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From Good to GreatBecoming an Excellent Business Lawyer

Co-ACC Mini MBA ProgramKeynote Address: Geoff Wilcox

May 16, 2013

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Good In-House Lawyers

• Understand law affecting their business

• Risk intolerant

• Defer to business people to make decisions

• What’s the risk of this approach?

“Good is the enemy of great. And that is one of the key reasons why we have so little that becomes great.”Jim CollinsGood to Great

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What Makes a Great Lawyer?

“Well, I don't know as I want a lawyer to tell me what I cannot do. I hire him to tell me how to do what I want to do.”J.P. Morgan

How do we get there?

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Great Lawyers Become Great Leaders

• Build relationships & trust:Emotional intelligence

• Find solutions:Creative intelligence

• Take risks:Make recommendations

• Prioritize effort:Assess importance of issues

“Move out of your comfort zone. You can only grow if you are willing to feel awkward and uncomfortable when you try something new.”Brian Tracy

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What Makes a Great Leader?

• 11 companies

• Leapt from good to great

• Stayed great for 15 years

• Outperformed market 6.9 times during this period

• Great leaders were the key

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Good Leaders

“Larger-than-life celebrity leaders who ride in from the outside are negatively correlated with taking a company from good to great.”

Jim CollinsGood to Great

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Great Leaders

“The good-to-great leaders…[were] self-effacing, quiet, reserved, even shy – these leaders are a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will.”

Jim Collins Good to Great

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Great Leader: Darwin E. Smith • First leader profiled: in-house

lawyer at Kimberly-Clark

• Became CEO in 1971

• Lagging 36% behind market since 1951

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Great Leader: Darwin E. Smith • By 1991, stock beat the market

by more than 4X• Outperformed rivals P&G and

Scotts Paper

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Good Leader: Lee Iacocca• Icon of business leadership

• Saved Chrysler from disaster

• Chrysler peaked at 2.9 times the market halfway through tenure

• Second half of tenure, Chrysler fell 31% behind the market

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The Icarus Problem

“In over two thirds of the comparison cases, we noted the presence of a gargantuan personal ego that contributed to the demise or continued mediocrity of the company.”

Jim Collins Good to Great

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The Secret to Smith’s Success• Personal Humility:

– Worked with a team– Seemingly ordinary man– Mild mannered– Awkwardly shy

• Bold & decisive action: – Sold off the paper mills – Exited company’s core business– Took on world-class competitor

P&G in consumer paper

• What made Smith different from the ego-driven leaders?

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Two Minds

• We have two very different, complementary brains

• Left brain: linear, sequential, literal, ego center, language, remembers the story of our life, follows rules, makes judgments

• Right brain: non-linear, timeless, sees life as collage of images, empathy, feelings & relationships, makes creative leaps, interprets non-verbal queues, intuition

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My Stroke of Insight

• Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor: highly successful neuroanatomist

• Massive stroke in left brain

• Lost ability to talk, walk, read, write or remember her life

• “Became empathic to what others felt,” tuned into “facial expression and body language,” noticed “energy dynamics” among people,” and felt “deep inner peace”

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Balance: Stepping to the Right

• During 10 year recovery, learned to “step to the right” and draw on abilities to empathize, utilize intuition and “think out of the box.”

• Chose not to recover left brain dominance and tendency to be “mean, worry incessantly, or be verbally abusive.”

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Finding the Right Mind

• Focus on present moment

• Focus on breathing

• Listen to music

• Ask “how does it feel to be here doing this?”

• Notice and let go of negative “brain chatter”

“Smell the rain, and feel the wind.”Ashley Smith

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Great Lawyers (And the Right Mind)

• Humility (Empathy)

• Bold leaps (Creativity & intuition)

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Building Trust: Emotional Intelligence

• Empathize

• Listen first

• Seek to understand

• Then challenge

• Know your own emotions

• Find a mentor

“Seek first to understand, then to be understood.”Stephen R. CoveyThe 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

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Empathy“Empathy…is the fundamental people skill.”Daniel GolemanEmotional Intelligence

“Good-to-great management teams consist of people who debate vigorously in search of the best answers, yet who unify behind decisions, regardless of parochial interests.”Jim CollinsGood to Great

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Empathy & LeadershipThe salient discovery is that certain things leaders do – specifically, exhibit empathy and become attuned to others’ moods – literally affect both their own brain chemistry and that of their followers.

Daniel Goleman & Richard Boyatzis, Social Intelligence & the Biology of Leadership, Harvard Business Review (September 1, 2008).

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Empathy & LeadershipThe salient discovery is that certain things leaders do – specifically, exhibit empathy and become attuned to others’ moods – literally affect both their own brain chemistry and that of their followers. Indeed, researchers have found that the leader-follower dynamic is not a case of two (or more) independent brains reacting consciously or unconsciously to each other. Rather, the individual minds become, in a sense, fused into a single system.

Daniel Goleman & Richard Boyatzis, Social Intelligence & the Biology of Leadership, Harvard Business Review (September 1, 2008).

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Empathy & LeadershipThe salient discovery is that certain things leaders do – specifically, exhibit empathy and become attuned to others’ moods – literally affect both their own brain chemistry and that of their followers. Indeed, researchers have found that the leader-follower dynamic is not a case of two (or more) independent brains reacting consciously or unconsciously to each other. Rather, the individual minds become, in a sense, fused into a single system. We believe that great leaders are those whose behavior powerfully leverages the system of brain interconnectedness.

Daniel Goleman & Richard Boyatzis, Social Intelligence & the Biology of Leadership, Harvard Business Review (September 1, 2008).

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• Steve Jobs studied calligraphy • Designed beautiful fonts into Mac

ten years later

• "Much of what I stumbled into by following my curiousity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on… You can't connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.”

Finding Solutions: Creativity & Intuition

“In August 2012, Apple became the most valuable company in history…the first company to become ‘most valuable’ because of its creativity.”Bruce NussbaumCreative Intelligence: Harnessing the Power to Create, Connect, and Inspire

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Creativity & Fear

• 2010 U.Penn. experiment

• People unconsciously associate creative ideas with: “vomit,” “poison” & “agony”

• Bias caused people to reject ideas for new products that were novel & high quality

"Revealing the existence and nature of a bias against creativity can help explain why people might reject creative ideas and stifle scientific advancements, even in the face of strong intentions to the contrary.”Mueller, J. S., Melwani, S., & Goncalo, J. A. (2011) (hyperlink)

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• Knowledge Mining– Years in the business– Recognized patterns

• Framing– Letting go of old lens

• Pivoting– Closed the mills– Shift to consumer paper

Creative Intelligence: Darwin Smith

Bruce NussbaumCreative Intelligence: Harnessing the Power to Create, Connect, and Inspire

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• Great in-house lawyers commit• Communicating with business

people– Don’t split hairs: “legally we have a

strong case”– What can they do with that?– Consider everything: legal issues

and the business case

• Provide an actual bottom line recommendation– Settle– Seek early summary judgment– Go to trial

Taking Risks

“Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.”Helen Keller

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• Volume of issues can be overwhelming

• Assess importance of issues

• Trust your gut

• Schedule based on priority

• Match level of effort & depth of analysis to importance of issue

Prioritize Effort

“The key is not to prioritize what's on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.”Steven Covey

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Great Leadership“When the Master governs, the people are hardly aware that he exists.Next best is a leader who is loved.Next, one who is feared.The worst is one who is despised.

If you don't trust the people,you make them untrustworthy.

The Master doesn't talk, he acts.When his work is done,the people say, ‘Amazing:we did it, all by ourselves!’”

Lao-tzuTao Te ChingA New English Version by Stephen Mitchell