How Strategic Plans Can Help Law Firms in an Economic Downturn
I‘m here at the ABA Law Practice Management Section Fall Meeting in Tucson, Arizona and had the privilege of dining with Ed Poll of Law Biz Management and Aviva Cuyler of JD Supra last evening. Ed related some observations about the presidential campaign and strategic planning, which got us involved in a discussion about how strategic plans help not only political candidates, but also law firms. Since Ed brought it up, we suggested that he might do a blog post on it, and he did so, early this morning. You can read Ed’s complete post about law firm strategic planning here.
Since Ed already did the hard work in his post, I won’t repeat it all here. But I will say that the process of strategic planning helps firms not only to think about where they want to take their firms in the future and how they want to get there based on what they know now and what resources they have available to them (as well as identifying resources that may be missing), but it also creates a mechanism to explore the potential problems that might occur in the future and to plan how the firm might weather those problems if they arise.
On a related note, on the Today show yesterday morning, Nik Wallenda of the famous Flying Wallendas talked about his world record tightrope stunt on Wednesday (he traveled across a 135 foot high wire above Newark, New Jersey – walking in one direction and returning on a bicycle — all without a net). There were a couple of scary moments during the stunt, including one moment when the bicycle started going backwards.
In response to a question about what he would have done if he couldn’t get the bicycle moving in a forward direction again, Wallenda responded that part of his training is to anticipate any potential problem that might arise, and to practice a response to that situation. Essentially, he has a strategic plan. Instead of panicking when the problem arises, he can move directly into response mode.
If your firm hasn’t started the strategic planning process, now is as good a time as any to begin. Your strategic plan can begin by focusing on where your firm is now, what challenges it faces and what resources are available to meet those challenges and anticipate what might happen in the future and begin scripting a response so that you can act instead of panicking.