Digital White Papers

11 WWW.ILTANET.ORG | ILTA WHITE PAPER POTPOURRI Keeping Innovation Strategies On Track Across Global Cultural Lines Greatest Successes The success of an innovation strategy depends heavily on the ability of different groups to integrate as a whole. When this integration involves people of different cultures, success is influenced by how well a firm achieves a shared cross-cultural vision. Social events that bring diverse cultural teams together are one way to help form understanding at a personal level, breaking down barriers that exist at an organizational level. Another less tangible but just as important method is free expression: fostering a culture where every member across regions feels comfortable expressing his or her views with management paying aention to members at lower ranks and in other cultures. Since engagement is key and distance a barrier to successful innovation, using technical toolkits to facilitate face-to-face, focused communication is highly beneficial. With high-definition videoconferencing, people can pick up on visual cues and act accordingly. Another tool to be considered is a set of common guidelines for the effort, such as guiding principles for the project or a published style guide. Law Firm and Corporation In today's competitive environment innovation is one of the ways a firm differentiates itself in the market. A key challenge for law firms implementing an innovation strategy is the tendency to avoid risk. While "fail early and move on" is commonly regarded as a building block for innovation, the professional training and personalities of lawyers can make them averse to risk and failure. As a result, innovation occurs by exception rather than as a routine. Innovation depends heavily on cycles of trial and error leading ultimately to the success or abandonment of a new idea. "Fail fast and fail early" is a proven mantra for successful innovation. Ideally this means being willing to identify an early innovation attempt as a "failure" while also learning from it and continuing to evolve the innovation until it ultimately succeeds or is deemed irrecoverable. Lawyers, however, are typically less than comfortable with imperfection, and law firms find it challenging to create an innovation culture that includes learning from failures as a building block of success. As a result, many law firms are not well-suited culturally to bold, transformative innovation and instead would be more culturally aligned with innovation in the form of incremental improvements or proven best practices. ILTA Don't Be Afraid of Risk by Sally Gonzalez, Consultant MICHELE GOSSMEYER Michele Gossmeyer, Director of Information Governance and Compliance at Dentons, has over 20 years of experience in large global law firms in numerous aspects of legal information technology, including information management, risk and compliance, communications, customer service, user experience enhancement, business analysis, budgeting, change management, project management, human resources, procurement, and network and back-office operations. Michele has been an active ILTA volunteer for many years, previously serving on the Board of Directors and currently serving on the LegalSEC steering committee and the ILTA CEO search committee. She also has spoken on various panels and written multiple articles. Contact her at michele.gossmeyer@dentons.com.

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