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ContactCourage as a Cultural Trait of Successful Firms?
I've been working on the notes from the LexThink 1.0 sessions in order to start releasing them in a public form on the LexThink website. The first installment will appear tomorrow.
This morning, I found the line, "a successful firm must have courage," in the notes about "creating a culture" from a session on what successful professional services firms have in common.
A successful firm must have courage.
This idea fascinates me, and brought me back to the energy and sense of purpose I found at LexThink 1.0. It also emphasized for me how essential it is to return to simple, fundamental questions.
What does it mean for a firm to have courage? How do you create a firm that has courage as a key cultural trait? Would you want to work at a firm that values courage? Or, perhaps a better question, why wouldn’t you always want to work at a firm that values courage? Then, what are the implications of working at a firm that either has courage or does not have courage? Is courage part of innovation?
We don't have this on the LexThink conference schedule (yet), but wouldn't it be cool to spend a day or two working on the question "How do you create a firm that has courage?"
[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]
Comments
Welcome! I think you'll find that the ability to engage in periodic dialog will strengthen your voice and encourage your readers to be more involved; I've found the comments on my blog to be one of the most rewarding aspects of the experiment.
Posted by: Rick Klau | June 2, 2005 02:14 PM
Courage in a law firm. To me, the "courage" as a term has been so watered down that it is virtually devoid of its true meaning.
Winston Churchill courage "the first of human qualities . . . because it guarantees all the others."
John McCain wrote (his book is a must read, Dennis,. on the topic) that "fear is indispensable to courage, that it must always be present for courage to exist. You must be afraid to have courage."
I will be interested to see what is posted. Courage in a law firm? Like Jan Schlichtmann taking on the corporate powers in Mass? Like an underfunded Riverkeepers group taking on a dumping concern?
It will be interesting to see what "passes" for courage.
Posted by: mk | June 3, 2005 03:53 PM