Fast forward to the law firm of the future

Last week along with nearly 300 legal technologists, I attended ILTA’s INSIGHT event in London. I have long been a fan and supporter of ILTA. When I worked in a law firm, I found the support forums extremely useful with helpful, friendly and positive exchange of ideas among peers.  A few years ago, I attended my first ILTA conference in Orlando, Florida. It was HUGE.  Absolutely nothing in the UK has anything to compare.  Something like 3000 attendees and such a diverse range of educational tracks from management skills to litigation support to end-user training to application development.

I attended the first foray of ILTA into the UK back in 2005. Since then, the event has grown in stature and confidence. I think there’s a general acceptance that last year’s event missed a beat. Wrong date, wrong location, wrong venue. However this year, back at The Grange, St Paul’s, the event was back in its stride.

For me, the keywords that throughout the whole event, were future, innovation, and creativity.

Global futurist Rohit Talwar of Fast Future presented the keynote speech sharing his key findings and actions arising from ILTA’s privately-commissioned Legal Technology Future Horizons project. He discussed the critical challenges that will face law firms, and specifically CIOs, in order for their business to survive and thrive. He made the case that the point of future insight thinking is to be prepared so that it is not a shock when it happens. Whatever “it”may be. Successful businesses are those that look ahead to the future and predict the challenges ahead, and what opportunities these present. He pointed out that often our most talented staff are ‘stuck’ doing ordinary work.  One of the keys to success is to master that ordinary or maintenance work so that our best talent has the opportunity to be creative and innovative. Truly a fascinating presentation to which more detail was added in the two follow up sessions after the keynote.

Another interesting presentation was from Adrian Nish, Head of Detica’s Cyber Threat Intelligence team at BAE Systems.  I encourage you to read the white paper The Shylock Malware.  The case presented is that cybersecurity is now a mainstream risk for businesses. Cyberspace remains hard to secure because the internet is borderless, anonymity is easy, attacks can be automated, and the infrastructure overall is weak. The threat for the legal sector is more likely to come from cyberspies than cyberactivists but make no mistake: law firms are targeted because we manage time-sensitive data and access to a law firm provides potential access to corporate intellectual property.

I then joined an interactive change management discussion led by Cliff Fluet and Penny Newman of Lewis Silkin LLP. What did we learn? That when dealing with change and changing behaviour, the technology is the least of our concerns. Process is part of the battle however the biggest challenge is dealing with the people. Lawyers, and therefore law firms, are by nature, skeptical and risk-focused. Whereas often for technologists, firefighting is more exciting than fire prevention. For change to be successful, there needs to be a clear purpose with clear goals as well as partner or senior management buy-in.

We then listened to  Caroline Ferguson of Allen Overy LLP and Stuart McRae of IBM argue whether Is Legal Anti-Social? In some ways, yes legal IS anti-social. Lawyers are risk-averse, work in hierarchical and siloed structures, like to have the answer, whose value is contacts and knowledge (and thus don’t always feel comfortable sharing). And yet, lawyers ARE social because relationships are key to what they do. Knowledge itself is not power, it is the application of that knowledge that is valuable.  The takeaway from that session was Caroline’s motto “Try and Fail but Don’t Fail to Try”.

Overall ILTA INSIGHT was a great event with lots of networking opportunities throughout the day, over lunch and drinks afterwards. If your firm is not a member, I encourage you to explore membership. It’s not that expensive and everybody at all levels in IT will benefit. Perhaps see you at ILTA INSIGHT next year?

If you attended ILTA INSIGHT this year, what was the highlight for you?

Three killer reasons to outsource your IT service desk

Whether or not to outsource the IT service desk is a hotly debated topic in law firms. In my career, I have managed a wide variety of service desks: decentralised, centralised, in-house and outsourced. I have also worked for a leading outsourced service desk provider. This experience, as well as conversations with Heads of IT and IT Directors, and various outsourced providers, gives me insight into what prompts a law firm to explore the outsourced model.

1.     Better manage spikes in volume

Every firm, no matter how robust your infrastructure, no matter how well planned your change initiatives, every firm will experience spikes in call volume to the service desk. How do you manage these currently?

A reputable outsourced provider has systems in place to effectively manage spikes in volume. Typically your firm will be serviced by a dedicated team of analysts with a contingency team in place who act as a backup in times of outages or other spikes call volume such as technology rollouts, office relocations, firm mergers etc.

The contingency team or backup pool is often a select group of very experienced analysts who have demonstrated their ability to handle users at all levels, from both the technical knowledge and interpersonal skill perspective. Outsourcing provides you and your firm with increased resilience and robustness.

2.       Give away the staffing headaches

In the survey that I did earlier this year among law firms, 14% of respondents had last sent their IT service desk on formal training more than two years ago. In today’s fast-moving technology world, two years without any formal training, be it technical or interpersonal, is a long time.

Often working on a service desk is a thankless task. Indeed one of the survey respondents cites “motivation in the face of thankless lawyers” as their biggest challenge. Staff need to be valued however they also need to be stimulated and interested to maintain their motivation and focus.

A service desk analyst working on one desk for one firm, learns all the ins and outs of that firm, and then that’s it, stagnation. Whereas an analyst working in a team of analysts working for a few different firms, has the opportunity to learn many more applications.

Often it can take years for an internal promotion opportunity to arise. This means that there is very little career progression available, leading to higher staff turnover on the service desk. High staff turnover leads to increased recruitment costs and the quality of service suffers while your new analysts come up to speed. Whereas the outsourced provider can offer specialist career progression from service desk analyst to team lead to account manager.

Giving away the staff retention headache, also hands over the pain of managing absences whether for training, sickness or vacation. Let the outsourced provider manage resourcing levels.

3.       Consistency in support 24×7

As remote access improves, users are more mobile, work over longer timeframes yet still want consistency in support. For those firms with international clients or offices world-wide, it is important that the end-user experiences the same level of support at 3am as at 3pm in every location. This is where, in my view, an in-house service desk just cannot compete with the outsourced model.

Using in-house staff to manage a 24×7 or 20×7 service desk is expensive. Dedicated overnight staff need to be managed – absence management can be an even bigger headache when you are faced with trying to organise sickness cover at short notice. Additionally because they are not called upon to use their knowledge as often as daytime staff, technical knowledge or skills can flounder when faced with an urgent client situation. Using an outsourced provider for your off-peak hours, you leverage the provider’s ability to use the same staff to service several clients, and therefore reduce costs.

So let’s hear from you, what would make you consider outsourcing the service desk?

If you do decide to explore the outsourcing model further, do read my earlier blog on the questions that will make your outsource provider squirm.

Vegas, Baby!

Did you watch the TV series the World’s Busiest?  I watched the episode about Shinjuku in Tokyo, billed as the world’s busiest station.  Never mind the crush of commuting on London Underground, that’s nothing compared to having a team of customer service agents physically pushing 4000 Tokyo commuters onto a train designed to carry 2000.  As for the busiest hotel – that’s in Las Vegas.  Guess where ILTA‘s next conference is.  Yes, Vegas Baby!

If you have not been to the ILTA (International Legal Technology Association) Conference and you work in legal technology, seriously you need to put this one on your agenda for next year.  This year’s event takes place 18-22 August at Caesar’s Palace, Las Vegas. Why such a huge venue, you might be wondering?  They NEED the space.

The first time that I attended, I was completely blown away by the size and scope of the conference: something like 3000 attendees at the four-day educational and networking event.  It was like going to a month’s worth of training days all rolled into one.  The range of topics (200+) is so broad: from The Evolving Role of the IT Trainer to How IT Contributes to the Success in a Merger & Acquisition to Using Your Service Desk KnowledgeBase More Effectively or Microsoft Exchange Server 2013.  The event is all about Inspiration, Education and Networking.

If you don’t know ILTA, do look them up.  ILTA is the leading education and peer-networking organisation for anybody that works in legal technology.  Although their members are predominantly in the US, there are many UK law firm members too.  The Annual Conference is the jewel in their crown but they also have informative egroups, regular regional meetings, webinars, seminars and they produce useful data and whitepapers on relevant topics.  For example, the 2012 Technology Purchasing Survey.

Later this year, on 14 November, ILTA comes to the UK for ILTA INSIGHT.  The UK event is not (yet) as big an event as the ILTA Annual Conference, however it is packed full of educational and networking opportunities.  The event is aimed at CIOs, Directors, Managers, and technologists. The 2013 event provides 15 educational sessions across three tracks:  Technical, Litigation Support and Knowledge Management.  What’s more, it’s FREE to register (just click here) for delegates from law firms and law departments.

However if you’re going to the big Vegas event, and it’s your first time, make time to plan ahead which sessions  to attend and which ones are the ‘must not miss’; take lots of business cards; follow up on the contacts that you make via LinkedIn, Twitter etc; use the hashtags specific to each session.  And check out Natalie Alesi’s top tips too.

Have fun and let us know what you enjoyed most.

#ILTA13

The real story behind service desk performance in law firms

In my last blog, I shared some questions that you should ask the provider if you outsource your service desk. Plan-Net plc is one such provider.  Richard Forkan, Director at Plan-Net plc, has responded with what he sees as the real story behind service desk performance in law firms.  Read Richard’s guest blog and if this rings true at your firm, leave a comment and let us have your thoughts.

The Real Story Behind Service Desk Performance in Law Firms.

As a managed services provider to the legal industry we get to see the mechanics of existing Service Desks before we engage. Our approach is to take 12 months’ worth of tool and ACD data and analyse it to the point where almost every second of a Service Desk’s life is accounted for. The results make interesting reading and raise a number of issues that are handled in ways that are pretty much unique to the Legal industry.

To Manage, First You Must Measure.

Basic metrics of a Service Desk’s performance can be constructed in a number of ways but the ‘giveaway’ measures are usually;

• First Time Fix (FTF) – We define this as a fix applied on the first call without further escalation or input from elsewhere,
• Service Desk Resolution (SDR) defined as a fix applied by the service desk without escalation regardless of time taken, and finally,
• Abandonment rate (taken from the ACD and usually split with a threshold.)

The ACD metrics tend to be a fair reflection of fact, but a Service Desk tool will only produce statistics based on input, so it is important to ascertain exactly how comprehensively the staff use it before relying on the data. (Our view is that everything should be recorded for a number of good reasons but that’s a separate article on its own.)

‘Requirements’ Versus ‘Needs’ – an Important Distinction

So, assuming the content, definitions and categorisations are correct it is then possible to start taking a view of the effectiveness (or not) of a Service Desk. But before any judgements can be made it is important to understand the culture of a business and ‘requirements’ of the user community.

I use the word ‘requirements’ here because this is the first issue that occurs in Law firms, but not in too many other commercial environments. When assessing a user group for support we would usually be thinking about ‘needs’, by that I mean what type of support does a user actually ‘need’ to be able to perform his/her role to an acceptable standard.

From this set of needs we would build the most efficient way of delivering them to achieve maximum service for least cost. (The key word here is ‘efficient’).  However, uniquely, in some Law firms a culture exists where a user’s ‘needs’ are confused with a user’s ‘requirements’.  This can be as simple as the standard mantra of ‘I know the business is a BlackBerry house, but I require an iPhone’.  This is not to say the user shouldn’t necessarily have an iPhone, but the distinction must be made that it is not something they need to do their job.

‘Role Model’ – Best Practice Service Desks

When building Service Desk models however, ‘needs’ versus ‘requirements’ can produce sizable cost differences and cause huge issues with Service provision and not just because one of the Partners insists on Apple kit.

As a Service provider our starting point with a Service Desk is always efficiency.  By that I mean, how is the fastest, most efficient fix speed and accuracy achieved to enable the user to return to working (billing) as fast as possible.

As a starting point, the way to achieve the greatest efficiency is to build a desk that fixes as many issues as possible at the desk either on the phone or by using remote tools.  To achieve this it is important to make two things clear to the business.

The Service Desk staff at the first line are just that, and are not permitted to wander off and perform desk side fixes.  A Service Desk analyst can achieve far more by not spending chunks of the day physically moving around.  Evidence proves, that when configured correctly, a model like this can achieve 90%+ SDR which supports the argument.

Users are required to call the desk and not encourage face to face attention from IT.  Genuine desk-side fixes are then attended to by a dedicated team of a size applicable to the volume of work.

So, Why Isn’t Everyone Doing It?

The issue with this model for some law firms is that users, and by this I mean Partners, are able to, by the nature of their position, dictate their ‘requirements’ to IT which are often understood or accepted as “needs”.

The most costly of these ‘requirements’ is the perceived need for a Support Analyst to physically attend a desk for the simplest of issues or, in worse case scenarios, actually ‘hang around the work place just in case there is a problem’.  This has a double whammy effect on costs.

Firstly, desk-side support staff are more expensive than service desk staff, and are not as productive because of the amount of time spent in transit between floors, buildings, rooms etc., so why have more of them than absolutely necessary.

Secondly, instead of a user receiving a fix remotely in a short period of time, he or she will wait for a desk-side visit, chew the fat with the analyst, move out of his/her seat and finally get back to work after a needlessly long period of time.

The Partners’ reticence to change is understandable though.  The combination of the constant pressure to account and bill for every minute of your working day with any past frustrations or even just perceptions of unreliable, faceless Service Desks is more than a fair rationale for wanting excessive desk-side presence to ‘sort your IT problem out quickly’.

However, if proper time and investment is made to address Service Desk issues and turn it into a responsive and high-performing operation, Partners’ confidence and satisfaction will definitely increase, and at the same time the whole firm will immediately benefit from the efficiency gains and subsequent increased billing and profit.

About Plan-Net

Plan-Net has established a strong track record as an IT partner and specialist to the legal profession.  They deliver IT support services and consultancy to a large number of law firms, including 14 of the top 15 law firms in the UK.  Plan-Net has a number of engagement models from Co-Sourcing to Managed IT Support Services and Outsourcing.  For more information, contact Richard at richard.forkan@plan-net.co.uk. 

Five questions to make your outsource provider squirm.

I will cover the question of whether or not you should outsource your service desk in another article. Today I will share with you five questions that outsourcing providers might not want to be asked.

1. What is your staff turnover?
   Some outsource providers survive by paying relatively low salaries to relatively inexperienced staff.  In a job that is often seen as a stepping stone to a career in IT, good staff retention indicates a good working environment where best practices are key. The result for you, the client, is better service from analysts who have learned the intricacies of your particular firm.
2. How do you manage spikes in call volume?
   No matter how sophisticated and well maintained your technology, there will be the occasional incident which triggers a spike in demand, e.g. a power outage or router failure.  It is essential that your provider can cope with the spike, after all, consistency in service is one of the main selling points of outsourcing. Professional outsource providers have a pool of overflow or backup analysts.
3. How often have you had to pay penalties for breaching SLAs?
   In your typical outsourcing contract there will be financial penalties if the provider fails to meet one or more Service Level Agreements.
4. How often have you lost a client, and why?
   Client retention is a good indicator of the quality of service of your outsource provider. Going from an outsourced to in-house service desk is expensive and complicated; firms only do this for a very good reason. However, given the level of mergers and acquisitions in the legal profession, there could be a valid reason for your prospective provider losing a client.
5. How will you ensure that your analysts know as much as our in-house staff?
   The key to success in any outsourcing project is having a robust transition. That means the outsource provider should be asking you detailed questions about your policies, procedures, applications and customisations. You must be confident that the provider has the skills and experience to transfer that knowledge to each and every analyst. The analyst must be able to handle calls effectively and professionally from Day One.  Beyond implementation, there needs to be a process in place to ensure that the provider’s knowledge base remains current, even if your own leaves something to be desired.

I would be interested in your comments. What questions would you ask?

Always-On Generation – are you ready for them?

For a while now, I have been flirting with the idea of inviting guest bloggers to share their thoughts on my blog. A cycling injury has hastened this idea forward and I am delighted to welcome the charming David Bullock, IT Manager at Bond Dickinson.  I have known David for a few years now and most recently collaborated with David when he instigated the first law firm specific Service Desk Institute event in Newcastle earlier this year.

Over to David.

“Over lunch last week with a colleague, we were discussing what we had been up to with our respective families the previous week.  He mentioned that he had been hoping to take his young family out for Sunday lunch.  On telling his family of the planned event, his youngest aged 5 piped up and asked Dad “Does the place we are going to have Wi-Fi?” Dad replied that he didn’t think it did and so the youngster promptly took his pants off and refused to go.

Those of you reading this will have your own views on this as a parent or otherwise, but the thing that struck me was the expectation of such a younger generation to see the ability to have an “always on” connection as a normal part of life and that anything less would be disrupting their digital world.

This generation of “always on” as they are called, are going to be in our workplaces in 10-15 years. Prior to that we have the Gen X and Gen Y coming through to deal with.  How well is your legal workplace geared up for dealing with these digital natives?  Will they accept a locked down standard issue desktop or expect to bring in a mobile device of their own and expect to hook it up into our systems and work from whenever they can get a connection (4G of course – 3G is SO last year!).

Will these digital natives require the same level of IT Support as we are providing for our staff, many of whom are still reluctant to try things themselves before calling the service teams. How will IT Support, as we know it now, change in the years ahead? Will the promised consumerisation of the workplace mean that the need for support will be lessened?

I have my own thoughts and views on this – such is the purpose of a blog it would be good to hear from you out there in legal IT support land on what you think will happen in the next few years with the increase of digitally aware new entrants. The legal world is slowly changing but will it have changed enough to attract these IT savvy students?

And finally before you make further judgement on my friend and his Wi-Fi obsessed son, it later transpired he was using a tablet app to test himself on his spellings for school the next day. That said, whatever happened to taking a set of crayons and a colouring book to keep them amused – don’t tell me there is probably an app for it already.”

Thank you David @davidthebullock for your thought-provoking blog.  I am left wondering how the service desk will cope with the always-on generation.

Get in touch srb@sherrybevan.co.uk if you would like to have a go at writing a guest blog.  Here are some thoughts from Darren Rowse on what’s involved.

Want to be a Service Desk Finalist?

Not long now to the SDI Conference 2013 which takes place in Birmingham this year (18-19 June). Always a great conference to attend if you are involved with managing a service desk AND you want ideas to inspire you and your team to increased performance.

Some organisations are no doubt getting excited and nervous in equal measures because the event incorporates the IT Service & Support Awards.  Congratulations to this year’s finalists:

Best Managed Service Desk Finalists
Endava
Fujitsu UK & Ireland – Financial Services Authority
JMC IT

Best Large Service Desk Finalists
Cheshire Shared Services
Liverpool Direct Limited
Virgin Media

Best Small Service Desk Finalists
NTT Data
Severn Trent Water
StepChange

Best Vendor Customer Service Award Finalists
Bomgar
Cherwell Software
Marval Software

I believe that service desk leaders need to be inspired and passionate about what they do, in order to inspire their staff to deliver fantastic customer service.

I am positive that all of the nominated organisations and the finalists themselves were able to demonstrate the ways in which they deliver excellence in service.  They will have inspirational and passionate leaders who believe in themselves and their teams, and take action to be better.

What else do you need apart from passion and inspiration in order to deliver excellence? Well, according to the Law Firm Service Desk Report 2013, the Top 8 mostly highly valued competencies are:

–       Customer service

–       Friendly and professional telephone manner

–       Communication skills

–       Problem-solving

–       Technical knowledge

–       Interpersonal skills

–       Business understanding

–       Team player

Do you aspire to be a Service Desk Award Finalist?  How does this list compare to the most highly valued competencies on your service desk? I’d love to hear from you.

In the meantime, good luck to the Service Desk and Vendor Finalists.  Fingers crossed for Tuesday 18 June when the winners are announced.

Be Inspired, Take Action, Be Better

The SDI Conference 2013 in Birmingham later this month is a fantastic event for anybody involved with the service desk.  SDI wants you to Be Inspired, Take Action, Be Better.

Here is a quick exercise that you can do right now, in less than 10 minutes, to take action from your inspiration.

First, take a clean sheet of paper and a pen.

Be Inspired, Take Action, Be Better.  What are the first thoughts that come to mind?  What steps or actions can you take to be better?  Think positive – don’t worry for now about the ifs or buts.  Just write those thoughts down.

Now think again.  What else could you do?

And if you had all the resources and time in the world, what actions would you take then?

What would your manager suggest?

And now think of just one more option.

What else?

What next?  You now have a list of actions that you could take to be better at what you do.  Look at your list of actions and ask yourself which would be the quickest to complete?  Which would be the easiest?  Which would bring the best results?  Now underline the actions that you will actually take.

Finally, look at those underlined actions – what are the steps to achieve those actions?  What is the first step?  Now when can you take that first step?  When specifically?  Not just “next week” but when exactly next week?  On which day?  And at what time?  Now put it in your diary.

On a scale of 1 to 10, how committed are you to taking that first step?  If you are at anything less than a 10, what would it take to move you just one number higher?  So for example if you feel your level of commitment is 7 out of 10, what would it take to get to 8 out of 10.

Fantastic.  Congratulate yourself – you have just self-coached yourself to be inspired, take action and be better.

Some people are simply brilliant at self-coaching.  However for most of us including me, it is easy to be distracted or not take it seriously.  This is when it can be extremely beneficial to work with a professional performance coach.

Coaching supports you to get where you want to be much more quickly than if you are left to your own devices.  It is founded on the principle that we all have what we need to move forward.  The role of the coach is to help you identify what you want and work with you to find a solution.  A coach supports you on a one-to-one basis, creating a safe environment where dreams and challenges can be shared without judgement and repercussion.  An external coach has no hidden agendas as well as an objective investment in your success.

If you would like to find out about working with a performance coach that specialises in service desk teams and managers, get in touch for a free 20 minute discovery session to find out if coaching is right for you or your team.

To celebrate SDI Conference 2013, I am offering a 35% discount on my regular session fee if you quote #SDI13 when you book 4 or more sessions before 30 June 2013.

Visit my website www.sherrybevan.co.uk for more information about me and the services that I offer.

The first Law Firm Service Desk Report

I love the IT service desk.  It has an absolutely pivotal role in IT and the user’s perception of the service that we offer. My Law Firm Service Desk Report is all about the IT service desk in legal IT.

And, yes I admit it – I am a bit of a geek when it comes to data.  I love my Excel spreadsheets.  I love pivot tables, filtering, conditional formatting, formulae, charts – just everything about Excel.

I feel that the IT service desk can sometimes get short shrift from several sides: from the end-user who is upset that the technology is not working; from management who is looking to deliver service excellence; from the 3rd level support teams who do not want to be bothered by questions from users.

As I have suggested before, the IT service desk in a law firm IS different to the service desk in other sectors.  Lawyers are demanding and expect nothing less than excellence and the technology can be complicated.

I have always been passionate about the delivery of excellent customer service and the pivotal role played by the service desk.  Being able to analyse and share the available data, to improve customer service, has always been very important.

It has been a true labour of love, to pull these different passions together to produce the world’s first Law Firm Service Desk Report.  This report is borne of a long-time frustration that most service desk surveys and reports are not law firm specific and therefore the data therein is somewhat irrelevant to our environment.

The data in the report which is launched today is based on responses from more than 30 law firms to a survey conducted during January and February 2013.  Further insight was gained from interviews with Law Firm Heads of IT, CIOs, Service Delivery Managers, Recruitment Agencies and ITIL Consultants.

The responses collected represent a variety of law firm sizes, locations and environments.  The firms who responded range in size from 35 to 5000 users with a huge diversity in the number of staff working in IT, from 2 to 230.  In total, the report represents 25,000 law firm users and 61,000 calls per month (731,000 per year).

I will be very interested to hear your thoughts on the data presented – if you work for a law firm, how does your service desk compare?  And if you are reading this and work in a different sector, how different is the law firm service desk?

Dream Corner – inspiring women of all ages

Recently I had the pleasure of meeting Viv Oyolu who is the inspiration behind Dream Corner.  Dream Corner is a radio show dedicated to inspiring women of all ages to follow their dreams and passion. The show interviews female entrepreneurs and female leaders in the City. Viv’s aim is to create an audio library showcasing female leaders who have achieved career success, to inspire younger women who want to pursue a career within any of these sectors.

Well, I can tell you, Viv is one amazing woman herself.  Our interview was booked for one hour, however our conversation after the tape had stopped, carried on for at least another 90 minutes. Viv has a fascinating story about how she came to be a radio presenter.  I’ve talked about the importance of passion before – Viv is the personification of what it means to be passionate.

Viv is a lovely person who really helps her interviewees to feel relaxed and comfortable.  She had given me some questions ahead of time; on the day we started with my marathon training and why I have chosen to fundraise for English Federation of Disability Sport before moving onto my career at Arthur Andersen and McDermott Will & Emery. We talked too about my passion for supporting women as an NCT Breastfeeding Counsellor and the voluntary work I have done for NCT.

It was fascinating to reflect on my career to date and what has led me to where I am now as an independent IT consultant and coach.  I am a firm believer that we make our own luck in that it is down to us as individuals to take personal responsibility for our professionalism, integrity, personal development and career decisions.  On the other hand, I was blessed with a strong and inspirational leader while I was at Arthur Andersen, and similarly again when I was at McDermott.  Why not listen to the interview and hear my personal thoughts on what it takes to be successful.

Oh, and of course I would love you to sponsor me for my first marathon, thank you!