First, the fundamental concern: will the change of mission jeopardize nonprofit status (and that typically means jeopardize 501(c)(3) status, which means deductibility of donations by donors)? The answer depends on whether the new mission falls within the law’s requirements to qualify for 501(c)(3) status. Easy example: an organization dedicated to educating children about music switches to educating children about art: no problem. Hard example: an organization that switches from operating a homeless shelter to advocacy, lobbying, and litigation about homelessness issues. Maybe that change would institute a review by the IRS to determine whether the rules were all still being followed, but the inquiry is always going to be fact-specific unless the organization changes so dramatically that you already know the answer to the question. (Example: the homeless shelter converts to a bed and breakfast.)

The trap you should not fall into is confusing the mission (“charitable purpose” is the catchphrase) of the organization with its operating model, financial structure, or even “mindset” about the issues. Many nonprofits charge money to at least some of the people who benefit from their programs or services. I gave a talk at a conference this past weekend for AutismNJ, which charges parents, educators, and professional members for attendance. That alone has no determinative effect on their nonprofit status.

Second concern: does this change affect our donors’ view of the organization?

Third concern: does this change affect our employees’ and volunteers’ view of the organization?

These last two concerns are readily handled together because they are essential components of any strategic planning exercise: determining the effects of a proposed strategy on the ecosystem around the organization. This question arises for nonprofits and for-profits alike. The answer for any group is going to be different, based on the particular history, composition of these stakeholder groups, and the rationales for the proposed changes.

I take the original questioner’s point of view to be best expressed as “I don’t like the new changes and so I’m going to complain.” And then that person will probably leave, looking for a new organization with similar goals and models and operations to the old group before it changed.

Separate from the inherent interest in the notion that the pack may be far more powerful than the cigarette (and I like both Why We Buy and Call of the Mall by Paco Underhill as modest introductions to some of these ideas) is the question that doesn’t occur to the author but matters a lot to us here.

Could the federal government impose similar restrictions on cigarette manufacturers in the US? We know some labeling requirements are permitted (the Surgeon General’s warning), but what about the rest? Is the design of the package constitutionally protected speech? What “message” is there, or is the “expression” enough?

I’m not a commercial speech guru, but I’m sure some of you are: what’s the story on limits on packaging regulation, and has it changed because of Citizens United?

And for the non-lawyers, would requiring bland packaging be an acceptable compromise to (1) allow smokers to continue smoking, i.e., not outlawing them entirely, (2) reduce uptake by new consumers, i.e., people who are now our children, and (3) allow adults the opportunity to make bad decisions? And if we can tax the price of a pack as much as we want (and do), why not do this too, or instead? After all, if we’re not going to outlaw cigarettes, what can we do that works to reduce smoking?

Is sharing knowledge a good strategy? I obviously think so, particularly when what you share is just an introduction AND when potential clients realize that their circumstances do matter and can’t be addressed in a few hundred words (or more) on incorporation.

Giving tools to my clients helps them become better consumers of my services. I don’t want to charge someone $250 to spend an hour explaining the same answers to the same questions. Not only is that not very interesting, but it’s fundamentally not my value proposition (there’s a reason I point certain people to Nolo.com for books) and, therefore, actually devalues my services in the eyes of clients.

In my field, competence is assumed; for my clients, excellence is required: they trust me with their most complex problems as well as the straightforward management of legal issues. I can’t imagine having any client who I didn’t respect enough to teach.

Recently, Wilson Sonsini released a “term sheet generator” tool, that allows start-ups to create a menu-driven term sheet that serves to guide a conversation with a [WSGR] lawyer. I think it’s a great idea — why not teach our clients to be educated consumers, not only of the contracts and deals and transactions that third parties bring to them, but of our own services as well?

Teaching my clients is part of who I am: it shows them that I respect them at the same time as it shows them my appreciation for the issues they’re facing.

1. If the culture change doesn’t lead to better metrics, what’s the point for the business? The metric might be reduced employee turnover, but “engagement,” “excitement,” and “commitment” should all lead to some kind of improvement in productivity, customer satisfaction, or even revenue. And each of these should be connected to its actual impact on the free cash flow creation attributed to your corner of the business. If you don’t know what’s improving, you need to figure that out before moving ahead too much. In terms of reasons change is slow, almost as strong as “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” is “if you’re gonna fix it, you better fix it.” Indeed, they’re probably two sides of the same coin, or maybe even the same side of the coin.

2. Employees need security. Unless you have control over their jobs, they, as you, have reason to fear changes that will inevitably, in their minds, be used to blame them for poor future results. If you want more power in this regard, put your job on the line and negotiate for more budget/P&L control. Put your compensation at risk, and then your employees may feel more open. The Ranger/Infantry version of this is “lead from the front.” Employees take their cues from the top, and there are lots of levels of “top” in a big company.

3. Companies don’t “get it.” They can’t, any more than the Army can “get it.” Parts of the Army get it (special operations) most of the time, but then you realize that even then, it’s about individual leaders. When lots of good leaders find and develop more good leaders, you get organizations that are set up for success, but that’s just opportunity, not a guarantee. So if you get it, then you bring your team along bit by bit and show them “the Mark way” and why it’s better, demonstrably better, than what they were doing before. (NB: this ties to the “what metrics are improving?” point.)

My personal “favorite” leader, the one guy I will follow anywhere if he tells me it’s important , says it very clearly: you lead people, you manage things.

(For those who might not understand the Army, here’s a more famous version of the same thing: be the change you wish to see in the world.)

My colleague Pierre Khawand at People-OnTheGo has presented his Accomplishing More with Less workshops to teams in the past, and we’ve discussed how this sort of simple tool has a disproportionately positive impact on how a team gets along over time.  People regularly object that “but there are always exceptions!” C’mon, I say, you’re a bunch of smart people, right? (No one ever objects to that!) There’s no reason that a group of smart people can’t come up with a standard way of dealing with exceptions and emergencies. In the linked post, it’s simple:

EMERGENCY? = Use phone

The understanding here is that if you know that people will check email at roughly the stated times, and your need is legitimately more urgent than that, you can use the phone. The implication is that the team leader has instituted, as part of the team culture, the rule that phones are to be used only for emergencies and that they have to be available to receive emergency requests. That’s a rule that others might disagree with, but that’s not the standard.

When asked by people what rules they should have, expecting us to pull out a laminated “rules of the office” list, we always go back to the underlying situation, habits, and culture. The key to this sort of SOP is that it should be organically generated by the team to improve/ensure adoption and compliance.

(NB: no specific reason for two POTG posts today other than that I’m clearing through emails and getting things written that needed writing.)

This boingboing post refers to two compounds as “powerful yet nontoxic” and “safe.” Luckily the commenters are smarter and note the fact that sodium hydroxide, conveniently labeled as NaOH for those who passed high school chemisty, is LYE. Ugh. Not recommended.

Knowledge is not a dangerous thing. Stupidity is dangerous. Thinking you have knowledge is more dangerous. Wisdom is knowing where your personal line between knowing and just thinking you know lies. (Yes, that’s a lawyerly skill — well-trained lawyers are typically very good at helping you discover that line during their questioning.)

There are a range of problems that I see with this proposal, and here are some suggestions as well.

Law firm tuition has gone up in great part because of the rise in starting salaries, which have now almost doubled from my time as a first-year in a large downtown NYC firm. If salaries go down, will law schools adjust? My guess is no, which means that the “lucky” students who get big-firm jobs at reduced salaries will have to toil even longer just to break even. It will take a very long time to take the slack out of the system so that young lawyers of the future are “merely” equally stressed financially compared to their peers at today’s firms. A better solution might be to modulate pay among first-years by letting them choose their own level of hours for pay deal. Let’s remember that associates are generally not to blame for a poor business environment; they may cost money, but without them, the firm makes a lot less money. Their marginal contribution is high.

This last point is the one that bears repeating because we must remember that the market will adjust (perhaps too slowly for our liking) to normalize returns for associates. But once someone has already bought a law degree, there’s no real clawback on the price, particularly when even extreme cases don’t get to discharge student loans in bankruptcy.

My colleague and friend Prof. Tomas Nonnenmacher posted this followup of sorts based on some more recent articles about what life in NYC can be like for a lawyer without a high-end job.

[At the risk of reposting, here are my additional remarks on the subject:]

“Segmented” is a nice word for it; “segregated” would be better if it didn’t have unfortunate overtones.

Here are some underlying data:
1. This chart spurred the recognition of the problem — it details the recognition of a bimodal salary distribution for starting salaries that many law students do not know about or understand.

2. Comments and the issues for law students (as well as practitioners)

3. More salary curves, this time including curves for 1991 and 1996.

What is important to assess, and so far lacking except in anecdotal evidence, are two more things: first, a usable comparison of schools matched up to these salary curves, and second, an analysis of law school tuition increases matched up to these curves.

It is my fear that law schools generally have increased tuition as a result of the increases in some lawyers’ pay, both capturing more of the benefit from these lawyers and capturing excess benefits from lawyers who land elsewhere on the curve.

Pushing the dialogue even further out, it’s clear that this salary distribution shift is “bad” for many would-be lawyers because they just don’t (a) know about it or (b) reliably assess where they’ll end up on the curve. As for (a), my prescription is above — some uncomfortable data will help everyone figure out what’s going on and improve the use of resources for everyone: students, schools, firms, and society. As for (b), it would be trivial with the additional curves in place to give people a real sense of what their “odds” are. That would shift some activity at the margin, which is all we can expect, and everything that we expect.

But is this salary distribution and the trends that are exacerbating it bad for society? More law schools => more new lawyers => higher supply of [mostly lower-priced] lawyers => lower legal fees for clients as a whole. Maybe society gains if there is widespread availability of legal advice at $50/hour. Or there will be a lot more plumbers and fewer lawyers, which may be good: after all, I have yet to find a line where Shakespeare says “let’s kill all the plumbers.”

I will complain, however, about the article’s use of the word “sheepskin” to refer to a diploma or college degree: “…dramatically undermining any value a sheepskin adds.”

A few weeks ago, there was an episode of the show “House” that had a character, a working-class fellow who owned a scrapyard. Talking to his son the night before graduation, he mentions wanting to watch his son “get that sheepskin.”

Please! Who has ever used that word, deliberately and honestly, in casual conversation? “Sheepskin” is one of those words that no one actually uses and should have died out years ago. My belief is that it’s kept alive by writers who know lots of words and simply get bored with using “diploma” or “degree” or anything similar. “Sheepskin” has a nice Shakespearean tone to it, and if challenged, the writer can always launch into the “well, in the olden days, they actually…” story and further impress people about her extensive knowledge of stuff that matters much less than we thought it did in college.

Full disclosure: I was an English major at a liberal arts college, and I really liked it. I read a lot, and I am trying to write more. I seriously considered becoming a professor. To add insult to injury, I have an Ivy-League law degree and started out as a litigator, one of those people who writes long persuasive argumentative documents and letters. I have already walked the path these people are, with one small difference. I’ve listened more to the people around me and realize when language is just not appropriate.

These phrases have effectively turned into jargon or argot [see, I did it there just to prove a point -- argot is a French word, borrowed by English, that means slang], even though they don’t meet the traditional definitions of those terms. “Sheepskin” isn’t a term of art among anyone, but using it creates the same effects as the use of jargon: exclusion, hubris, and confusion.

For lawyers, I’ve found the “Dictionary of Modern Legal Usage” to be very helpful at eliminating the stumbling-block phrases that seem to infect legal writing more than you think. I like this book so much that it’s my standard gift to new lawyers and law students that I know. It’s that good.

I’ve always liked Quentin Tarantino’s comment about his films; he said that even if you didn’t like the story, the film, or any number of other things, you had to admit that he wrote great dialogue that sounded realistic. People don’t always talk like they do in Jackie Brown or Pulp Fiction, but they could.

When you’re editing your own writing, think about your audience and catch those words that they wouldn’t ever write themselves. Eliminating the deadwood words will freshen up your writing and help it flow more smoothly.

Please add your suggestions for similar words that should be retired in the comments; I’ll do a round-up post once we have enough nominations.