Not All Ideas Deserve Your Reaction

Ideas are constantly buzzing to get in. You don't have to let them.

Meditation has taught me that we don't need to react to every suggestion or complaint a lawyer brings.

It's inevitable that stray thoughts will interrupt me while meditating. Not all thoughts deserve my energy. It can be enough to observe a thought, steer it aside, and return to center without immediately reacting to it.

Any legal marketer who has ever labored over a new website, CRM, or other highly visible product or service in a law firm can surely identify.

• At center is an intensive exercise that requires focus, discipline, and purpose exerted over time.

  
  

• Swarming from all sides are suggestions and complaints, usually meant well, that threaten to disrupt progress if entertained equally. (Have you noticed that literally *everyone* has opinions about these projects?!)

  
  

• As service professionals, we are hard-wired to listen, understand, and react accordingly. Yet this instinct can delay or even sink critical projects.

A healthy dose of non-reaction is essential to provide effective client service in law firms.

Lawyers often have strong feelings about colors, fonts, user experience, client journey, dashboards, internal politics, and more. While we want their engagement, not every suggestion or complaint deserves our reaction.

To be sure, we should make each lawyer feel heard. But we don't have to defend, explain, or promise anything in response.

In fact, a healthy dose of non-reaction is essential to provide effective client service in law firms. So here are three things we can do when faced with input that threatens progress.

1️⃣ Ask questions.

Why does this lawyer want this feature? (Hint: The answer often involves their competition.)

Why—specifically—do they dislike a characteristic? Who does it limit or harm, and how?

2️⃣Assess: Is this a subjective or objective improvement or complaint?

Asking questions and gathering information without defending or explaining shows lawyers that we are attentive and inquisitive. Their answers are key to help us discern whether an idea or concern is subjective or objective.

We can often safely acknowledge and set aside a subjective item, whereas an objective item may deserve more thought or action. 

3️⃣ Schedule: If an item is valid and deserves attention, is it a now or later issue? Lawyers often bring important perspectives to our projects, and it's important to allow space to remember this. But just because we should in fact tweak something doesn't mean that the tweak must happen before launch.

Part of our value to the firm is to help inform *when* to address a credible issue, as much as whether to address it at all. 

The next time a lawyer brings a suggestion or complaint and you feel compelled to react, ask "What if I simply observe?" Watch what happens as you gather and prioritize information. It is in this interval that you will likely make your highest contribution to the firm.