When Does Choosing A Better Computer Become Wasteful?

No, I'm not referring to green computing devices. Though, apparently computers account for 2% of the world's carbon emissions. I'm swapping my nearly four year-old PC notebook for a new 15" MacBook Pro. Can you say upgrade? Like many buyers, I'm tempted to get the fastest possible machine with the most memory, given my budget.

But I keep thinking about over-processing. It's wasteful to get a tool that's more powerful than what's needed for the job. Here's some of my thinking.

• How fast? I do minimal multimedia work. Mostly, I access databases and documents on a local network and remotely, create text-based documents, and work on the web. But time is money (my time ends up being my clients' money, to be precise). So, I decided to get the fastest available processor along with a solid state drive. I can always upgrade RAM, but predict 4 GB will be plenty for 95% of my work.
• How much memory? With a 500 GB hard drive I can save data for years to come without worrying about usable disk space. But I've only got 65 GB of data now. So I decided to get the 128 GB drive. I can always upgrade when I near capacity. And who knows what cloud storage options will look like then.

The hardest decision was whether to get a solid state drive. Ultimately, I chose one because they're more reliable (no moving parts) and run cooler (no motor). The result is a more efficient machine, with the related benefit of a longer battery life. I decided to go with the Apple OEM drive rather than with a third party upgrade. There may be better after-market drives out there, but I'd rather avoid any potential problems with warranties and service. If there's a problem, it's Apple's to fix. Period.

Now, it wasn't that hard to identify the right machine for today's work. The over-processing analysis would have been easy from that standpoint. But predicting the appropriate tool for two to four years from now? Given the extraordinary rate of change in consumer electronics and the web -- who knows what we'll all be doing then. That's what made this a challenge.

Has anyone else experienced this challenge when buying a computer? From an enterprise IT perspective, our firm certainly has, and larger organizations must have it even worse.

Over-processing: Too Much Of A Good Thing

Bruce MacEwen at Adam Smith, Esq. has an interesting post on how the views on quality held by corporate in-house legal counsel diverge from outside counsel. Referencing McKinsey, he divides quality into three segments and explains how he thinks corporate America views them:

• Good enough: Sufficient for almost all purposes almost all the time.
• Excellent: Occasionally needed when germane to reputation, marketplace perception, or positioning.
• Superb: Very rarely required, perhaps only when genuine organizational threats are in play.

He contrasts this with the perspective of outside legal counsel:

• Superb: Why you come to our firm, what we do, and who I am. (Don't for a second underestimate that third element; it's why you get up in the morning and how you hold your head high.)
• Excellent: When we try to execute a representation with some degree of sensitivity to costs, based on a longstanding relationship.
• Good enough: Who do you think we are? You've come to the wrong place.

Assuming outside counsel does the work at a "Good enough" level, Bruce poses the question: "who's to blame-your firm or the client-for the fact that merely sufficient legal advice has come back to bite?"

Good question. And one I'm not prepared to answer.

But let me add a comment from a Lean perspective. The problem with outside legal counsel's view is the willingness to engage in over-processing, one of the seven traditional forms of waste (muda). Over-processing is doing more work, or higher quality work, than is desired by the customer, or using tools that are more expensive or precise than needed.

Outside counsel sees the high quality work as an unqualified good thing (who would want lesser quality?) In-house counsel sees the work as "wasting" their finite budget for legal services. The company wanted a Corolla. Its attorney just built a fully loaded Lexis LS600hl.

The key here is open communication between the client and outside counsel.The client should be clear about what it needs. Counsel should be clear about what it will deliver and at what price. Also, counsel needs to explain the risks of opting for work of lesser quality. And to the extent possible, the client needs to sign off on any such risk.

We also should be careful to distinguish between the quality of work product and the quality of representation. Work product almost always should be high quality. It's the amount or type of work product that should vary depending on the client's needs. For example, a legal brief should be very well written -- no matter what. But whether the brief should be filed should be considered at the outset.

Given the current economic climate, there's sure to be a lot more discussion about the appropriate level of quality, for legal services and virtually everything else we have to pay for.

GM's Plan For "Zero Waste" Operations

The New York Times reports:

General Motors said last week that 62 of its manufacturing plants (representing 43 percent of its global production) no longer send any production waste to landfills. The company’s goal, first stated in 2008, is for zero waste at half of its operations by the end of 2010, and it’s 87 percent of the way there.

Zero waste, or “Nil to Landfill,” has been a rallying cry in Europe, and it is national policy in New Zealand, but it’s still a fledgling movement in the United States. Still, some major corporations, including Wal-Mart, Nike and the carpet maker Interface, have embraced zero waste goals.

Physical waste indicates that a process contains one or more of the seven traditional forms of waste, or muda (transportation, inventory, motion, waiting, over-processing, over-production, and defects). For example, if you're throwing out a lot of spoiled food from your refrigerator, you should reconsider how you do your grocery shopping (over-production and excess inventory?), meal planning (defects and waiting?), and cooking (over-production and defects?).

However, GM and other companies are careful to clasify material sent to outside recyclers as non-waste. But being able to recycle waste is less a testament to an efficient manufacturing process than it is innovation by the recycling industry. Just because my paper waste goes into a recycling bin rather than the trash bin doesn't mean my processes have improved. Recyclable waste is still waste, and still a likely indicator of inefficiencies in the process. Still credit where credit is due.

The iPad And "Closed" Workspaces

In case you missed it, Markos Moulitsas (aka "kos") has a wonderful review of the iPad. But its actually more of a "day in the life" of an iPad user, which I think makes it more valuable for anyone thinking about buying one. The part I found most interesting was his discussion of the relative reliability of "open" hardware  (i.e. PCs) versus "closed" (i.e. iPhone or iPad) hardware:

My Mac, while not perfect, is far more solid than my PCs of old. While the software isn't locked down, The hardware homogenization of Apple's lineup means fewer hardware-related crashes. And given how few third-party apps I run, my software-related crashes are kept to a minimum. The day HTML 5 fully kills off Flash will be the day that 95% of my infrequent crashes are eliminated. Currently, I reboot my MacBook Pro about once every 2-3 months . . . .

On a network level, we've also learned to appreciate the benefits of locking things down. We've experienced this both in deploying virtualized workspaces as well as our desktop management system. The key seems to be allowing the right amount of user customization while keeping the overall system highly standardized.

From a lean perspective, standardized tools means less error and lower variability when carrying out standardized work. It also reduces a great deal of waste for IT engineers, avoiding the time consuming process of fixing problems caused by user downloaded applications.

Will Increasing Complexity Lead To Collapse?

Clay Shirky writes a facinating post describing the erosion of complex business models. He recounts a talk he gave to TV executives worried whether online video will generate enough revenue to cover production costs. Drawing on Joseph Tainter's The Collapse of Complex Societies, Shirky examines whether media will simplify, or instead collapse:

Early on, the marginal value of this complexity is positive—each additional bit of complexity more than pays for itself in improved output—but over time, the law of diminishing returns reduces the marginal value, until it disappears completely. At this point, any additional complexity is pure cost.

Tainter’s thesis is that when society’s elite members add one layer of bureaucracy or demand one tribute too many, they end up extracting all the value from their environment it is possible to extract and then some.

The ‘and them some’ is what causes the trouble. Complex societies collapse because, when some stress comes, those societies have become too inflexible to respond. In retrospect, this can seem mystifying. Why didn’t these societies just re-tool in less complex ways? The answer Tainter gives is the simplest one: When societies fail to respond to reduced circumstances through orderly downsizing, it isn’t because they don’t want to, it’s because they can’t.

His conclusion is probably right. But I think the argument has two problems.

First, increased complexity doesn't necessarily create drag on the system. Put differently, increased complexity sometimes costs less than the status quo. My favorite example is virtualization. The back end is indeed complex, requiring advanced and well-designed software. But virtualized servers actually use resources more efficiently. And a properly configured Citrix desktop environment is faster and easier to work in than a thick client environment. Complexity is more efficient.

Second, improvements need not add complexity. Managing from a lean perspective, I'm always looking for ways to simplify. Those who identify and eliminate waste from a system make it less complex.

In other words, the best solutions are elegant, reducing complex problems to simple yet correct answers.

So on a fundamental level, I agree with Shirky: success lies ahead for those who can add value by making things simpler. The future is poetry, not prose.

Why Process Improvement Should Matter To All Lawyers

One thing is now clear: for serial litigants, developing efficient processes for handling e-discovery is critical. Joan Goodchild at Computerworld sings a common refrain heard at the The Sedona Conference Institute e-discovery conference I attended last week:

NBC Universal is one of the largest media and entertainment companies in the world. Chief Information Security Officer Jonathan Chow and his team manage information security for several business lines within NBCU, including its broadcast and cable television to film production, online ventures and its two theme parks in Hollywood, California and Orlando, Florida. Among one of the biggest challenges in the last few years has been the incredible explosion in demand for e-discovery services, according to Chow.

Since different legal teams handle the needs of each line of business, the workflows associated with managing electronic discovery vary as well, adding another layer of complexity. And because of the growing number of cases, and increases in both the amount of electronically stored information and hours spent supporting the process, demand for e-discovery services has increased 30 to 50 percent annually. The costs were spiraling out of control and this sent Chow looking for a way to manage the process internally.

Chow . . . tackled the costly and time-consuming process and turned it into a cost-effective and more efficient system that has seen a 40-45 percent gain efficiency since its implementation.

I spoke with several in-house teams who've done a remarkable job developing standardized workflow for handling e-discovery. In doing this, they've discovered how wasteful the processes were when handled by outside counsel.

But the lesson isn't that in-house teams are necessarily more cost effective than outside lawyers. Outside counsel can do this too. The lesson is that process matters. Efficient processes allow in-house teams to save money for their companies. And outside counsel can give their clients the service they deserve.

Lean and Daylight Savings Time: Beware The Ides Of March

I've never liked Daylight Savings Time. It's antiquated and disruptive. This humorous post sums it up well, and links to a Daylight Savings Hub for understanding how it's observed internationally with resources for IT administrators. The cited justifications just don't make sense.  For example, via Bill Petro, this Department of Energy study (PDF) found that the time change saves only about .02 percent of total U.S. energy consumption.

The change unnecessarily creates the chance for error. How many people forget to change their clocks and miss appointments on Sunday or Monday morning? Not that many, maybe, but enough to cause damage to a good number of relationships and measurable financial harm to companies. It's true that most clocks change automatically or are synced to a network. But globalization also increases the opportunity for cross-border disconnection. Economies are increasingly urban, exacerbating the problem of being an hour late. And how much money do we spend just reminding people to reset their clocks?

And resetting clocks -- or writing software to automatically reset clocks -- is not a value-added process. It's waste. On a national scale.

It's also bad for workplace safety. Based on data from the U.S. Department of Labor, Michigan State University researchers Christopher Barnes and David Wagner concluded that the number of workplace accidents jumps after Daylight Savings Time:

In two separate studies, they found that the March switch to Daylight Savings Time resulted in 40 minutes less sleep for American workers, a 5.7 percent increase in workplace injuries and nearly 68 percent more work days lost to injuries.

....

But can losing one hour of sleep really make a difference? “Yes,” said Barnes, “it can. Especially for those engaged in jobs requiring a high level of attention to detail. Studies have shown that lost sleep causes attention levels to drop off.”

....

There is other research available that tends to support Barnes and Wagner. A University of British Columbia study, using data from the Canadian Ministry of Transport, found that when Canada went into daylight savings time, there was an 8 percent increase risk of accidents on the Monday after the changeover. A similar study, using information from the U. S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, cited sleep deprivation as the most likely cause of a 17 percent increase in accidents on the Monday following the time change.

Daylight Savings Time disrespects human physiology, and therefore people. It subordinates humans to machines. And this study, if accurate, makes the case even stronger by pointing to real human costs in the form of injuries and death.

If this post sounds a little snarky, I blame the time change.

Serve It Up Precisely

Chuck Hollis thinks IT managers have paid too much attention to costs for hardware and software, and not enough attention to internal IT processes. He argues in favor of less precision and more speed, since the "time to serve" -- the time infrastructure is requested to the time of deployment -- determines the business advantage of implementing new IT infrastructure. "Time to serve" is another way of describing lead time, which is, indeed, something we rarely hear about when evaluating IT initiatives. And in discussing IT costs, we rarely explore how much of these costs are the result of internal wasteful processes. Instead, the discussion focuses almost exclusively on costs for hardware, software, and training.

However, I disagree that "time to serve" is improved by reducing precision. In many projects, resources are spent fixing bugs, troubleshooting, training because of poorly designed systems, and modifying existing processes so they are compatible with the new infrastructure. Less precision just exacerbates these non-value added processes, or waste. On the other hand, waste -- and therefore costs -- are reduced the more an IT project fits an organization's needs.

Interestingly, he concludes:

Over the last year, I've sketched out what I believe to be the dominant model for next-generation enterprise IT: the private cloud. What makes it a "cloud" is that it's built differently, operated differently and consumed differently. What makes it "private" is that it's under the control of the enterprise IT organization.

But new models require new metrics to judge their effectiveness, and drive continually improvements.

As cloud computing matures, and our assumptions about hardware and software change, will we see new focus on internal IT processes?

D. Mark Jackson

Lean Writing

Can lean improve your writing?  Let's take two essential lean concepts and see how they apply.

Minimize Waste

Eliminating unnecessary words makes for good writing. Ask any editor or writing coach. Removing unneeded words is reducing waste in your writing.

Think of editing as a form of kaizen, the process of continuous improvement.

Respect for People

How often do litigators exchange briefs or letters filled with invective and hyperbole?  By all accounts, judges hate this. This style of writing may satisfy the emotional needs of lawyers and their clients, but it rarely serves their interests. Yet many lawyers persist in thinking that diligence requires them to be mean and disrespectful. As Gary Kinder teaches, judges want to be fair and are more likely to be persuaded by your writing if it is fair too. Therefore, showing respect for your adversaries and their lawyers makes you a better advocate.

D. Mark Jackson

Lean Document Review

Bruce MacEwen of Adam Smith, Esq., shares his interview with Ray Bayley, co-founder of NovusLaw. You'll likely walk away with a much different view of business process outsourcing. One of the major concerns about outsourcing legal work, including document review, is quality. Case managers wonder whether contract lawyers can provide the same quality output as highly paid associates working at law firms, in particular large law firms with plenty of resources. Bayley responds:

"Quality is one of our 'cornerstone' initiatives, along with ethics, security, and business continuity planning—all of which report directly to me.   In fact, we started our quality program before we even started the company.  But now our 'lean six Sigma' processes and quality control programs are certified by Underwriters' Labs, with full-time six sigma black belts on board that do nothing else but focus on quality.  'Lean,' which is a term that comes from the Toyota Production System, stands for the methodology used to eliminate non-value-added time and activity, a/k/a waste.  'Waste,' in turn, has a very simple definition:  Anything the client wouldn't want pay for if they were given a choice.

"Six Sigma is what we use to eliminate defects as we measure and analyze our work processes.  Typically, undocumented processes will yield 20,000—60,000 defects per million opportunities.  Six Sigma is designed to get that down to fewer than 4/million.  On our most recent document review we performed at Five Sigma, or approximately 200 defects per million.  By the way, that's about 200 times better than the average in the legal industry today."

As I wrote recently, this is the first time I've read about an entity applying lean production concepts to legal services.  And the document review process, of course, has the potential for involving a great deal of waste, making lean a good approach. At least as important as minimizing waste, however, the Toyota Production System emphasizes the value of respect for people.  Bayley also outlines his approach on this issue:

"Obviously it starts with who we hire: with recruitment.  The average lawyer at  NovusLaw has approximately eight years of experience, and we believe we've been able to attract talent on a par of those in AmLaw 100 firms with comparable experience.  Everyone interviews with me and each of my partners, as well as going through nearly a half dozen other interviews to ensure cultural compatibility.  NovusLaw is not for everyone.  If you can work independently, have a strong work ethic, and if you're smart about BPO—and if you have a sense of adventure—then you're a good candidate for us.  And I think our attrition statistics bear this out:  Only 3-4%/year.  It's a tough process to get in, but once you're in, you're in."

These are good numbers. Bayley's recruitment method reminds me of Toyota's when it opened its facility in Hebron, Kentucky. His organization obviously is taking a different approach to working with its people.

Now, these statements raise a lot of questions. How do you define "defect" in the ambiguous world of identifying relevance and privilege?  This measure doesn't easily translate from the manufacturing context. What specific processes do they use to minimize waste? What kind of waste is it? How do you show respect for people, while tasking them with some of the most repetitive and least glamorous work in the legal field?

But the real lesson here has nothing to do with business process outsourcing. It's that lean has something to offer the world of legal services. Indeed, nothing prevents lawyers and law firms from changing their own processes -- directly -- and using lean principles to improve their work.

D. Mark Jackson