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Hi,
Welcome to With Less - a weekly newsletter dedicated to helping legal creatively do more with less.
Want to move closer to your goals? Want to do more or even the same work, but in less time or with less resources? There’s no silver bullet or panacea. But, reflecting on great (some would say that right) questions followed by action will get you very, very far.
The wrestler Roddy Piper had this saying, “[j]ust when they think they know the answers, I change the questions.”
There are 10 questions* that I use with my coaching clients about their legal function and work and the answers reveal non-obvious paths to solutions.
I hope these questions help you as they have helped me, and others get from where we are to what we want to create.
- If you had to stop doing 10% of your tasks, what would you drop?
- Is this actually working?
- What would you do if you had to finish X in Y days?
- What have you learned to do well in the past year?
- What has been well received by management or “the business” in the past year?
- Do you keep 50% of your time unscheduled? 50% is arbitrary. But do you maintain unscheduled time (or even schedule unscheduled time) for getting work done or for reflection or planning?
- What’s stopping you from doing X? How might you get/do/improve/overcome/get around/find that thing stopping you from doing X?
- What would I recommend my friend do if they were facing this dilemma?
- If you could wave a magic wand and fix one thing in your work what would that be? What would that look and feel like?
- If I had to leave my organization for a year and the only communication I could have with my manager/person I report to was a single paragraph, what would I write?
Want more strategies to help you do more with less? Reply to this email with the words “I’M IN” and I’ll register you for my free 5-day email course (meaning the course is delivered over email) on simplifying your work by scaling. Course starts July 1st.
Have great week!
Marty
*I take no credit for coming up with the questions on this list. It’s a greatest hits of guidance, thought leadership, and effort of others I have gathered over the years.
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