Innovate or Capitulate: In The Struggle For Survival, The Fittest Win

"This means we can’t go backward, and we can’t stand still. We can’t rest on our laurels and we can’t keep doing what we’ve always done — even if we are doing our best, we need to keep doing it better."

Good Morning Folks,

"Innovation" is one of those buzzwords you hear all the time. People are always talking about being a "leader in innovation" or "taking innovation into the twenty-first century". It can look like some kind of innovation nation out there. It's hard to tell who is devoted to innovation and who is simply paying lip service to It. We at FSO are serious about innovation. So serious that we use the word (re) IMAGINE to define who we are: a partner dedicated to always finding new and better ways to improve service, lower costs and take better care of people.

I believe complacency is when innovation ends. The advantage every business has, but few in our industry leverage to the advantage that we do, is the ability to innovate and reinvent. So many great companies lose their edge and end up playing catch-up until they're obsolete. That’s not going to happen here.

Dramatic paradigm sights are occurring in every industry, YOUR industry because traditional barriers to entry don't exist anymore. If you don't think a new era of change and creative destruction isn't headed to your door step, you are sadly mistaken. If you want to be on top, you have to look at innovation in a new, interactive way. You have to believe it is worth coin, its worth doing wrong. You have to be willing to try your model, test it, innovate around it, get out, screw up, and then do it right. You have to understand that speed is everything in an electronic realm because you can fix mistakes before anyone realizes that mistakes were made.

We are facing the biggest transformation the way business is conducted since the industrial revolution. If you are willing to innovate, you are taking steps towards crashing your competition.

The problem according to ANTHONY IANNARINO of there sales blog is change, He writes:

==> Change is more difficult than you believe. Having an intellectual understanding the reason something needs to change isn’t enough. An emotional need to change is necessary and more powerful. 

 ==> Change is psychological. You first have to have a shift in your mindset, your personal philosophy, your personal psychology. Without that shift, there will be no change.

Why something is being changed is more important than how that change is accomplished.

==> Change takes longer than you believe.  It takes longer to sell, longer to build consensus, and longer to execute before results are seen. It is mistake to believe the results of change will be realized quickly, even though change happens in a second 

==> Change comes with built-in enemies. The very fact that you are trying to make change will cause some to oppose you. Resistance is your enemy when you try to change yourself. 

Most change initiatives die not because the idea isn’t good or necessary but because it was poorly executed. The change is usually poorly executed because it lacks executive engagement. People are exceptionally gifted at waiting out change initiatives. 

We overestimate what we can accomplish in a short period of time and underestimate what we accomplish over a longer period. When results don’t come fast, change initiatives are often abandoned. The better results were only a little bit further.

==> Sometimes change initiatives fail because too many variables are changed at once. One major change might have been enough to produce a result, but because so much was attempted, nothing really changed. When too much is changed, you can’t easily figure out what is working and what isn’t.

Radical change very quickly becomes the new status quo. It soon develops its own defenders who protect it from future change.

As an owner and CEO, I am keenly aware that rapid change in business and technology is the “new normal.” The only way for our company to survive, let alone thrive, is to continuously reinvent and redefine— everything.

This means we can’t go backward, and we can’t stand still. We can’t rest on our laurels and we can’t keep doing what we’ve always done — even if we are doing our best, we need to keep doing it better.

The spirit of innovation is a cornerstone of our company. Because at FSO, we never stop rethinking, refreshing and (re)IMAGINING a better future for our clients. We work together with our clients to foster innovation. Our process contains not only a method for generating ideas, but also a system for managing change. Similar to our methodology for continuous improvement, we challenge all levels of our organization to challenge the status quo.  

We reward continuous improvement and innovation; as a result our employees are motived to identify opportunities for improvement and innovation. Our employees are expected to always seek new ways to make our client’s life better through our white glove treatment; the whole FSO Experience. It is not just a tagline for our brand – rather, it is the culture that drives everything we do.

Since our founding six short years ago, we’ve matured from just a service provider among many, to a true strategic partner like no other. In over 160 client sites nationally we’ve become "entrenched" and so "important" to how our clients operate from the first impression - to amazing smiles and hospitality - to all services from mail, copy, records, conference centers, security, concierge, IT and much more. We are the glue that makes our clients business run seamlessly. We are part of their company, and critical to their success.

To our team: You have been given the opportunity to show what you’re made of, to be so much stronger and better than you were just the day before, and to show the world of business a better way.  

So as you get ready to start your day take a second to think; how am I contributing to my clients' success? How can I be better?

How can I get to infinity and beyond? 

How can I be that star, that hero that brings to our clients all the positive change, wealth and success they deserve?

IT IS YOU that makes FSO who we are. Love Life!

Mitchell D. Weiner

Chief Happiness Officer  

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"In the struggle for survival, the fittest win out at the expense of their rivals because they succeed in adapting themselves best to their environment." ~~ Charles Darwin

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S. ANTHONY IANNARINO is the President and Chief Sales officer for SOLUTIONS Staffing, a best-in-class regional staffing service based in Columbus, OhioHe is also the Managing Director of B2B Sales Coach & Consultancy, a boutique sales coaching and consulting company where he works to help salespeople and sales organizations improve and reach their full potential. And he works ass an adjunct faculty member at Capital University’s School of Management and Leadership. Anthony teaches Personal Selling in the undergraduate program, and I teach Persuasive Marketing and Social Media Marketing in the MBA program.

Inspire ME Friday ==> Keep (re)IMAGINING

“Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?” 

Greetings Friends,


The Internet is awash with examples of futuristic predictions that came up short (and plenty that came true too). There are top ten lists, wiki’s, quote archives and countless other repositories.

More than a few famous names are included in the indexes of naysayers whose cracked crystal balls led them to memorable mistakes they’d likely reconsider if given the benefit of hindsight and the chance to rephrase:

Leading the charge, back in 1876, President Rutherford B. Hayes saw the telephone for the first time. In reaction, he said to Alexander Graham Bell, “That’s an amazing invention, but who would ever want to use one of them?” During the same year, a Western Union Internal Memo predicted similarly that, “The ‘telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered a means of communication.” How wrong they both were.

Forward thinkers haven’t always done better. In 1926, Lee DeForest, a pioneer in the development of radio, said of television: “While theoretically and technically television may be feasible, commercially and financially I consider it to be an impossibility…a development of which we need waste little time dreaming.”  

In 1927, Harry Warner, President of Warner Brothers, said, “Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?” The same year, however (apparently at the urgings of brother Sam, the studio’s co-founder), Warner Brothers released The Jazz Singer, one of the most expensive films they’d ever made. (Sam died before the New York premier). Turned out, The Jazz Singer was a major hit and helped usher in the era of  “talking pictures.”

Not even experienced technologists are immune. In a famous recent example, one from a technologist who’d presumably know better, Ken Olsen, then President, Chairman and Founder of DEC, famously said in 1977:  “There is no reason for any individuals to have a computer in their home.”  He was right - there wasn’t much of a reason given the state of in the industry at the time - but fast forward a few years, or a decade or two, and how different the story became.

Optimists championing technology have fallen into similar traps at the opposite pole of opinion. In one example, in an 1858 book called "The Story of the Telegraph," authors Charles F. Briggs and Augustus Maverick wrote: "Of all the marvelous achievements of modern science the electric telegraph is transcendentally the greatest and most serviceable to mankind … [it] binds together by a vital cord all the nations of the earth. It is impossible that old prejudices and hostilities should longer exist.." Impossible? Not at all.

The reality of futurism or any kind of technology prediction is they’re often going to be wrong, either too conservative or too optimistic.

The only thing we know for sure about the future, is that it will won’t look anything like today.

That Internet delivery of video and TV content will eventually become a mainstream standard is a given. The question is one of when, not if. 

Keep (re)IMAGINING! And have a GREAT weekend.

And have a GREAT weekend.

Make a difference folks!

Mitchell D. Weiner

Chief Happiness Officer  

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. .  

“The expert in anything was once a beginner”

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Throw Back Thursday: In The Struggle For Cell Phone Survival, As With Any Business, Only The Fittest Win

"Change is Good. You Go First, Because somebody's gotta win. It might as well be you."

Good Morning Folks,

"Innovation" is one of those buzzwords you hear all the time. 

I believe complacency is when innovation ends. The advantage every business has, but few in our industry leverage to the advantage that we do, is the ability to innovate and reinvent. So many great companies lose their edge and end up playing catch-up until they're obsolete. That’s not going to happen here.

Dramatic paradigm sights are occurring in every industry, YOUR industry because traditional barriers to entry don't exist anymore. If you don't think a new era of change and creative destruction isn't headed to your door step, you are sadly mistaken. If you want to be on top, you have to look at innovation in a new, interactive way. You have to believe it is worth coin, its worth doing wrong. You have to be willing to try your model, test it, innovate around it, get out, screw up, and then do it right. You have to understand that speed is everything in an electronic realm because you can fix mistakes before anyone realizes that mistakes were made.

We are facing the biggest transformation the way business is conducted since the industrial revolution. If you are willing to innovate, you are taking steps towards crashing your competition.

Just look how the today's "Throw Back Thursday" photo depicting the short history and rapid advancement of cell phone technology.

As an owner and CEO, I am keenly aware that rapid change in business and technology is the “new normal.”  The only way for our company to survive, let alone thrive, is to continuously reinvent and redefine— everything.

This means we can’t go backward, and we can’t stand still. We can’t rest on our laurels and we can’t keep doing what we’ve always done — even if we are doing our best, we need to keep doing it better.

Because at FSO, we never stop rethinking, refreshing and (re)IMAGINING a better future for our clients. 

Yesterday away a case in point. Yesterday at FSO was a great and fantastic day sitting the standard for innovation and perfection in everything we do. 

Over the past weeks our teams have received an amazing shot of passion, inspiration, tools and content supported by the  entire leadership team. We're focused on how to ensure consistency and execution across all of our site openings. 

We are doing some very out of the box and special things for our newest clients and I look forward to sharing our successes in future.

IT IS YOU that makes FSO who we are. Love Life!

Mitchell D. Weiner

Chief Happiness Officer  

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"In the struggle for survival, the fittest win out at the expense of their rivals because they succeed in adapting themselves best to their environment." ~~ Charles Darwin

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LinkUp Thursday: A Great Summer Read

"For anyone interested in technology, entrepreneurship or the price of greatness, Ashlee Vance's new book, "Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX and the Quest for a Fantastic Future," is a tremendous look into arguably the world's most important entrepreneur. Vance paints an unforgettable picture of Musk's unique personality, insatiable drive and ability to thrive through hardship. The book bursts with telling anecdotes and quotes that illuminate who Musk is". - The Washington Post 

Good Morning Folks,

With the holiday season upon us, we'll all be spending more time in airplanes, on boats and on the beach. It might be the perfect quiet time to put away the Smart Phone and enlighten ourselves with an inspiring business story.

I just finished the new Musk book. Has America lost its ability to think beyond the fancy dinners, yachts and houses the quick buck might provide? Our greatest American 'capitalists' did not pursue money. They pursued causes and changed the world in the process. Maybe Musk will get to mars, maybe he won't. Maybe Tesla will be able to deliver a $40k fully electric car, or maybe not. But the essence of his pursuit, the reason he risked everything he owned every day, is the interesting aspect of this book. Capital was a means to an end (eliminate the need for fossil fuels; find a place where mankind can go when we eventually and inevitably destroy this beautiful earth), not the end. Highly recommended and very thought provoking.  Order on Amazon HERE

Recently in a standing room only event at Apple Inc.’s shiny SoHo store, people packed in to listen to Steve Jobs’ biographers talk the iconic CEO’s life and legacy.

But as it now should, the discussion shifted beyond just how the iPhone inventor should be remembered, to who the next great visionary might be. The more important question now is not that of Jobs’ legacy, but whether there is, or will be, anyone in the same orbit as Jobs that has the ability to greatly shape civilization for the better.

For Schlender, the answer is Elon Musk, the Tesla Motors Inc. TSLA, -2.07%  and Space-X CEO, and chairman of SolarCity Corp. SCTY, +0.18% for his space aspirations—Musk ultimately wants to set up a human colony on Mars—and electric car. Musk, he says, has “the track record and ability to build enthusiasm and paint a beautiful picture of how the future should be,” similar to the way Jobs could.

Read this book and you will see why.

Meanwhile we do as Musk does: WOW our clients!  WOW our employees!  Roll out the Red Carpet!  Ensure White Glove Service!  Perfect professional images!  Make a difference to ensure our clients Feel the Experience!

Have a happy, smiling and productive day.

Mitchell D. Weiner
Chief Happiness Officer

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"Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, 

who can cut through arguments, debate, and doubt 

to offer a solution everyone can understand."

~~General Colin Powell 

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ThrowBack Thursday: Napster, MySpace and What We Thought Was Progress and Way Cool in 1999

"Once proud industry leaders like Blackberry, Kodak, Tower Records, MySpace, Sears and Napster who should have been innovating their way towards eliminating the need for iPhones, iPhoto, iTunes, Amazon and Apple, were asleep at the switch and let new upstarts with younger more passionate people and an open minded strategy embrace possibility thinking and eat their lunches."

Good Morning Folks,

They say in this digital generation every ten years of progress is faster and better than the total output of the last hundred years before it.

Today some cases in point.

Hard to believe the young workers already advancing in their careers with us were glued to sites like MySpace and Napster while their parents back in the office could barely open an APP let alone think of themselves carrying iPhones with albums of family pictures and racks of CDs at their finger tips 15 years into the future.

Back then, only the top executives were given Blackberry's and everyone thought "WOW"-- but now they are antiques. 

Well, all that's changed for the better. But to give you your Thursday trip down memory lane I call your attention to this Mashable feature "20 Things Other Than Napster Released in 1999"....

Napster was born on June 1, 1999, in Shawn Fanning's Northeastern University dorm room, and music was forever revolutionized. 

The service pioneered peer-to-peer file sharing, meaning it allowed users to transfer files directly between each other. Prior to Napster, downloading music off the Internet was unreliable. 

But two years later, the Record Industry Association of America filed lawsuits against Napster users who illegally downloaded music and the service was shut down. Napster may be gone, but its legacy will live on. 

Music wasn't the only thing set free 15 years ago. Take a trip with us down memory lane and relive the final year of an innovative century.

Browse the gallery to see 20 Things Other Than Napster Released in 1999 

Technology changes fast and the Internet never stops or pauses for stragglers to catch up. Once proud industry leaders like Blackberry, Kodak, Tower Records, MySpace, Sears and Napster who should have been innovating their way towards eliminating the need for iPhones, iPhoto, iTunes, Amazon and iTunes, were asleep at the switch and let new upstarts with younger more passionate people and an open minded strategy team who embraced possibility thinking, eat their lunches.

That won't happen here. I have never taken my eye off what drives a successful company – continued innovations, changing with the times and having the ability to be flexible, and retaining great talent. FSO is driven by passionate people and the value they create. They are passionate about their work. Their passion and enthusiasm are the fuel that ignites our success.

We enjoy what we do, believe in what we do, and deliver to you a passion that just cannot be duplicated by others in our industry.

We excel at attracting and retaining inspired and passionate people with performance-based rewards and opportunities for advancement. We offer employees the opportunity to work with industry leaders, the latest and greatest technology, and some of the most forward–thinking customers in the world. FSO provides an environment that rewards innovation, is rich in resources and respects the incredibly talented team we’ve built over the last three years.

No other organization provides the level of encouragement and motivation that FSO does and we continue to remain at the top of our industry for recognizing and rewarding our dedicated staff. We believe that our motivated and happy staff, with that twinkle in the eye, skip in the step and  fire in the belly will go the extra mile when it comes to providing the Service Extraordinaire that we promise deliver to each and every one of our clients.

The result of this philosophy is happy customers, workers who can see meaning in their contributions and soaring profits for those clients who place their trust in us.

Thanks to Mashable and Pinterest (for the image) and to you for listening.''

If know of someone who would enjoy working for or with FSO please do not keep us a secret.

Have a GREAT day

Mitchell D. Weiner
Chief Happiness Officer

Learn more about what DIFFERENTIATES FSO here

Throw Back Thursday: Once Upon A Time You Couldn't Do Business Without "White-Out" Correction Fluid

White-out reminds me of that esurance commercial— Beatrice: Instead of mailing everyone my vacation photos, I'm saving a ton of time by posting them to my wall. Friend replies... That's not how this works. That’s not how any of this works!

Good Morning Folks,

A blogger advises newly hired law firm associates...

On your first day at a law firm, you will…
…train with an 18-year-old Harvard freshman who somehow manages to be more put together looking than you are.
…embarass yourself trying to use the unnecessarily complicated “coffee system.“
… go to a two-hour, three-course lunch, at the end of which the associate you ate with will say, with genuine pleased surprise, “hey! only $90 for lunch! not bad!”
…spend two solid hours being trained on the use of Outlook. (Who knew email was so complicated?)
…learn that all summer associates are going to be attending next week’s Beyonce concert in a luxury box, courtesy of the firm.  and...
…walk into your newly-issued office and discover that it is stocked chock full of office supplies, including a glue stick, an “envelope moistening wand”, White Out (now available in legal pad yellow! who knew!), and brand-new, still in their packaging tape dispenser, stapler, and scissors. (The teacher in me nearly swooned.) 

Yes, even in a computer age where word processing programs with spell check have made error correction automatic, White-Out, as it is known, is still used widely.

Directs one law firm to its clients:

When you deliver documents to our office, it helps if you can do the following: 

We rarely need originals.  Please deliver clear copies unless we specifically request the original. 

We want to protect you from identity fraud. Many bank and credit card statements, tax returns, and other documents have your social security number or account number on every page.  Please redact (use White Out) all but the last 4 numbers of any account numbers."

Then again, this is one area of the law where enthusiastic use of White-Out and CIA-grade black highlighters is encouraged.

According to Wikipedia: "White-Out "correction fluid" as it is known generically, is an opaque, white fluid applied to paper to mask errors in text. Once dried, it can be written over. It is typically packaged in small bottles, and the lid has an attached brush (or a triangular piece of foam) which dips into the bottle. The brush is used to apply the fluid onto the paper.

Before the invention of word processors, correction fluid greatly facilitated the production of typewritten documents.

One of the first forms of correction fluid was invented in 1951 by the secretary Bette Nesmith Graham, founder of Liquid Paper.

The best known brand of correction fluid,Wite-Out dates to 1966, when George Kloosterhouse, an insurance-company clerk, sought to address a problem he observed in correction fluid available at the time: a tendency to smudge ink on photostatic copies when it was applied. Kloosterhouse enlisted the help of his associate Edwin Johanknecht, a basement waterproofer who experimented with chemicals, and together they developed their own correction fluid, introduced as "Wite-Out WO-1 Erasing Liquid".

In 1971, they incorporated as Wite-Out Products, Inc. The trademark "Wite-Out" was registered by the United States Patent and Trademark Office on February 5, 1974. (The application listed the date of "first use in commerce" as January 27, 1966.)

Early forms of Wite-Out sold through 1981 were water-based and hence water-soluble. While this allowed simple cleaning, it also had the problem of long drying times. The formula also did not work well on non-photostatic media such as typewritten copy.

The company was bought in 1981 by Archibald Douglas. Douglas, as chairman, led the company toward solvent-based formulas with faster drying times. Three different formulas were created, each optimized for different media. New problems arose: a separate bottle of thinner was required, and the solvent used was known to contribute to ozone depletion. The company addressed these problems in July 1990 with the introduction of a reformulated "For Everything" correction fluid.

In June 1992, Wite-Out Products was bought by the BIC Corporation. BIC released a number of new products under its newly acquired brand, including a Wite-Out ballpoint pen (November 1996) and dry correction tape (1998)."

Today, corporate clients have shifted priorities for law firms. Tired of high hourly rates and a no-bid mentality, corporations are demanding changes in the way law firms bill their clients. And the law firms are responding. There's no room for errors let alone non-billable time spent correcting errors. 

Law firms also are facing the same forces that have driven other industries to become leaner and meaner, namely globalization and technology. Law firms today must compete across borders for business while technologies, such as Internet search engines and online law libraries, call into question the need for legal associates and researchers poring over hard-cover law books and documents.

Once upon a time White-Out was a major innovation and a staple of the legal profession. But today it's going to take more than White-Out to "Wipe Out" competition.

Back office business practices have to change. And though law firms have been slow to change, I think we’re going to see even more innovations in the future. Like outsourcing.

As a result, many law firms are adopting new business models and doing what once seemed almost unthinkable in the industry: cutting hourly rates, bidding for corporate work against rival firms, capping prices, and keeping a sharp focus on the corporate client’s bottom line. In turn, the firms are cutting their own costs in a drive to become more efficient, using fewer attorneys on cases, and moving back-office operations to lower cost,more efficient processes like outsourcing.

I launched FSO with a vision, a dream of changing the outsourcing business in a way that was never done before. At FSO we are driving change and ushering law firms into the 21st Century and beyond. In a sense we are "Whiting Out" the past and delivering the future.

If you’d like to explore how FSO can bring your firm into the digital age, contact me personally at 212-204-1193.

With gratitude to Wikipedia and the Boston Globe for their insights that contributed to this post, and most of all to you for listening.

Have a fabulous, sunny, productive day filled with love and inspiration.  

Hugs all around.

 

Mitchell D. Weiner
Chief Happiness Officer

ABOUT FSO:

• The fastest growing and most successful national onsite outsourcing in the U.S. focused on 1) improving services, 2) reducing costs, and 3) giving employees  an opportunity to grow.
• We outsource functions like: Mail, Copy, Reception, Switchboard, Office Services, Records, Messenger, IT, Concierge, Front & Back Office and much more.
• 1600+ employees, operating in 60+ cities, 225+ operational sites, 98% employee retention & 100% client retention.
• Ranked #24 in Crain’s magazine’s fast 50 and listed to the Inc 5000 list two years in a row.
• We (re)imagine the ways businesses are run.

VIDEO:

Brief "corporate portrait" video shows who we are and what we can do for you HERE

ThrowBack Thursday: "Switching It Up" For Four Generations Working Alongside One Another

“In the legal profession, we are always trying to find ways to be more efficient and as competitive as possible in the market,” said LaFramboise. “Keeping up with developing technology and infusing it in your firm is absolutely essential to accomplishing that.”

Good Morning Folks,,

Telecommunications was always and still is the backbone of any service business.

Smartphones, iPads, BlackBerries, Facebook, LinkedIn—they’re revolutionizing the practice of law. But not everyone has cottoned to this technology. There is a technology generation gap, and bridging it requires recognizing and respecting how attorneys young and old use technology to do their jobs.

Ted Schwartz just got an iPhone, he tells Matthew Malamud for the American Association for Justice.

“It’s terrific!” the 66-year-old attorney from Philadelphia exclaimed, ticking off all the ways he uses it: “as a phone, obviously, but also to send and receive e-mails, and for driving directions.” His voice conveys the astonishment of someone who remembers when making a mobile phone call meant stepping into a booth to use a pay phone."

Communications technology has changed since the days when Schwartz clerked in a law office during law school in 1966. Back then, law offices still had rooms with telephone switchboards where operators manually connected calls by switching out and plugging in numerous wires.

According to WikiPedia, "A telephone switchboard is a telecommunications system used in the public switched telephone network or in enterprises to interconnect circuits of telephones to establish telephone calls between the subscribers or users, or between other exchanges. The switchboard was an essential component of a manual telephone exchange, and was operated by one or more persons, called operators who either used electrical cords or switches to establish the connections.

The electromechanical automatic telephone exchange, invented by Almon Strowger in 1888, gradually replaced manual switchboards in central telephone exchanges starting in 1919 when the Bell System adopted automatic switching, but many manual branch exchanges remained operational during the last half of the 20th century in offices, hotels, or other enterprises. Later electronic devices and computer technology gave the operator access to an abundance of features. In modern businesses, a private branch exchange (PBX) often has an attendant console for the operator, or an auto-attendant, which bypasses the operator entirely.

The first telephones in the 1870s were rented in pairs which were limited to conversation between those two instruments. The use of a central exchange was soon found to be even more advantageous than in telegraphy. In January 1878 the Boston Telephone Dispatch company had started hiring boys as telephone operators. Boys had been very successful as telegraphy operators, but their attitude (lack of patience) and behaviour (pranks and cursing) was unacceptable for live phone contact,[1] so the company began hiring women operators instead. Thus, on September 1, 1878, Boston Telephone Dispatch hired Emma Nutt as the first woman operator. Small towns typically had the switchboard installed in the operator's home so that he or she could answer calls on a 24 hour basis. In 1894, New England Telephone and Telegraph Company installed the first battery-operated switchboard on January 9 in Lexington, Massachusetts."

“I remember clerking one day,” Schwartz said, “and there was no one to operate the switchboard so they asked me to be the telephone operator. I, of course, had all of three minutes of training on this thing. The lawyers were on the phone—some were talking with clients in Hong Kong and California. You can imagine what happened. I pulled the plugs and I had the client in Hong Kong talking to the client in California while the lawyers in one office were talking to the lawyers down the hall. They came out of their offices screaming.”

Today’s attorneys don’t have to rely on a switchboard, and they aren’t tethered to an office. They have cell phones, smartphones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), laptops, and tablet computers. They e-mail, instant message, text message, blog, tweet, and update their Facebook pages.

In law firms’ attempts to go paperless, they’re relying more on devices like the iPad, which can be used in the office and the courtroom. They’re also moving into cloud computing, which requires less information technology infrastructure and frees up office space by moving data storage to Internet-based servers. These technologies also enable lawyers to work from anywhere, not just the office, because they can access files via the Internet.

But not everyone feels the same way about the technology at his or her disposal. A generational conflict is at play, and technology is at the center of the fray.

Rather than making things easier, technology sometimes frustrates communication between legal professionals young and old. Instead of being a communication conduit, tools like e-mail and text messages can be an impediment, which is why the different generations need to constantly work to resolve their differences.

For the first time, four generations are working alongside one another. The WWII Generation (or Silent Generation), born before 1945, comprises five percent of today’s workforce. Baby Boomers, born between 1946 and 1964, make up the largest share of the workforce at 38 percent. Generation Xers, born between 1965 and 1980, are 32 percent, and Generation Yers (or Millennials), born between 1980 and 2000, are 25 percent.

Members of each generation tend to share common perspectives on workplace issues, including communication,1 and each generation has divergent attitudes toward technology in the workplace. A member of the WWII Generation, for example, may prefer to correspond by memo, letter, or personal note, while a Baby Boomer is more apt to reach out by telephone or personal interaction. Generation Xers and Yers are most likely to send coworkers voicemails, e-mails, instant messages, or text messages.2 These two groups rely heavily on social networking tools like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, though mostly in their personal lives.

Take Schwartz, for example. His iPhone is the first mobile device he’s owned that is capable of sending and receiving work e-mail. His colleagues, including his Generation X colleague Pamela Lee, had been prodding him to get one for some time. “I can’t live without my iPhone!” Lee said, perplexed by how she ever managed without a smartphone. “Technology has made things easier.”

Schwartz, on the other hand, is a little less enthusiastic. “It is a convenience, I will tell you that, and it keeps me in touch. But it is a curse because it keeps me in touch. Being connected 24/7 has its drawbacks.”

He is a typical Baby Boomer. They weren’t born into a digital world and aren’t as comfortable with today’s gadgetry.3 Boomers tend not to consider ubiquitous technology-related products and services like Facebook.

However, Generation Y member Drew LaFramboise, who is only as old as the Apple Macintosh computer, thinks of today’s technology as an extension of himself. “I just don’t function as well without it,” said the new attorney from Columbus, Ohio.

Natasha Patel, a career adviser with Columbia University Law School, sees a gap between older partners and younger associates when it comes to knowing when to use electronic communication.

“You’ve got a generation that communicates everything online and a generation that doesn’t rely on electronic communication as its sole method to communicate,” said Patel. If associates want to advance, they’ll need to “meet the partners at their level,” she advises young lawyers. This means forging relationships the old-fashioned way, by regularly meeting with partners and speaking to them in person when issues arise, not just shooting off an e-mail, according to Patel.

Patel also sees a problem with young associates feeling isolated in the work environment, which may be attributable in part to electronic communication. This isolation in turn affects retention. “They are behind a computer in their offices most of the day. And though e-mail is the easiest mode of communication, they should feel comfortable enough to go knock on the partner’s door and strike up a conversation,” she said.

Generation X member Sonia Chaisson of Los Angeles said she is more likely to pick up the phone to speak with an older colleague than to send an e-mail or a text. She also said she sometimes forgets that older people aren’t as hip to the various language shortcuts that younger people use in e-mail and text messages, such as TTYL (talk to you later) or BTW (by the way). “I have to remind myself to write everything out in full sentences when I’m communicating to older adults,” she said.

Betty Barrett, an associate professor of sociotechnical systems with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, agrees with Patel. “I advise my students to be aware of the fact that they are working in a world where the authority figures have different expectations and different sets of behavior patterns,” she said.

But that is not to say Baby Boomers are off the hook. Barrett thinks that each generation needs to recognize and respect that there are differences among them. Baby Boomers need to understand that younger generations think of mobile communications technology as an extension of who they are and what they do; multitasking is second nature to them, Barrett contended.

“I’m of an older generation that was brought up to pay attention to whoever was speaking to you and that a sign of respect was putting your work down when being spoken to,” she said. “Young people increasingly don’t have those values, and that is where we’re seeing conflict.”

Barrett spoke of a manager who hired several young workers. “They were on their cell phones all the time, this manager told me,” she recounted. “He wanted to know how bad it would be to take away the use of their cell phones during the workday.” She warned against it. “It’s something they’ve grown up with. They’re going to panic—they’re going to have a physical reaction to not having that cell phone. Students are coming out of college today with their phones in their hands all the time—it’s part of them.”

Baby Boomers also should recognize that younger generations expect feedback instantaneously. “I will get frustrated if I e-mail someone and they don’t get back to me right away,” Lee admitted.

Just because older generations are less likely to depend on technology the way younger generations do doesn’t mean they eschew technology altogether. Let’s dispense with a stereotype: Most veteran legal professionals today know how to use a computer. Yes, they may still remember the days of typewriters and mimeographs, but they’ve kept up with the changing technology. Still, there is a clear generation gap when it comes to adopting and using new technology and applications.4

For example, although just two-fifths of all legal professionals say they use mobile devices in the courtroom, almost three-quarters of Generation Yers do.5 About half of Generation Xers and just 23 percent of Baby Boomers use mobile devices in the courtroom.

The generations also diverge in their attitudes toward using technology. Compare Schwartz and LaFramboise: Schwartz sees technology as helpful, while LaFramboise sees it as something that’s necessary.

“In the legal profession, we are always trying to find ways to be more efficient and as competitive as possible in the market,” said LaFramboise. “Keeping up with developing technology and infusing it in your firm is absolutely essential to accomplishing that.”

While two-thirds of Baby Boomers think it’s impolite or distracting to use a laptop or PDA during a meeting, just 57 percent of Generation Yers think it’s impolite and even fewer (49 percent) think it’s distracting.

Not surprisingly, the percentage of adults who use electronic tools, such as laptop computers and iPads, trails off with age. For example, 70 percent of Generation Yers own a laptop, while just 46 percent of Baby Boomers do.

Whereas present-day law firms are confronting technology and social media, the law firms of the future will have to confront this new dynamic.

“Young people in many ways, especially the very young,” Barrett said, “are developing earlier and earlier this capability to multitask and interact in an electronic environment, and that’s changing how they are. But that evolutionary change is going to be much slower than the change in technology, so that imbalance is going to always cause some serious dynamics in how the generations perceive each other and their interaction with technology.”

As telephone exchanges converted to automatic (dial) service, switchboards continued to serve specialized purposes. Before the advent of direct-dialed long distance calls, a subscriber would need to contact the long-distance operator in order to place a toll call. In large cities, there was often a special number, such as 112, which would ring the long-distance operator directly. Elsewhere, the subscriber would ask the local operator to ring the long-distance operator.

The long distance operator would record the name and city of the person to be called, and the operator would advise the calling party to hang up and wait for the call to be completed. Each toll center had only a limited number of trunks to distant cities, and if those circuits were busy, the operator would try alternate routings through intermediate cities. The operator would plug into a trunk for the destination city, and the inward operator would answer. The inward operator would obtain the number from the local information operator, and ring the call. Once the called party answered, the originating operator would advise him or her to stand by for the calling party, whom she'd then ring back, and record the starting time, once the conversation began.

While many have written-off the old-fashioned service and personal attention you'd once expect from the phone company and other service providers in favor of voice -automation and voice mail loops ,at FSO we opt for the way it use to be. That's why we answer your calls personallywith active involvement of the most tenured outsourcing leadership team in the business: Myself (Founder, Chief Happiness Officer, & Owner) and Jim Caton (President, Chief Chaos, & Owner) are “hands on” leaders who are intimate with every operation and who remain so for the life of the contract.

Thanks to WikiPedia, The American Association for Justice for helping us prepare this story, and to you for supporting FSO. Matthew Malamud is an associate editor of Trial. He can be reached at matthew.malamud@justice.org.

If know of someone who would enjoy working for or with FSO please do not keep us a secret.

Have a GREAT day

Mitchell D. Weiner
Chief Happiness Officer

Learn more about what DIFFERENTIATES FSO here

Notes:
AARP, Leading a Multigenerational Workforce (2007), assets.aarp.org/www.aarp.org_/cs/misc/leading_a_multigenerational_workforce.pdf.
Id.
Sara J. Czaja et al., Factors Predicting the Use of Technology: Findings from the Center for Research and Education on Aging and Technology Enhancement, 21 Psychol. and Aging, 333 (2006).
LexisNexis, LexisNexis Technology Gap Survey (2008), www.lexisnexis.com/media/pdfs/LexisNexis-Technology-Gap-Survey-4-09.pdf.
Id.
Pew Research Center, Generations and Their Gadgets (Feb. 3, 2011), www.pewinternet.org/reports/2011/generations-and-gadgets.aspx. The authors separated younger Baby Boomers, age 47–56, from older Baby Boomers, age 57–65; the 46 percent of Baby Boomers who own a laptop is an average of the two segments’ proportions.
Pew Research Center, 65% of Online Adults Use Social Networking Sites (Aug. 26, 2011), http://www.pewinternet.org/reports/2011/generations-and-gadgets.aspx.
Id.