This is Part 3 of my 4-part serious on spring-cleaning and taking stock of your business. In Part 3, I’m going to be focusing with my group of expert contributors, on their favourite resources when they review their businesses. (You can find the other parts to this series, covering why and how you should review your business and what to prioritise, on merlie.co.uk)

So in your experience, what are the best resources for reviewing a business?

I asked each expert to identify his/her favourite resource(s). As you’ll see from the chart below, my contributors rely on a wide variety of helpful resources, ranging from online resources, advice from coaches, comparing notes with peers, advisory boards, social media, to app-based/digital management solutions, amongst others.

We’ll delve a little more deeply into some favoured examples of these resources in a moment. Read More

This is Part 2 of my 4-part series on spring-cleaning and taking stock of your business. In Part 2, I’m going to be focusing with my team of expert contributors, on what you should prioritise when you’re reviewing your business. (You can find the other parts on merlie.co.uk)

So what are the most important things to prioritise when reviewing your business?

I asked each of my contributors to identify their top 3 items to prioritise when it comes to reviewing business performance and deciding what to focus on in the months ahead.

As you’ll see from the chart below, their views were quite varied, Read More

Limber up and get out the feather duster. It’s time to take stock of your business and do a bit of spring-cleaning.

I was looking for some guidance on this topic myself. But I actually couldn’t find anything particularly helpful, beyond a fair amount of theoretical guidance and some out of date blog posts.

So, I asked a very broad cross section of business experts from my network for their practical tips on what to do, when to do it, and what are their secrets to doing it really well.

Here’s what they very generously shared with me. It’s a great feast of helpful information and resources, so I’ve split it into 4 parts. This is the first part and it focuses on how often, and the best ways, to take stock of your business and keep it on track. (You can find the other parts on merlie.co.uk). Read More

How can you successfully lead an in-house legal team in 2017? And can technology help to solve some of the increasing challenges faced by those leaders?

It’s a good question. One that Nilema Bhakta-Jones and I addressed in part last week at the Alternative In-house Technology Summit in Oxfordshire.

It is something that over the last 10 years at least, we have almost endlessly debated between us and we’ve regularly shared our learnings, ideas and experiments. The conversation started out between just the two of us. Now we discuss that same question, those ideas and our experience, with so many different people and organisations. Change and innovation within legal services is something that we are both passionate about and this passion has driven many of our career choices since we first sat down together.

Here are some highlights of our on-stage conversation and the discussions that followed. (I will leave it to Nilema to explain why she blames BATMAN for many of the frustrations that in-house teams face… and if she doesn’t blog this herself, I will interview/interrogate her for a separate blog, so that you can see why she’s right and how BATMAN is to blame.) Read More

‘Get geeky’ was the advice of a leading commentator on the future of professional services at an event I attended earlier this week. Yes, it’s ‘cheesey’, yet I still wanted to stand up and applaud.

Not because it was a revelation.

But because the real leaders of traditional sectors, including professional services, are finally, demonstrably, committed to harnessing technological solutions better, and because they are starting to forge a path where there previously wasn’t one.

And their achievements are being noticed and appreciated. Which is great. Although it’s unlikely to be enough. It’s only a step in the right direction.

Why? Read More