Hello, unwelcome to the Data Log Business Strategy on Driving Change program. My name is making the kind this program quite a comprehensive. Ah, set of materials for you on It's created, of course, not only with these recordings, but also with a workbook, and I encourage you to get hold of that work broken. Referring to that. It's some 87 pages and expected Prince Tool out, of course, but to have that accessible while you go through this program because I'd like to help you take those ideas that I'm sharing with you on, put it into practice. So using that workbook to add your own notes and ideas, they will be much more information in there to give you background that I won't be covering on the program but will nonetheless reinforce the various components off this program on strategy, development and clearly how we drive change through your organization at, say, with a copy of the slides and also with the workbook. So let's get into the day on understand exactly what's going on. Well, the leading objectives, many and varied we're going to explore first of all, what we mean by aims, objectives, strategy, tactics, what those words mean? So we get a clear idea. But what strategy developed is all about, and then to have a look at many MBA of your strategy toolbox. Lots of different tools and techniques that we can use to analyze the environment and work out what our business is all about and how we can drive it forward. But success in the area will only happen if you bring your people on board. So what is it that is going to help resolve that particular question about how two people take on board your ideas? Is there gonna be resistance to those change initiatives that you put forward? What all the skills of the change master and that's what really what we want to explore, how the attitude and energy of yourself and your people can really affect the impact that they will have on taking on issues forward. I think it's very important to to recognize that we need to plan properly, but plans are only as good as the people who read them and people that implement them budget. Now those allocated to various departs off the business. How do we create sustain that strategic capability on match Those core competences to strategy because the only sustainable competitive differential is the ability off your firm to learn faster than the competition. And learning is what Data Law is all about. So let's have a look on. Get some understanding off the various component. Let's look at these things about aims, objectives, strategies and tactics, our view on the world and the environment of what we do as a business to fit in with that. Well, first of all, some definitions. And again, these air covered in much more detail in the workbook page. Six. You'll find those, but we'll take you through this very quickly. So what's your business all about what it's aiming to do abroad. Primary outcome. You may be involved in legal age, maybe in gold from the bench may be involved in housing or all sorts, various bits and pieces. And I just use an example here off a firm up in Chester that said there to Chester. We want to be the first choice conveyancing sister practice in Chester's Abroad. Um, overview. I'm trying to understand what first choice really means. Well, first choice could mean things from house movers of course if they're doing tenant landlord work again. First choice in property in that sort of area, uh, and have that defined within a particular geographic area. So that's the aim. Well, what's the goal? Well, it should be a clear, brief statement in the outcomes to be achieved. What's gonna look like? Well, they want to have every state agent in five miles willing to make a referral Doesn't mean that they will, but they would be willing to. So there's a particular goal subordinate to that aim. Well, okay, how will they enable that strategy to occur? What is the overall approach to achieve? That intention while they're going to do, is to make personal visits to every state agent on engaged all the staff in the agency and property on regulatory updates. They feel that's their strategy is to be seen as the go to solicitor's practice in Chester for that particular area of law. If that's the strategy, what all the objective? What are those measurable steps along the route that's going to achieve that strategy? And they are going to run free monthly breakfast seminars at their gesture offices. Amy aimed estate agent staff so if we look at leadership, leadership is all about finding the path A management is about making sure that we fall over parts. This is leadership, managing dishes overlapping. That's what we want to try and define for the business. That's how we're going to take it forward on. That's where we want to move things running ahead. So with that in mind, what we need to do is to look. It's having some objectives that are clearly defined. And this acronym Smart is being used. And as it says on the card, it's all about being specific. So we know exactly what we're talking about on. We know whether we've done it. It's measurable, then it needs to be not over ambitious but actually achievable. Is it relevant to the business? Is it matched it tuned to us when we're gonna have it done by? So let's have a look. A statement we've got on screen deliver free mentally breakfast seminars on probably regulator updates on a 12 month rolling programme with defined agency staff attending at least one event 1/4. So let's have a look at that. It is a one once a month specific could be more specific, and we know what we know, whether we run them, is it? Is it achievable? Certainly sounds reasonable, I think when a week would be too much. But the months it seems as if it could be achievable. It's relevant to the objectives it's relevant to the to the aims that we're trying to achieve for the business going forward on. We know because there's a timeline to that getting defined agency staff. We know the star far having visited all the agencies, could could be getting to attend one a quarter. But I think what A quarter's achievable. I don't think one a month is because not all staff goto things, but at least one a quarter may be insufficiently ambitious, but I think it's a good starting point to go with. So as you can see, what we end up with is much, much better and clearer objectives. So with that in mind, let's go and turn to have a look at the process off strategic management development. The process off strategic management is very straightforward. It's a four step process on. I used the acronym a pie because it's just a ZZ as a pie Essentially, what we do is to analyze where we are now, and that analysis turns into a plan with a plan we need to implement a plan on workout. How it went on each of these stages have got their own important steps. Let's look at them each in turn the situation analysis to say, Well, where are we now? As a firm, where is the market that we're trying to operate in? So understanding the internal external parts off the business is so fundamental because you can't just analyze your own business without understanding the market. You can't use market analysis without understanding yourself, so these two have to come together. The next stage, then, is to say, Well, what is it we want to achieve? What are those aims? Andi, Goals that we want to achieve and how should we go about doing so? That strategic intent should lead to identify the plan. So, as I mentioned earlier, leadership is about finding the path on management is about following the path. So how do we make sure that the path we're defining is followed by the organization going forward? Clearly that through our people on what do we do to measure our success. Why are we underachieving? Why we overachieving what we learn about our own strategy, development process? Each of these steps, in turn, the strategic intent, would lead to birthday, corporate or indeed, a business goal, depending on the size of the organization and maybe one of the same if you're more modest entity. Of course, with the management issues, we're going to be looking very much at the functions off the business, how I t works in harmony with the people and how the finances work, and so on and so forth on all of those lead together to look at the gold standard. There a competitive strategy because a strategy on its own that he's not competitive is not worth the paper it's written on. So there we have it, breaking it down into its component parts. But essentially, it's easy as pie analysis plan, implement evaluation. So with that in mind, let's start to understand what's in our strategy toolbox to take our business forward, I think nine times out of 10 when I meet young professionals, my training courses and ask them what's the purpose of your law firm? They'll say profit make money well, in fact, Peter Drucker on Americans Very popular author many, many years ago, and he says the purpose business to create keep customer profit is the by product off that activity on. I think that's worth remembering. That's not our purpose is not to make a profit. Our purpose is to create and keep customer because the byproduct of all the management activities is going to be profit, not the purpose. It's a subtle change, but it does begin to identify a little bit more about strategy because creating a customer keeping a customer is what the strategies about. And if we could do that, then we are going to be more successful. So let's take. They look at the various components off strategy, development, how we do that on As I mentioned before, I've got a very comprehensive workbook created for you to explore the content of how we go about doing this. So if we have a look at the elements of our business, were on page 10 of the of the notes there on one of the key things it says is what gets measured gets done. So many of these strategy development tools are about measuring the marketplace, measuring your business and getting some parallel understanding of how things work within that, because you were gonna understand those things and get a handle on what's going on by that. Know what the opportunity is for our business gets on measures of that potential, some measures of our ability to compete with other firms for that sector of the market. We're gonna be much more successful crew to craft that business case to drive your business forward. So let's have a look. There's in no particular order. They are there to illustrate the breadth and the complexity off strategy development, but it allows you to use the right tool for the right purpose. Please don't start to tighten up nuts with a screwdriver on. Don't use a spanner to, um, put up some shelves by screening the war with the span. You've got to use the right tool for the right job on. I'm trying to illustrate that as we go through this strategy development tool box. So what's first on our list? Well, one that you're be familiar with. Have you been on any of my programs? Looking at the fundamentals off the big, wide world have you stare out the window? It'll be many and complex areas. How do we break it down? How do we analyze it into bite size chunks? And it's called the Pest Analysis. It's an acronym for the political, economic, social, technological changes happening out there in our world. Okay, the world is constantly changing the CPS of doing things legislation and changing the money supply is changing. The salaries and the uh, fortunes of the country are always changing. Social demographic changes occur, but much your clients as well as the people that you try and recruit and so forth. So past is a common acronym, but you'll see that some want to make greater complexity. They may define legal. Separating out from the political environmental is clearly going to be important to all of us on this blue planet of ours. But one could look at the major components and say, Well, that's the focus. The leverage was in the political enviroment called Well, we have an office on. That's probably about it. So we just make sure we're not throwing plastic cups away all day long. On then, of course, ethics Well again, Ethics very important from the legendary point of view, the professional skills courses your first introduction to the ethical environment that sits there with allegedly framework. So whether it's pestle or steeple or just a pest, whatever you use, it's a simple way of dividing up the world into bite size chunks. Because if we have a strategy for our business on, we have some sort of objectives and here's our business going forward, there are going to be some rocks in the channel. The legendary changes will be there. We have to respond to those the economics, the money supply. If you're in conveyancing, for example, mortgage rates, all those sorts of external factors will be there. If you're running an international pieces exchange rates are gonna be very, very crucial. Then, of course, we have the changes society to demographics off people coming into the profession. We're seeing these changes, and I think a good thing to see their branches schemes come around and so forth as well as technology changes. The way in which we communicate with our market on we communicate to our market as well as here from then are that effect may change the direction off the firm on the way in which it goes. So what we've got with that in mind us a couple of very straightforward ways of handling this. You'll see this within the notes on That's just on my laptop below the screen. Here we have sitting there on page 12 a very simple grid. How do you do in this will get your team together. You might cost you some coffee and a packet of biscuits or something like that. But you can get them to debate. What are those changes being brought upon us in the various sectors? That's the left hand side in your particular area for your type of work. Then the interesting thing is, on the right hand side, there's The idea is that people will come up with what the firm could do to either take advantage of those changes or mitigate against the changes if they are not going to be quite so helpful to us. In my experience of running these programs, it takes a group, got eight people that you got four teams to. You could look at each of them in turn, whichever the best way of doing it is and you will get a very comprehensive view off the marketplace, and also people will be able to help on add to that understanding for you. That's the first step in getting people engaged in strategy developed. I've met junior lawyers. They've all got an opinion that organ idea about what's going on out there. Sure, if you want to make it more complex by putting in legal or environmental issues, depending on your area of law and by all means, just adapt Page 12 to suit on. This is the sort of thing What are the key pests? Pestle factors that influence the business over the next 36 months. That's just three years ahead on what would you recommend to take advantage will mitigate against the changes, and that's what you end up with. That document itself is a very good analysis strategy, development to so there we go, very straightforward. On one, I'm sure that you'll find easy to use and generate lots and lots of ideas amongst your team. Okay, well, there's the 1st 1 Let's move it in to look at the next one. I think one of the most common tools that people talk about is the classic SWAT analysis again an acronym. Strengths, Weaknesses, opportunities, Threats on DA. It is a very well used one, but not always used particularly well. Let's look at it in a bit of detail. First of all, the strengths and weaknesses are internal because they are under our control. We can build our hearts, our strengths. We can really resolve to deal with our weaknesses. We can reduce them the impact off they are under our control. But the opportunities and threats are not under our control because they're outside the business. So, of course, your past analysis will be feeding in tow. Identify what's an opportunity for the business to exploit, to expand on those. What are the threats to the business? One of those things that we need to avoid or thwart in order to manage our business going forward. So a very important and useful tool to look at. And I think when we turn to look at our strengths, what is quite interesting is what comes out from that analysis, and this is what I found. If one thinks what are we really good at? What we're going to be? Well, most of it has to do with our expertise, our knowledge, our relationship with clients or our skill sets. Well, of course, they're all the people. We've got a range of people. We've got some senior people, junior people, because people speak different languages, we got people that relate to difficult people. We have a good reputation as a business going forward, and that's a lot of people. Strengths. Well, okay, well, what houses the strength? Well, you may be in the right place. You may be in the high Street, close to the courts. Low cost area, a place that people want to work in where you can attract good staff. It may be your location. It may be that that location enables you to have good into connection with other parts of the country or indeed online, something like that. It may be that one of the other strings is Well, we actually not only do you have people we know stuff, we have a database. We know people. We know what the sector industry we're about. We know what actions against the police. We know about clinical negligence. We know about conveyancing and we know what our individual clients have. We have long reputations going back over years with some corporate clients or various groups of people. It could be those things. Well, that could be strengthened. Another one, of course, could be that you've got some money in the pot to invest in the above, and I think that probably summarizes most of the strengths on. Therefore, if those are the strengths, what are the weaknesses? Well, any shortfall in any of the above, of course. So immediately we can see that with the past analysis. SWAT analysis Coming together We've got a lot off strategy, development ideas going forward. Well, now you haven't. What you've got is pretty good analysis off. What's going on? Going forward. You see, both the pest and the SWAT are analytical tools, but they dont develop the strategy. So what we need to do is to look at how we develop strategy. It's a very straightforward tool, but one that's underplayed in my experience on this is how we go about making it happen. What I do is on it's called the toes matrix. It just basically turns a swat on its head. What you see on screen will be the key areas off the analysis, the strengths, weaknesses, internal, the opportunities, threats. Now imagine that I had a group of people together on each of these four areas. Waas a post it Sorry a flip chart post its to its more flip chart. Get a flip chart paper, a bit of white Tak Gu. Take whatever pin it on the wall on then You've got quite a big view there off the overall business strengths. What are those strengths? How do they work? What are they going to be for our particular part of the organization? If you want to run this forward, then, of course, the notes on page 13 running forward give you a lot more detail. Identify the most important strengths major, secondary, third and so forth on the fundamental weaknesses that we might have. We can then look to those opportunities on those threats. Now we've got a matrix. We got those two dimensions So clearly what's happening in the middle of the screen is the interaction between the internal on the external coming together. So what can that looked like? Well, this is where the strategy development comes from. The analysis your analysis is on those four pieces of flip chart paper pinned to the wall on what we could do is to then but for other pieces underneath there to create that four box matrix. And you look at that and say, Well, OK, let's look at these four areas for different sorts of strategies that would come about that before I reveal them. Which area would you like to look at first? I think most people say, Well, we're pretty good at this stuff and there's the opportunities we should do our strengths, opportunities? Let's look at that. And that's a very common thing. So you might say, Okay, this is what we're going to do. Let's call it a proactive strategy. We have the strength. Let's proactively get hold of mawr of that market. Let's get round the estate agents in the catchment area. We could be proactive, going meet them, set up a training program for their staff on the regulator areas, affecting estate agencies and so forth. That would be a proactive strategy. Did you do that? You think you've done extremely well on job? Done. Well, it is up to a point, but don't forget your analysis internally on your analysis of external have identified other areas. Other areas of weakness is that if you were to do something with those, you maybe have to take advantage of more opportunities. It maybe there's some significant threats out there, so basically, you just focus on the proactive strategies you've lost. Most of your analysis on the interaction between external external creates other strategies to improve your business. Senate's explore what they look like. Let's take our strength. Well, we've got some threats out there. What is it that we need to do to prohibit those threats from undermining our strengths? Go back to us. What analysis? Water the strength when our people on their knowledge and industry sector well, the threat. Maybe that another firm is opening up a branch office close to us that may attract be more attractive than we are. So we may lose talent and what's caliber of people amongst your team. Get up and go and find another job. The ones that that struggling find very difficult to cope with ones that good enough to find another job. They In my experience, it's good people that are hungry for ambition, hungry for improvement in their own particular situation on. Therefore, it may be that you lose the best talent on D, then find yourself compromised by that. So what would be a prohibited strategy? It's not a marketing strategy, it's and management initiative, and this is what this program is all about. What can we do to make sure that we hold hold onto our good people, weaken design better CPD structures? We can have a career path. Documents showing people how they can progress in their career doesn't just have to be through to supervise and management or more senior positions. It may be matter complexity, broadening their experience and so on and so forth. So prohibited strategies will be very important for your business overall and similarly moving on round the toes matrix we ever we can identify other particular areas. Now, if there are opportunities out there, what are those fundamental things that were not quite so good at what we do that's progressive? To take advantage of some of those opportunities? Maybe we need to recruit different caliber of people, different sorts of people to do different sorts of work. Maybe that's a progressive to grow the business by recruiting people or maybe news consultants before, initially, just to create the, uh, the initiative on get the reputation and then decide whether there's enough work out there that we could win to back pay for the new staff that we're having. Maybe that we need to get more people trained up with new standards, whatever that might be. Within our particular area, we may recognize there's an opportunity for more legal aid work if we had more people trained up to higher rights or whatever, whatever. So the progressive strategy is to contact data law Andi Workout, a portfolio of training to improve people. It may be that we look at getting more people on the level free program or Level five program. Let's be progressive. Training people up in recognized qualifications, weaknesses, threats. World People like to talk about those, but actually they are quite protective strategies. These threats will under mine up is a particular competitive. If the threat is competition on our weaknesses being at the deal with the competition, then we need to do something to protect us in the short term. So here we have four different strategy strategy types. They will have to begin with pro and ended. I ve very clever, but effectively what? It shows all the different approaches. There are business needs to taking it. Maybe in the short term, we need to do the protective stuff over the next 3 to 3 to six months before we get diverted into some of the progressive things. Whatever it may be that these four don't end up a different strategy. There's a blend off strategies to take advantage of. A particular opportunity is part proactive, part progressive. But what it does is to create a big picture that your people can buy into. Your people can see what's going on. Your people will agree the priorities in the short, medium and long term short, maybe the next quarter medium, maybe the rest of the year long term, maybe next one after the next 12 24 months. But as you can see, these are tools that help to capture the analysis. They are tools that help you to identify what's needed. Help you to move things forward, help you to get people on board on help to make decisions about how we moved the business forward. So hope you found that useful and as I say within the notes, there is a lot more to explore within this, and I hope you'll find that gives that extra remit to give you some opportunity to develop strategies that work. Okay. Cup of straightforward tools there. Let's explore the next one. The next tour we can look at is also a matrix, and it's after chap called and soffits called the Ants Off Matrix and, as you can see, looks your existing products or services that you have currently being offered to the market. Or you could have new products services that you develop, who also have a look on the other axis, the existing markets or geography that you serve on what new sectors could you look for on this matrix, therefore, is a useful tool to say, Well, OK, we're gonna move things forward. We need to manage risk whenever spent the money. We need to manage that risk off things, not working very well. So as soon as I mentioned the word risk on strategy on DSO fourth immediately, you can look at these four boxes and said, OK, which is the least risky strategy moving forward? Many would say, Well, quite obviously, If we take our existing products and existing services on find Mawr people to buy what we currently do, then that would be a market penetration strategy. So we currently are doing conveyancing in jester on. That's what we're good. But we're not getting enough estate agents to recommend us, and we could then broaden the the number of transactions that we can handle because we get more and more people coming to us to do their house by house selling on that's market penetration. Clearly, that would be a good way forward on having got that and said, Well, OK, we've got a low market, we can moment that's are where we've got to We need to develop business in other directions. You could look at the other three areas that we're OK, which is the next level of risk on some would say, Well, actually, if we're already providing services to clients, get a good reputation with buying and selling properties, then we may add some more services to that, because every property transaction there's a householder on, we can start looking at their well, well, we don't do wills at the moment. We could bring somebody in part time two on a fee earning basis for individual wills and so forth. So householders, looking at their wills. Maybe that's it unease e service to provide on. We just pay as we go in terms of working on that. So it's not expanding yourself much wider, much further. It's about doing things in that way. It may be, you say. Well, actually, if we do conveyancing on where they're in Chester, why don't we just expand the market? Why don't we move through other parts off the county? Maybe one of the partners has, ah long commute and then said, Well, why don't we open up an office somewhere going north on the were or something like that? Maybe we could do that as a strategy going forward and perfectly reasonable. That market extension is in this example, moving on to another geography. It may be that said, Well, okay, what will our existing products and services that we could develop new particular customers? We have conveyancing. A new customer in conveyancing could be a property developer. So instead of doing private client conveyancing, we could offer our services to developers because somebody putting up half a dozen houses on a particular error greenbelt or brown belt or whatever on the outskirts of the town. Let's go after convincing through new types of customers. On that we develop a customers who, looking at a package of conveyancing, for example, now clearly moving to the fourth area is new products, new services, new customers and that is diversifying away from your core competencies. Now that may be something to look a little bit further is to say, Well, OK, we were there in property. We've looked at private client property. We've developed a property. Maybe we could look there a tow offering, some new services, new sectors. We're talking about high expenditure. It may be that we offer some financial advice. Maybe it's mortgage advice or something like that. Clearly that needs new people, new regulation, new ways of doing things. So as we go from the top left here down to the bottom, right, we get Maura Maura way from where we are. But nonetheless, as you can see, there are some strategy developments that come from this building on that analysis, and it's a useful tool again to illustrate the process on I'm talking for pieces of paper for flip chart pinned on the wall. People start talk about different strategies. Now those of you looking at the screen will wonder why that dollop of raspberry jam is up in the top left hand corner. Well, it's very important to recognize that the raspberry general must apply to all strategies that you undertake. What is the Ransford general? Well, raspberry jam doesn't taste as good if it is spread very thinly. So it's the same with your cash, your people, your time and all the other resources to drive the business forward. It won't be as effective if you spread yourself too thinly. If you want the impact, let's decide we're going to do market penetration now. We get that done in the next 2012 24 months, and then we look to market extension that will take a little bit longer to take our existing convincing to new sectors that may take us in a sort of 18 24 months. Something like that. It's a second phase market extension on then service development, where we're not gonna do that for 24 to 36 months to three years down the line. But then gives a timeline off approaches. Andi, therefore not trying to be all things to all people. Very tempting when you're looking at things they were, we could do all those things, but you can't do it with finite amount of money, Time, people resources and know how. So use the ants off matrix in that way to help guide the particular approaches that you take because that will help you make sense off the business development going forward from there, of course, come to this later, you get better plans written for your firm. So a couple of, um, analytical tools there and also strategy development tools. I've mentioned money. Well, how do we handle things like that? Well, let's turn to look at a nice, straightforward tool that helps you analyze what's going on in the marketplace to help you make decisions about where you put your effort of where the money is going to come from. In order to fuel that effort going forward, what I'm gonna be doing here is to take you through quite an important and useful way of approaching your business and its development. It's called the importance performance matrix on. I'm gonna run you through in the presentation here. A case study on within the notes. Page 21. You've got the edited highlights, if you like, and copies of a couple of the slides. I'm gonna base it on the, uh, case study where there was one firm did one thing So many of you in your businesses may in fact, be specialist in particular areas. You may be criminal defense or this or that or the other, so it's a valuable tool where you don't have a wide portfolio to look at, but it starts with Asil. Business should with customer in mind. Okay, well, let's get into this. The first thing that I noticed in many business was that many law firms develop their approaches to the market. But forget that their people, their HR, human resources skills and so forth are fundamental. Mention this right at the beginning. It's not the strategy developed. It's the people that happened Implemented will determine the success. And secondly, you may need to get the right sort of I t strategy to develop those capabilities. The case management systems and so forth client engagement tone and so forth. Communication systems need to be there. So there's the first problem. It's alignment between strategy and people on the 2nd 1 is that some of initiatives can be developed by a small group of individuals, and I have to put my hand up and say I could be justly accused of being one of them. You see, I developed a on approach to dealing with consultants. That we use for training courses and clients is that many years ago we used to go to the vast to match these great initiatives, to say thank you to the people that I've got get to know clients. But better on would open up a restaurant down in Richmond on by people down there from early lunch to get on the bus with all the other supporters and go to the palace to match early December in Twickenham in London and then wander back to Richmond and have a hot hot chocolate. What heavy on a great day out by staff consultants as well as clients. But that's because I, um ah, former rugby player on a rugby coach on a rugby referee and that was my bit on. That was me using that marketing initiative being driven by just a small group of individuals. What it should be driven by, of course, is whom the customer on what does the customer want? So with these two problems, let's explore strategy and its development. Well, the first thing we recognize is a top level strategy, and we've talked about this on this program to date is that we say it's a balance between the external pest analysis on the internal strengths, weaknesses, opportunity threats, and it develops a strategy. We use the toe make tricks. We're going to use the Boston Consulting Group. We're going to use a variety of different tools to decide what our strategy is going to be. What does that mean? Well, it does define what we're about giving people access to justice, dealing with high net worth, individuals focusing on criminal defense, focusing on person injury or whatever it might be. This is what we value. This is our approach to the market. This is what we expect to achieve from those activities. The product of our activities is the prophet. We've already explored the ants off matrix. Looking at the strategic options. I just repeated here just as a quick reminder. We've decided. Well, OK, in the short term, we're going to get market penetration. Then we're going to go to market extension or service development or whatever it might be moving the whole thing forward. So what does that look like? Well, in terms of marketing strategy, our second step two decide the from the top level strategy is going to be while Okay, we're going to achieve these things with the current services current market, short term year, one year to its new services and then year three medium term new markets or what have you advances in Know how approaches to, um to the market and so on and so forth. So we get a timeline. A marketing strategy is coming over time. Raspberry jam rule always applies. What does that mean? Well, that means that we get into the market. We're in the market for convincing. We're gonna be in the market for property development. We're going to be in the market for financial, says we're gonna be doing something, getting to the market for it. And there's a subtle difference between qualifying for the work. I'm actually winning the work. Now Let's suppose I want to move my wife and I want to move, downsize empty nesters we want a smaller house on. Therefore, if you do convincing, you qualify for that. It's not a person injury matter. So if you do person injury and you don't do conveyancing, quite obviously you don't qualify for conveyancing. But just because you do convincing, does it mean that you're going to actually win the business? Now? Um, there's various reasons why you may or may not win the business from May. That's not important. What is important to recognize that there's two things one is We got to get in the market then. Secondly, we've gotta win it. That marketing plan demonstrates how we're actually going to win the work. Moving the thing forward. Okay, well, with that in mind, what does that do? Well, that leads into the third level, the operation strategy. What we mean by that is the order qualifies order. We've gotta have the right people in the right place. We got on the right I t infrastructure. There's our current capabilities on what we need to do. In order to capitalize on that market, we need to invest in people ready to invest in their skills that training the market accessibility we need do the i t. We need to get the case management systems, the financial systems there on. We need to decide what we need to do to improve things so that we can capture our share off the market, rather those terrible schmucks down the road who do similar things. A competitive strategy. So step one top level strategy than the second level. That's of marketing strategy. Short, medium, long term initiatives on then operationally, we need to get work out what we need to do to get better. So there's three step approach is there. So how do we start to analyze this? Well from the customer's point of view and is the key thing from a client point of view, We need to understand different things. So what we can do and this is the case study I'm looking at here is to look at the order winners and the order qualifiers on buildup. This importance performance matrix what's important to customers. How well do you perform compared to their alternatives that they could go to get their problems solved, legal problems solved for essentially what we're looking at? is to say, Well, okay, what is it that we do? That means we win the business? And here's a metric is it is something that we do crucially important to win the business, or is it just useful? What level of that do we have to win the business? What are we going to do? That needs to be up to a good standard or medium range of professional standards and so forth? What is it that we do that from a customer's point of view, is not particularly important. So identifying this requires us to do bit of market research. Go and ask a few customers. What's do we need to do to make sure we're in the market? What do we need to do to make sure we win the market? This is the dialogue that we have. For example, when I used to convincing analogy, you go to the estate agent, introduce yourself and said, Okay, what do we need to do to make sure that we're meeting the requirements that you would want for the conveyancing solicitor? And while we tickle those boxes and then we say, Well, okay, what are we gonna have to do to make sure that we do get recommendations from you. What is it that we want to do? And we identified earlier on the training up Some of their staff are breakfast meetings is a very good way of ingratiating ourselves with that particular sector. So maybe that would be on order winner, for example. So here's your first things. They were okay, customers. What's really important to you? What's gonna get us into the market? What's going to be there to actually win the market again? Conveyancing if you're looking at private client work is quite different from the local developers developing 1/2 dozen houses on a particular state. What do that? What does that business want? It would be different from the private client sort of thing. So we get some understanding about what is important, too. The particular client. Now let me turn to the case study that I was looking at on this WAAS, a group who were patent attorneys, bit different patent attorneys and they did a variety of things and we talked to the firm there and they said we need to know a little bit more about our market. We are based in West London. We are winning and lots and lots of work. 80% of our work comes from the to top London based universities. Imperial College, London on Bond Uh, the University of London. We need to look out what we are getting from their Onda. Understand what we can do to win more business because we're losing somebody to some other people up in Cambridge. So we need to know what it is we want to do. So this is the case study on the the edited highlights, as I say, are within the notes rating importance to customers. They looked at eight core areas. They were technically very competent at their patent work, very talented people with dual qualification or any in patents, but also in particular areas of biotechnology or, um, uh, very med ser, or engineering or color chemistry and all those sort of things. A technical solution really worked very, very good client care, fairly straightforward stuff, their documentation. They always wanted to print things on very good quality material. So all of the documentation really impressive particular patents and so forth file that sort of things that clients had case management delivered to interview today sponsored youth orchestras service flexibility on day were charged, charged clients. £650. Now eye watering amounts of your legal aid, of course, but that's what they did on Remember we had this metric. So we asked the people from UCL University, College, London and Imperial and said, Okay, uh, from the University of London. What is it that this firm does? That's really what is it that firms need to do that's really important to you on 23 what they need to have up to a good professional standard. 456 What is less important to you? And I did some of these interviews. There were 13 individual spin out companies that produced 80% of the work for this patent attorney firm on This is the results off the conversations that we had the average Overall, they were saying technical solutions very important to us. We need to make sure our patents of robust territories, which were operating when your client cares, and he's been good service flexibility, good value for money. Sponsorship isn't so important to US documentation. Well, you know, it's it's accurate, it's accurate, so that's not crucial to us, and that's where it sat. Okay, well, there's the importance to it. But the second half of the conversation was to say, Okay, how do this foam in West London compare to those people up in Cambridge Open conversation? And we were there, representing the West London firm said. Are they What did they do that's better than those people in Cambridge? What did they do? The same as those people in Cambridge. What did they do that's worse than those people in Cambridge on? They were very straightforward and honest to us, and they could come up with metric across that area again. The scale 1 to 9123 is the being much, much better than the competitors. 789 worsening competitors and 456 about the same on again using the same criteria were looking the eight core areas. How does this firm in West London compare with those people up in Cambridge on they said, Well, much better technically documentations marvelous, that sponsorship marvelous. It's not quite so good on the client care, not quite so good on the value statements that we get from them. So here we've got two dimensions. So what it does is to produce a matrix is balance off the importance to customers across the bottom. Okay, Uh, remember that the top end of the scale of 1 to 3 is order winning material 789 less imports of what is important to customers on then the other dimension is how does this firm compare with the competition on that? What we have here is what would be described as a lower boundary off acceptability. If you below the line, you need to improve on your If you're in the southeast corner here. If you're worse than that, competitors at things that really matter, then this will be requiring urgent action. Equally. The great value of this is to say, What is it that we're doing that's good and appropriate? Well done, ppd. But why are we better than the competition at things that don't matter? We wasting your effort and this is really quite interesting. Yes. You've got this copy slide within the notes, particularly something seminal bottom page 21 on then the data from the two pieces of analysis the importance performance metric on those scales across those eight areas is produced in this slide here and you've got a copy of that. Yes, it's within the stack of slides, but it's here, particularly for the case study. Let's plot it all out on then see what decisions we can take operationally going forward to improve our business opportunity. Well, hey, we can see technical solution. They are better than the competition, and that's clearly important. So the first thing the partners in the patent attorneys in West London date is to shake my hand paperbacks and well done. Mac, We knew we were technically brilliant, is just confirmed this. Thank you so much. Send us your keynote, but hang on a second. Let's analyze this a little bit more. Well, you're technically good, but what's the problem? Will you are your client Care is worse than the people up in West in Cambridge, and you are not demonstrating Good Valley for money. There's your problem. Equally, your sponsorship is better than the people up in Cambridge, but it's not important to the customers. You're wasting your time now. Hang on a second. It's just to stop a look at this. Clearly, your client care needs to improve. What was the problem. Well, what about being technically brilliant meant that these people in West London rather thought that everybody would drag themselves over from East London, where the universities were into the spin out companies and so forth would have to cross London to come and see the patent attorneys. Where it's people up game which would hop on the train, come down liberal street, drive down the A 10 whatever it might be with the M 11 on, come and visit them those South men's. The veterinary school, for example, would be a A classic case in point biotech company there. And that's the problem. Is that the kind care really wasn't very good at West London people, rather, on evidence it, if you want to see his form an orderly queue on, uh, their approach was very good. Equally, £650 an hour is a lot of money just to register a trademark. I've done trademark registrations on behalf of my sons who have developed their own small businesses in various ways, have helped him with that on. It's a fairly straightforward online process. It wouldn't charge somebody £650 an hour for something as simple as that, particularly as you can get the equipment services for £225 now from those rather nice people in Cambridge. So that's the southeast corner you may have spotted when I mentioned before sponsorship this West London firm. We're sponsoring a youth orchestra. Hang on a second. We're talking about spin out companies of the top tier of the off the London University University College, London Imperial College, and he took use orchestra. Why? Well, the niece of one of the partners played the trombone in the brass band on the firm sponsored the coaching accommodation for the school band to go to the Hillbilly C Day in Paris just outside the Not a damn before It's terrible fire, of course. Teoh, enter the competition, schools, competition, whatever it waas. Totally laudable. Very useful, I'm sure for the Children, I'm sure that have enjoyed it, but quite relevant for the spin out companies. So there you go, equally as you will notice. There your documentation is better than the competition on things that really isn't quite so important. So why investing so much in in printing things out in high gloss on 160 GSM conquer Lay that shiny, thick paper. Complete waste of time doesn't need to be like that. Case management systems pretty well, okay, but could do a little bit better. Bennett. So that simple exercise there, which I've taken you through, helps to explain exactly what is going on. It's what's important to your customers on how well do you perform compared to the competition on? If you don't know the answers, then you are missing a trick you may need to get somebody to find out for. You. Ask a few questions on Use that analysis to drive business forward. So that's it. Importance Performance matrix. I hope you found that useful on just before leaving this particular section. We're talking there about client care value statements just to point out in the notes on page 23. There is a section there on client management client health check. It's a way of evaluating how well you manage the client interface, so that's something that's important to you. Then please check out that it's an example of what we did fall them to help improve how they were going to make changes to their client care initiatives. So that again Page 23 notes from there. The next tool that we want to look at is from a chap called Michael Porter. He came up with a model looking at how to analyze where the drivers were within a particular sector. The visit. Where was the rial competitive pressure, aligning itself to originally five Forces on. Then from there it became six forces, and I'll explain what all that's about. Page 25 Off the notes starts with rivalry with other firms. While you're not the only firm in the neighborhood who happens to do what you do so clearly, where is that? What are their competitive? Focuses. So the importance performance matrix was very good way of understanding the rivalry with other firms. If you're in a particular sector of the market, particular geography, for example on that, therefore is one of the core centers off the drive for that competitive pressure. But it may be that there are a defined number of suppliers who supply what you need in order to do your work. It may be case management systems. For example, I work the firm that was looking at picking up the private ah client debt from banks, credit card debt, overdraft, current account debts and so forth on it was the case management systems there used to analyse the propensity of a particular individual to recover that amount of debt have to do with the number of different parameters to that on the supplies off. That software was really what the banks were keen on. Now, the example again from the banking environment with working law firms. Another firm we worked with had software to deal with remortgage processes within the bank there, there was a find out number supplies in that particular sector, and they had a lot of dominance in that particular area. So there's two different areas. Competition could produced the dynamics within a particular sector. Most people watching this program will save locates the clients. They have the choice they could go to here, here or here. There's three different firms operating in their particular area. Then they are the ones who have the decision. So again, important performance metrics there is about what's important to them, the buyers, what we need to do to make sure that we're not just qualifying for the work that actually going to have the order winners a fairly straightforward, upstream, downstream approach to analysing the forces of competition. But it may be, we can say, Well, we need to look at our particular air. And so who else is entering the market? Who else is coming in all that? Somebody else opening up a branch offices, a sort of a large regional firm opening up a new branch in our high street, a new entrance into the sector. Maybe there are alternative business structures coming in. Maybe there are new online competitions and those sorts of things that may come in as a new entrance into the market. License conveyances, companies doing various sorts of work, maybe new entrance to come into your sector. And what do you do therefore to ring fence your particular sector to make it unattractive for new entrants to come into your sector Or if they do, come in? Then you pick up the the smaller lower value matters and you go for the higher added value work. Fifth area. What alternatives are there to what we do in what all the substitutes? Well, of course, if you were working in, um uh, work that ends up in court you can get direct access to the bar. There are people representing themselves so self, the client representing themselves as a substitute to using a law firm or going direct to a barrister robin going through a law firm. These are substitutes. What can we do again to manage this particular situation? What in issues do we have to have to lower the impact of those alternatives online? Plenty of examples there, UH, I mentioned will writing. There are online systems where you have a split screen question on one side, the documents produced on the other. I answer the questions document gets produced. I pay for it. I print it. I do my own. They are substitutes for coming into your hallowed portals. So there's Michael Porter's five forces. The sixth Force was to say, Well, OK, all their complementary products that that work in the sector said the example that I gave in the notes is that if you're a bus company, what's a complementary product to a bus company will clearly fuel for those buses because if the price of fuel goes up, it affects your profits straight away their complementary products to that, Yes, it is a supplier in one respect. But again, barristers law firms are complementary in some sectors. So again, it's a way of saying, instead of just looking out of a window and trying to make sense of it all, let's break it down into bite sized chunks and analyze each of those and make decisions about how we protect our particular market. From that you'll see in the notes this area here, it won't be read it on screen, so no apologies for that. It is within the notes to look at the 56 forces within the workbook. It's on Page 25 will guide you through Ah, lot of the various issues under the heady, so get quite a useful analytical tool. Looking at your own business, the on analytical tool that is really very, very powerful is the McKinsey seven s model on what this is saying. Well, OK, if we're looking inside, it's not just strengths, weaknesses within a lot off tools, looking at strategy development externally. But what about what's going on internally? How do we analyze our internal? It's not just strengths, weaknesses. There's much more to it on the McKinsey model is a very powerful tool to help you stop and say, Okay, what's going on within our business area? Or what do we need to change in order to make significant headway to improve our business? Let me explain a little bit about the model again. Within the notes. Page 28 you'll see what we've got a so called hard elements all around the shared values off your firm. What are those hard elements? Well, the strategy that we're going to develop on the structure of our business in the partners, the managers, the supervisors, thief, ear nose, the lay staff. We have this structure of the way people operate. We have the systems, the case management systems, the systems of engagement kind file opening, Billy debt recovery. Although those systems are there, well, there's the hard elements underneath that there are those softer elements which have to do with the shared values. So if you look at the Legal Aid Agency firm, the shared values within that firm are actually quite different and art specifying them because you know what they are. If you're a legal aid firm to a, um city centre commercial practice, the shared values, maybe common in some areas. Others may be quite different, but the shared values is something very important from a recruitment point of view, very way important from the way the business operates and its central to the business overall. On around that there are three other areas we have the staff who they are related to structure in a sort of staff, how long they've been there, their demographics and so on and so forth. Does that match the market that we're providing services to? So who are the people we've got? And also, then what are those skills? What are the skills of the people in the skills of interacting internally? The way in which people operate the skills off using client for cross selling into other departments, for example, to get that market penetration, if you will? And then the style has to do with this style off leadership, the style of management, that style of supervisors, the way in which people are expected to behave. So as you can see just running through that very quickly, and it's taken me five minutes to run through that, you'll see there's a lot of questions rising from each of those seven areas on. That's what it's intended to do is to say, OK, let us explore and try and understand what's going on in those seven areas and notes within the workbook helped to explain these a little bit more detail. There is under style, for example, page of their page 29. Look at the style of management, the you know, the the way in which the whole thing comes together with that analytical tool. What one is asking. Well, imagine these circles are actually a compass on the compass. Needle points in a particular action. It it will point north and magnetic compass spent, not interfered with other by the earth magnetic field on The question I have for you and your firm is this of all those seven areas are they allow equally aligned. You said When you develop your marketing, stretching your strategy to capture more of the market, have you got the structure to match that strategy? Are the systems I t systems appropriate to match that particular strategy is, is it gonna be along the shared values that you have to the way in which ethos the culture the way in which your firm works are the staff in the right place the right calibre. The rights had to do to have the skills to match that strategy of this style of management leadership, matching it. So this orientation, it's so important in the business. And it's the McKinsey seven s model that will guide you in that particular approach. So use that. Use the notes as part of your analytical process, to explore how we can use it on, decide whether or not we're coherent with our strategy and all the other parts, the business. And if they're not, you've got to put some of those things right before you're going to be able to succeed as well as you might. Let's move on to the next one.
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