Crisis-driven change

The opening quote of Francesco Guerrera’s Analysis article in this morning’s FT caught the eye, “A crisis is a terrible thing to waste” (but then I don’t work at Citigroup, so hadn’t heard it before).

What struck me, however, and what is applicable to law firms as much as any other business was this,

Experts argue that although most companies see the need to reform in a crisis, many embark on the wrong kind of change. A common mistake is to go for across-the-board job and cost cuts that weaken the company without sharpening its core businesses. “The first thing you have to do is to protect and strengthen the core,” says Bain’s Mr Rigby. “In the same way our bodies allocate blood flow away from expendable extremities in favour of vital organs during a crisis, companies must make sure their best markets and consumers are protected.”

Driving change may be easier in times like these, but, as Guerrera notes,

In the middle of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, companies face a daunting choice. Do they exploit the tough times to lose the ballast accumulated during the boom years and make risky strategic changes in the hope of emerging as lighter but stronger organisations? Or do they adopt a defensive stance, trying to weather the storm without rocking the boat until their markets and the economy rebound?

“A truly diverse and inclusive legal profession”

I always enjoy John Naughton’s posts in Memex 1.1.

Yesterday, in Onwards and downwards, what struck me most was less his finding the report of Alan Milburn’s inquiry into social mobility in contemporary Britain “deeply depressing” than his conclusion,

But the wider problem laid bare with scarifying clarity by the Milburn report remains. And nobody — and this includes Milburn — has any real idea what to do about it.

And today I have finally got round to reading Alex Novarese’s post Law and the myth of social mobility in Editors’ Blog on Legalweek.com,

Does the legal profession have particular cause for concern? The basic fact remains that law, like medicine, is built on a foundation of structured academic learning, followed by equally structured vocational training. As such, law is not well equipped to overcome the weaknesses of the UK’s educational system. Interestingly, Milburn’s report also notes that the number of independently-schooled solicitors has fallen since the late 1980s, so on that yardstick there has been some progress. There is also the issue that law has a very structured career track, with clearly defined routes in, making it one of the more transparent of the aspirational careers.

There is an interesting comparison to journalism, which the report notes has moved from being one of the most socially inclusive careers to become considerably more privileged over the last 20 years. The report concludes that journalism is the only career in which the proportion of staff educated at independent schools has gone up (it was static or had fallen for all other professions, even for judges). There was also the hilarity of seeing one newspaper covering the report refer to journalism as a “former trade”, as if it had been transformed through the infusion of the privileged classes into an actual profession; my chosen trade has far more to be ashamed of regarding social mobility than law.

But the last word perhaps should come from Beth Wanono, in her Comment piece in the Law Society Gazette on 9 July, Managing Expectations. What she is writing about is not so much about social mobility and the legal profession as the very real and immediate challenge for those who aspire to be lawyers,

There is a difference between a crunch and a squeeze. My impression of the trainee market is that the situation is akin to 10,000 people trying to cram onto a train that can only hold 1,000. You could extend the tenuous analogy further and say the platform is already overflowing with those who couldn’t squeeze on to the last train.

This will only get worse. As Wanono remarks,

We have reached a stage where the balance between offering access to the profession and managing the expectations of those considering it has become dangerously tipped towards the former.

Heard it through the Swine Line

The Telegraph is given to hyperbole, and never more so than when knocking the present government (not necessarily something I usually mind). This morning’s lead story about swine flu is another good example.

What caught me eye, though, was this

The hold-up [by the Treasury taking seven months to sign off the deal to set up a flu telephone helpline] meant that the Government had to introduce a stopgap flu phoneline, introduced last week, manned by staff given just one day of training.

In the meantime, NHS Direct, which should have been running the service, has made hundreds of its highly trained staff redundant.

The conclusion the Telegraph invites you to draw is that the Swine Line is somehow sub-standard, operated by barely literate staff and likely to make the situation (sorry, in Telegraph-speak “chaos” or “crisis”: take your pick) much worse.

Well, I have news for you. Expert systems work and this is just flu.  The NHS National Pandemic Flu Service is not offering the expert health information and advice that NHS Direct does; instead it is something very different: a screen based expert system that allows people to check their symptoms. It doesn’t need highly trained staff; it simply needs people who can operate the system. Two days in and it is working.