In-house counsel are for change, before they are against it

“Change is hard,” says first lady Michelle Obama. “You Can Keep the Change,” sarcastically sings Hank Williams, Jr. And there are the change flip-floppers on both sides, who are for change, before they are against it.

Presidential politics aside . . . if you’re trying to change things like work habits, personal competencies, and work loads – change really is hard, even for in-house counsel. So before you lead your next change, make sure you spend enough time thinking through what obstacles may be thrown in your path and how to best overcome them.

Below are a few suggestions on change management, including a couple of solid lists-of-10 for your endeavor.

Coaching tips for the “leadership sauce” of in-house counsel

How is it that some in-house counsel have strong relationships with their corporate clients, peers, and bosses, while others don’t? Why do opportunities seem to come faster for some counsel than for others with similar talents? Is there a “secret sauce” for success?

Every in-house role requires a combination of technical and personal skills (think of these as ingredients). These ingredients - properly measured and mixed - comprise a "leadership sauce" that varies by counsel (you), and by your company, boss, team, and client constituents (because they’re all different, too). If your leadership sauce is a little off, commit yourself to improving your personal competencies and adapting them to every new situation.

Get buy-in: leadership lesson from "Salmon Fishing in the Yemen"

There will come a time in your in-house career when you are a visionary. And you fail at it, because you misjudge what you can accomplish and how. That's my leadership take-away from Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, a British romantic comedy-drama film viewed this weekend.

If you're in a legal-compliance risk-mitigation role, you often see things others do not. You have this vision where the organization needs to go. You do a decent job at communicating the issues, the risks versus benefits, and the range of reasonable solutions. You may encounter problems, however, if you skip critical next-steps, as illustrated in Salmon Fishing.

Embrace your "difficult boss," in-house counsel

Whether your boss is the CEO, the general counsel or managing counsel, you should want your boss to be reasonably demanding. A boss that challenges you helps you get better at doing your job as in-house counsel.

If your boss is grumpy on any given day, that's a prerogative of being "the boss." But if you find your boss to be very "difficult," is it your boss who needs to change, or is it you?

Conventional wisdom is that you can't change your boss. So start thinking about how you can change you – to help you embrace your difficult boss.

Employees See "Death" When You Change Their Routines

The headline is a bid dramatic, but the point is made.  If you have experienced a reaction to change "that's far bigger and more negative than anything you expected," and you blamed yourself for doing something wrong, it may be that you did everything right "except underestimate [the employee's] fear of death," according to the blog post, Employees See Death When You Change Their Routines.

Getting Past "We Already Tried That"

Funny how non-legal business units confront the same issues as legal teams when managing through a difficult change.  For corporate law departments, recent challenges include cutting costs, increasing response timeliness, and accomidating changes in the business units.

For those who have been in-house for some time, you may have heard the familiar refrain "we tried that" already.  John Kotter provides a few suggestions for responding to that refrain and encourages us to "never get sucked into the black hole of " what happened before.  Read Kotter's blog at Getting Past the "But We Already Tried That" Response.