Yesterday was the first day of the ILTA Conference, the International Legal Technology Conference. I’m not there this year; I couldn’t work it into my schedule. In a way that’s too bad, because it sounds like I’d have had a fun time arguing with one of the speakers.

According to reports, a speaker said stuff along the following lines:

1. Legal Project Management (LPM) depends on measurement and process.
2. Document the work before thinking about what to measure.
3. Management buy-in comes from having good metrics.

Wrong, wrong, wrong. Worse, most of it’s backwards, cart-before-horse backwards — thus the title of this article.

In the speaker’s partial defense, the discussion was on an e-discovery track, which is not truly LPM but a blend that’s sometimes much closer to traditional project management. Also in the speaker’s defense — which is why I’m not naming anyone — I wasn’t there, and these reports are based on what others wrote about the content. For all I know, writers got the speaker’s points backwards.

Nonetheless, I firmly believe all three of these points are not only wrong, but will lead to unintended results. Indeed, they illustrate why so much soft-science (legal, software, white-collar process improvement, etc.) project management fails.

1. Does Legal Project Management Depend on Measurement and Process?

Measurement is a good thing, when done properly. Effective, low-NVA (non-value-added activity) processes are also good things. I firmly support both of them. I spend considerable time in my book Legal Project Management discussing both. My full-day courses and Master Classes, such as the one next month in Chicago, have a section on metrics and another on streamlining processes.

But LPM can be effective without either of these. Worse, tying the implementation of LPM to what you can easily measure, or to process improvement, is a recipe for doing a lot of ineffective work — and for putting your teams out of sorts without gaining ground on efficiency.

For example, in business there’s only one metric that truly matters — repurchase intent, often expressed as client retention in the legal world. Even the so-called ultimate metric, profitability, depends on repurchase intent when you look at a business over a term longer than a year or two. Yet repurchase intent is very hard to measure well.

Most easily measured project management metrics — adherence to schedule and budget, for example — are but superficially aligned with repurchase intent. For example, let’s say you set an unrealistically low budget, for whatever reason. If you drive the project such as to make that budget, you probably scrimp on exactly those hard-to-measure items that drive repurchase intent, such as quality.

In fact, quality itself is one of those measures that people strive for but rarely can measure directly. Industrial Six Sigma takes a whack at it in terms of defects per million, but even in industrial situations — which isn’t the legal world — it’s not that simple, especially in this disposable society that continues to flourish about us. In legal, measures of “quality” only sometimes align with repurchase intent.

While Legal Project Management of course is enhanced by good metrics and improved processes, it can succeed in their absence. Indeed, in their absence it may be even more imperative to introduce Legal Project Management. By using the simple tenets and principles of LPM, you can get project/matter teams aligned on goals. LPM builds a focus on repurchase intent, profitability, and a useful definition of “quality,” whether or not you have good measures of these variables. LPM removes or minimizes factors that create inefficient processes.

In other words, don’t wait to begin an LPM effort until you have your house in order — because in the crush of business, you’ll never get a disordered house in order. Rather, use Legal Project Management as the first step toward introducing order.

2. Must I Document the Work Before Thinking About Metrics?

No. The object isn’t to measure what you’re currently doing. The object is to measure results — in particular results that matter, such as repurchase intent/client retention and all-up project profitability.

There’s a memorable Gary Larson/Far Side cartoon that shows in the foreground a gaggle of geese walking in V-formation. In the distant sky are checkmark shapes representing geese flying in V-formation. One walking goose is looking up and exclaiming, “Look what they’re doing!” (I can’t find a link on line.)

If you document the work the foreground geese are doing, you’ll have a description of walking geese. Perhaps they walk at 2 miles per hour. Now work hard to improve those metrics, whether by putting the geese on a fowl treadmill or dangling succulent grass just ahead of them, and you may get them to walk at 2.2 MPH. Why, that’s a 10% improvement! Isn’t that wonderful!

But you’ll never get them flying by documenting and improving their walking. By the way, don’t step in the yucky stuff walking (but not flying) geese leave behind them.

Think about goals first. Where do you need to wind up? What does “Done” look like? What can I do to improve client retention and repurchase intent?

Then think about how (and whether) you can measure those goals, what you can do to attain them, how to share those goals across the team, and so on.

Once you’ve got it right, consider how you can pass it on to subsequent teams. That kind of documentation — which may not be a “document” at all — matters.

Knowing and understanding the current state is valuable. Documenting it is next to useless unless the current state is a good one — or you’re writing a book and need a “before” case study.

3. Does Management Buy-In Stem From Metrics?

Some managers say they manage by metrics. Outside the sales world, it’s rarely true. Good managers and leaders, intuitively or by training, understand the issues with substitute metrics, misaligned goals, partial measures, and the like.

Upper level managers look first for reasoned, convincing arguments. They need a vision of the imagined future, a high-level strategy, and the definition of at least a few initiatives that will get you there. On our family’s recent road trip, my daughter desperately wanted to see Mt. Rushmore (vision); we would drive east to get there from Seattle (strategy); and we would do so in legs of less than about 350 miles, we’d allow the kids to control the radio half the time, we’d do a mix of camping and hotel stays, etc. (initiatives). I didn’t really care about the exact distance to Mt. Rushmore, the specific roads we might take, etc.

Managers also know that metrics can be manipulated, especially in the early/buy-in phases of a project. No matter what they say, senior managers need more than metrics to buy into a project. Vision, strategy, and initiatives build that buy-in¹.

Metrics may — may — help finalize the deal, or at least show that you’ve got that base covered. But they won’t get you a hearing in themselves, let alone get the buy-in you seek. Even the most enticing bottom-line measure, such as profit before-and-after, can but whet their appetite; they are never the meal itself.

——————

¹I teach how to build these in my courses and Master Classes, too — they’re that important.