. Bye bye
[49:12] Thanks for listening to legal innovations spotlight
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