Peer to Peer Magazine

55 WWW.ILTANET.ORG Do Your Current Job Well Whether tackling a complex problem or performing a routine task, take pride in your work. Your approach to current initiatives is how others become acquainted with your work and is invaluable in cultivating and maintaining your reputation within the firm. Great potential means lile if it is not propped up on a solid foundation. Executing the core components of your current position well signals to others that you are ready to tackle more complicated problems and gives them the confidence to afford you latitude in the strategies you employ while solving them. Look for People with Complementary Skill Sets Everyone has heard the saying that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Set yourself up as part of a cross-functional team that leverages complementary skill sets to deliver outcomes that could not be achieved individually. This does not need to be a formalized team; it could start with a few people with common interests or goals meeting informally to brainstorm ideas. At Bryan Cave, a major initiative using analytics to bolster strategic decision-making started out as a few people geing together a couple times a month over lunch to kick around ideas about how statistics could apply to law. Their positions within the firm differed: one was a project manager, another a database administrator and the third a soware engineer. What drew them together was a shared interest in mathematics. From these informal sessions, the soware engineer came away with ideas on how to tweak firm tools to facilitate the capture of higher quality data, the database administrator was ready to query the data captured, and the project manager saw how their collective analyses would help design more effective processes. Though the initial work was largely a labor of love performed aer business hours, it did not take long before some of their findings had legs. A presentation to their managers resulted in time being designated during business hours for the "stats team" to work together on initiatives, and their success on those projects paved the way for bigger and beer opportunities down the road. Today, the value of their data initiative is unquestioned, and the team's analysis is routinely used by the highest levels of firm management. Not too shabby for a lunchtime team. A Winning Recipe for Up-and-Coming Leaders FEATURES Measure and Articulate Value If you have done well in your previous assignments, be able to demonstrate that success empirically when you seek additional responsibility and opportunity. Rather than waiting until your project ends to find your story, think proactively at the onset and measure from start to finish. Ask yourself what success looks like and how you will measure your performance against success criteria. Say you are in charge of training lawyers on firm soware and have been tasked with developing and implementing new training modules over the next 12 months. Start identifying and measuring markers of a good training program: number of aorneys in aendance, percentage of fee earners using products the firm has purchased, etc. Think of ways to improve on the current baseline as you cra the new curriculum. While completing a large initiative is an accomplishment, remember the firm's interest was not in overhauling the training modules. The firm wants to see positive outcomes associated with the overhaul, such as aendance at live training sessions shooting up 50 percent with the number of aorneys routinely utilizing firm technologies climbing another 30. Such outcomes serve as excellent justification for a promotion, whereas simply stating that new training materials were created at the request of your boss justifies a rating of "meets expectations" at your annual review. You are far more likely to be given serious consideration for promotion when you can directly tie your performance to outcomes that benefit the firm. Think Outside the Org Chart Say your boss is at least 15 years from retirement. Does that mean you are stuck in your current role for another decade or more? Of course not. Look to leverage the strengths of others as part of a problem- solving team, and measure and articulate the value you provide to the firm to find opportunities that might not exist on the current organizational chart. Those three members of the lunchtime "stats group" at Bryan Cave were all subsequently promoted, in part due to their work on analytics. None of the positions to which they were promoted existed when the stats group formed. JENNIFER SCHUMACHER Jennifer Schumacher joined Bryan Cave's client technology department in 2008 in a support role where she was responsible for various web- based technologies. She quickly progressed into management roles, most recently overseeing the firm's client and lawyer collaboration service team and engaging with the enterprise and engineer teams. Jennifer is certified in Six Sigma and spends most of her time on client engagement, solution discovery and team management. Contact her at jennifer.schumacher@bryancave.com. CHRISTIAN ZUST Christian Zust is director of Bryan Cave's client technology group and is the only person to have served in each the firm's innovation departments. For the past five years, his focus has been on identifying ways to improve efficiency while maintaining and improving quality by leveraging technology and improving work processes. Christian is a certified Project Management Professional and regularly writes and speaks on topics related to legal pricing, project management and technology. Most recently, he was the recipient of ILTA's Distinguished Peer Award for Young Professional of the Year. Contact Christian at christian.zust@bryancave.com.

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