How can I identify opportunities in my own work?

So, now you’ve seen what other legal teams are doing at Josef. But how does this relate to you? How can you identify the right opportunities in your own work? How can you decide what to build in this program?

Below are the top 5 tools and practices used by the best legal teams in the world to identify opportunities for automation.

A. Analogous inspiration

We touched on “analogous inspiration” in the previous session. But what is it, exactly?

Analogous inspiration involves examining other products, services, or experiences to determine how you can make improvements in your own life. For example, the University of Wales Hospital System improved the accessibility and organisation of their surgical equipment after studying F1 pit stops!

To find your own “analogous inspiration,” have a chat to the bot in session 3 and look at the examples of what people are doing in your space or in relation to your work.

Additionally, think about your day-to-day life outside of work. What parts would you like to automate and why? The answers are often tasks that are tedious (washing clothes), unpleasant (cleaning out kitty litter), or better done by a robot (remembering to do something).

Taking these answers, apply it to your work. What work is tedious or unpleasant or would be better done by a robot? This is a great starting point for identifying tasks that could be automated. 

B. Interviews

What could be better?

Margaret Hagan, director of the Legal Design Lab at Stanford University, asks her clients this question early and often. It often leads to unexpected process improvements and improved communication. It might sound scary, but a short interview can be an easy and cheap way of unlocking all kinds of insights.

We suggest you interview someone you work with or a client of yours to find out what could be better. Ideally, this will give you some insights to help you decide what to build over the course of this program. 

If you already know what you’d like to build, speak to someone who looks like your future user to test your thinking.

Here are a handful of questions to guide the conversation…

1. What could be better about the work I do for you?
2. Are there any specific pain-points? For example, inconveniences or inefficiencies?
3. Is there any work that I do that you think could be improved through automation?
4. Would you like to be able to self-serve any of the work that I do for you?

We know that asking these questions can be scary! But knowing the answers will help you to learn more about the impact of your daily work, and will let your clients and colleagues know that you care.

C. Process mapping

Process mapping helps us to drill down and understand precisely where a problem lies. It enables better planning by articulating exactly where our automation opportunity sits in the broader business context. Process mapping consists of the following steps: 

1. Think of a process
2. Map it out
3. Find the sticking point
4. Drill down 

Think of something at work that isn’t working. This could be a meeting that you don’t like, a task that takes too long, or a question you’re asked too often. 

Now take a minute and map it out. Draw it on paper or write it down as a list (bullet points are fine). Think about the following questions …

• Where does the process start? 
• What people, systems and activities are involved?
• Where does it end?
• What’s the output?

Now, map these out too. Write them all down in order and connect them with a line or arrows. 

Now it’s time to identify the sticking point. What parts of the process are the problem? Highlight them on the page.

An example of a process that we improved recently was Josef’s All Hands meeting, a company-wide meeting where we provide weekly updates. After process mapping, we realised that for the meeting to run better (and on time!) we needed a shared meeting template for the whole company. (Teams had been bringing their own agenda and formats to each meeting, which had caused confusion and delays).

It was a simple fix to what felt like a hard problem to solve.

D. Reverse brainstorming

Think of a process that doesn’t work. Now ask yourself: if that problem didn’t exist, how would you make sure that it did?

Does that sound like a ridiculous question? Asking how to create a problem is a technique called reverse brainstorming that is designed to improve creativity. Sometimes asking the question, “how could we create a problem or make it worse?” is easier than trying to come up with solutions.

For example, imagine a doctor’s office is trying to improve its waiting room experience. Rather than looking for solutions, the team asks themselves how they could make it worse. 

One idea is to keep patients waiting as long as possible, with no idea of how long their wait will be. When they turn that idea on its head and try to solve that problem, they come up with a new solution: giving patients an estimated wait time when they check-in.

E. Currency

One final way to decide what to automate is to think like a journalist.

Journalists start each morning with a blank computer screen and a simple question: what is on people’s minds? A news story can be well written and well researched, but if it isn’t newsworthy, no one is going to read it.

What makes a story newsworthy? Here is a simple list put together by the authors of Writing and Reporting The News. We find currency (take into account what is on people’s minds) and usefulness (help the audience answer questions and solve problems in their daily lives) particularly relevant for our context.

Keep these questions in mind as you look for something new you could automate.

Now, move on to the next Session to learn how to validate your idea.