February 07, 2020

legal technology legal innovation legal operations

Over the past 15 years, as legal operations have taken shape, and given the business value it provides, companies have been slower to adopt these practices than one would hope.

When I was doing consulting work at Pfizer a number of years ago, a senior executive outlined for me her concept of the “organizational speed limit.” In essence, every organization that acknowledges the benefit of a change/augmentation in practices will implement at a different pace. The drivers for this are multi-faceted, but start with organizational culture (compliance-oriented or fully empowered/entrepreneurial at every level) and include the current financial state of a company, any market forces, leadership stability and precedence for success with change. Recognizing this will enable internal and external change agents to be patient–if they can calibrate the organizational speed limit.