Recently in Side Notes Category
Robert Scoble: Geeks' private hells
Arnie Herz: lawyer independence - citing NYT/Henry Fountain: The Lonely American Just Got a Bit Lonelier
This post is brought to you from Breckenridge, Colorado, where the temperature is in the 60s in the valley and around 45 at 12,500 feet, people are enjoying one last day of skiing before the resort closes for the season, and a bunch of young lawyers from a Denver firm are in town for a retreat.
That last bit would be why I'm here.
Spotted recently online:
- Produce becomes less nutritious.
- Bruce MacEwen recommends that law firm managers read "The Enthusiastic Employee." He adds, in a comment about how equity is a motivator for employees, "I've often noted that human beings have evolved with an exquisitely tuned sensitivity to inequity and unfairness, and nothing will destroy the motivation of of an enthusiastic employee to go above and beyond the job requirements faster than a whiff of injustice. . . . And how much does it cost you, again, to lose an associate?"
- What's worse than a nail to the head? Twelve nails to the head. That's twelve reasons to stay away from the meth — as though you needed any more.
Update: Retreat was a good time. Saturday included a well-designed and entertaining 'teambuilding' activity not contaminated with some of the trite exercises that tend to pollute conventional corporate 'teambuilding' activities (as one associate put it, "no trust falls!"). We had a nice, casual dinner that night in a beautiful location, and there was plenty of unprogrammed time to visit with each other and enjoy the town. That was far better than the lectures, filling out of forms, and structured discussions about business that constitute some firms' "retreats." I think there's probably more to be gained from the approach my firm chose.
That sounds like an appropriate post title for Topic Drift, but it's not.
New York Times: Chicken with arsenic? Is that O.K.?
The website for Denver's KMGH Channel 7 has this slideshow of two Seaworld penguins going through the metal detectors at Denver International Airport. [Link via Bruce Schneier.]
TSA didn't subject the penguins to a pat-down, but some of the onlookers wanted to.
I guess that just goes to show that under the right circumstances, penguins can fly.
During a post on The Care and Feeding of Laterals, Bruce MacEwen notes, "The answer to associate churn is a smart, heads-up, formal (meaning partners get billable-hourly "waivers" for participating) professional development program."
Well, that seems an excellent idea. Law firms: Do you have such a program? What does it involve? And shouldn't associates get billable-hourly "waivers," too? (Maybe he meant that.)
This would be a good topic for a later post. Maybe someone more experienced in management and training than I am should take it up. Anyone?
Adina Levin has this interesting post raising questions about electronic social networks and notions of public identity.
Christopher Allen's post that started it.
