To accomplish its tasks with efficiency, a group ought to agree on how it makes decisions. A facilitator can explain that there are four processes to reach a decision. Consensus is one, where everyone agrees that they can accept the final decision. Another is consultative, where a decision-maker excepts input…
Another stimulating idea from David Sibbet, Best Practices for Facilitation (Grove 2007) at 71, is electronic brainstorming. Have participants at an off-site bring their laptops and install simple group decision-support software. The book mentions software from CoVision and Catalyst Consulting. If you have a clear set of questions, the lawyers…
As part of a strategic planning process or an effort to make headway on a problem, many general counsel try brainstorming (See my post of Nov. 28, 2005: mind-map software helps brainstorm; Dec. 9, 2005: Delphi technique; Oct. 30, 2006: have rules and push participants to prepare ahead of time;…
RACI refers to four labels for each individual or group involved in a decision process: Responsible, Accountable, Consulting, and Informed. From the ACC Docket, Vol. 25, Sept. 2007 at 44, we learn the application of RACI by the Law Group at Becton Dickinson (BD) to the company’s information-technology contracts process.…
Value attribution, according to Ori Brafman and Rom Brafman, Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior (Doubleday 2008) at 48, is “our tendency to imbue someone or something with certain qualities based on perceived value, rather than on objective data.” It is what compels us to take seriously twaddle from…
Leonard Mlodinow, The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives (Pantheon Books 2008) at 191, urges that ”We should learn to spend as much time looking for evidence that we are wrong as we spend searching for reasons we are correct” (See my post of July 10, 2007: the confirmation…
Research subjects had their brains imaged in a magnetic resonance scanner as they drank and rated several wines of seemingly different prices. In fact, the wines were randomly assigned high and low prices. As summarized in Leonard Mlodinow, The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives (Pantheon Books 2008) at…
“Lawyers are generally not fond of images. Words are their trade. Attorneys’ antipathy toward visualization is confirmed in several psychological studies.” This quote comes from the J. of the Legal Writing Inst., Vol. 14, 2008 at 92, and the article footnotes two such studies described in an earlier article. The…
Most of us have no inkling how we developed our bedrock beliefs regarding management of people. We may even not know we cherish those assumptions until somebody challenges them, which reverberates to the core of our being. Managers often do not even articulate what they think they believe. Beliefs and…
An investigation of the relationship between hedge fund returns and the academic credentials of their managers’ colleges nudged me to muse about a related study for law departments. As reported by the NY Times Mark Hulbert a few months ago, academics compared the performance of about a 1,000 of hedge…