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LawFirms

An Example of the Complex Pressures Facing Law Firms
ByMike McBride July 28, 2021July 28, 2021 Reading Time: 2 minutes

So, if you are a firm with Morgan Stanley as a client, maybe the easy thing is to just say “hey, our huge client wants us back in the office and wants to have in-person meetings, so you’ve got to come back”.

But it’s never really that simple, is it? What do you do if your staff and lawyers really don’t want to be in the office full-time? What if some of the same people who first attracted Morgan Stanley to your firm are willing to leave to work at a firm that is more flexible?

Now that you are only recruiting among the legal folks who want to be in the office five days a week, is your talent up to snuff to keep Morgan Stanley as a client?

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Career

Oh Look Someone On Wall Street Doesn’t Understand How People Learn
ByMike McBride July 26, 2021July 25, 2021 Reading Time: 2 minutes

Let me fix it for you, what JPMorgan is really doing, is weeding out anyone who might actually want to work differently than the way Wall Street has always worked.

It’s almost like they have no interest in actual diversity, employee mental health, or work-life balance. Of course, we know they don’t. Wealth Management isn’t about the people who work for you, it’s about how much money they bring in, period.

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Security

Your People Are Routing Around Your IT Security
ByMike McBride July 23, 2021July 24, 2022 Reading Time: 2 minutes

That combination of things points to one, larger, issue. There’s a pretty large communication gap between IT and business users. The security restrictions that exist are getting in the way of people getting work done, and rather than ask for them to be changed, users simply work around them using their own tools, maybe even their own laptops, or network connections, and the IT folks don’t even know this is happening.

That’s a recipe for disaster. It might be time to work on communicating with your users, and of course when I say “communicate” that absolutely means listening too.

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Links | Security

Linked: Spyware meant to track terrorists was used against journalists, too
ByMike McBride July 21, 2021July 20, 2021 Reading Time: 1 minute

Yeah, no one ever misuses these kinds of tools, right? Nope, nothing to worry about here, they are only ever used to target bad guys. You have nothing to fear from them.

Whatever.

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Career | Links

Linked: Brain Research Confirms Stupidity Of Back-to-Back Meetings
ByMike McBride July 20, 2021July 20, 2021 Reading Time: 1 minute

The research just proves that we already know from first-hand experience, right? We’ve all been in back-to-back meetings, leaving one Microsoft Teams or Zoom call just to click the link to another, and it’s obvious which team members have done that and aren’t mentally prepared for the current meeting.

We all know it. We all schedule our meeting to end at 25 or 55 past the hour so that we don’t make people do that, and then we still run to the top or bottom of the hour anyway. Sometimes even over.

Proving, once again, that we suck at meetings. And yes, I include myself in that.

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Career

Do You Have Work Boundaries?
ByMike McBride July 15, 2021July 14, 2021 Reading Time: 4 minutes

t’s also about being respected enough to allow our work to actually fit into the rest of our lives, as opposed to having it interfere with the rest of our lives. Human beings have boundaries between their work and the rest of their lives. Numbers on a financial sheet are generally not provided that level of respect and concern. Which one would best describe the people who work for you in the culture you have created?

You might be very surprised to learn that it’s not what you thought it was from your view in the C-Suite.

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