If you have never experienced a World Cafe session it's great fun and very visual. It encourages participants to express their thoughts and ideas in pictures and diagrams all of which get pulled together in large drawing prepared by a professional artist which captures the themes in one coherent whole. 

I was reminded of the benefit of using pictures for a proposal by a legal colleague this week. This was surprising in a way because images are counter cultural for lawyers. Our means of expression in drafting contracts and providing legal advice is words. Using language for clear articulation and precise meaning are the tools of our trade. We tend to frown on the use of pictures and diagrams, grudgingly accepting tables of figures in legal agreements.

And yet sometimes drawings can be a far more effective way of explaining a concept or a process whether legal or otherwise. You don't have to be an artist either to use a flip chart or whiteboard to set out some basic ideas. It is quite easy to draw simple diagrams and pictures without being Leonardo Da Vinci.

Apart from this being fairly obvious once you try, it seems that there is some scientific support for this approach as a large part of the human brain is used to process images, which it does very quickly and efficiently. Think about how fast we recognise the faces of friends and celebrities. I saw Rod Stewart in a restaurant this week and recognised him instantly even though I have never seen him in real life before.

So as lawyers in a making presentations and proposals and even in that holy of holies the legal contract maybe we should start making more use of images to help express concepts and communicate better.

I don't like January. All that money spent over Christmas comes back to haunt you. The tax man cometh. The weather is horrible. It goes on for ever. No holidays. There is no hope!

It's like that feeling when as a lawyer in private practice a client emails you just as you are packing up on a Friday evening with a complex contract to be reviewed or drafted very urgently. Or worse still, and as has happened to me, someone calls you in and says your long established legal practice is breaking up and you are going to join a long time competitor.

However I find that the best reaction in these dire situations, as with January, is to look at what in practice you can do. Forget the inevitable emotionally sinking feeling. Rise above it and think about how to respond to the challenge. January can be a time to take stock and set goals for the year - or to go skiing. Contact your client and find out what they really need done before Monday and why. The partnership change maybe an opportunity in the longer run for career change and development.

I do not pretend that reacting positively and constructively is easy. But there is a choice. We can either sink in a mire of self pitying despair locking ourselves metaphorically in our homes and offices for January or the duration of the work crisis.

Or we can look for a way forward, recognising that disruptive work and change like Januaries are inevitable facts of life and challenges that approached in the right way we can all rise to, conquer in the broadest sense and also learn from. After all the shortest day has passed and the days are getting longer.

​This week I almost missed meeting a friend for coffee because we both made an assumption about where we would meet up that was slightly wrong.
 
The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy tells of a war between two distant galaxies accidentally caused by a dreadful insult originating from Earth. When the war torn galaxies finally discover their mistake they send a joint battle fleet to destroy our galaxy.
 
"For thousands more years the mighty ships tore across the empty wastes of space and finally dived screaming on to the first planet they came across - which happened to be the Earth - where due to a terrible miscalculation of scale the entire battle fleet was accidentally swallowed by a small dog."
 
They also made a wrong assumption and suffered terrible consequences!
 
In contract negotiations making wrong assumptions about, for example, the motivation of the other side to enter into the contract in the first place can have equally disastrous effects. If a supplier thinks the customer is really motivated by cost savings, when in fact they are determined to obtain a quality service to replace a poor one, it will adversely affect how the contract negotiation is approached.
 
A simple and often forgotten way to avoid working under the misapprehension of a wrong assumption is simply to find out what motivates the other side. Asking is an obvious way of doing this - which in this case will have the dual benefit of persuading the customer that the suppler is actually interested in what they might want. 

We use to order online and have groceries delivered by one major supermarket chain to our house. The van would come along the road, the driver (who was perfectly pleasant) would bring the numerous plastic bags to our door and let us unload them. We often had substitutes - where you order say apples and get pears. The timing of the deliveries was hit and miss. Eventually one delivery came early when we were out, was left outside - and turned out to be half of somebody's order!

So we abandoned online shopping for a year or so and then tried again with another supermarket. This one delivers on time. There are rarely  substitutes and the driver is also very pleasant, but not only does he bring the crates into the house to our kitchen but also helps unload them.

In the anti super hero film Hancock the "hero" is advised by a publicity agent to tell people how well they are doing. He tells the police forces as he helps them at a  serious crime scene, "Good Job", "Good Job" to the point where they tell him to just get on with helping them. 

But there is a serious point. The difference between a good and an indifferent job or service performance may be marginal and based on small things but it makes a real difference. As with our supermarket deliveries the first caused us to abandon the service and the second really pleases us.

In professional service delivery we should all be trying to understand and deliver a "Good Job" for our clients - they will reward us with faithful continuity of custom. 

As we enter another new year I was thinking about the advice a wise old man once gave to a younger man who was about to be wed and having doubts about his future married life.

"I want to get married" he said "And I love my fiancee, but what will happen if when she is my wife she turns out not to be as nice as she seems now and is always unfaithful to me. Won't I have a miserable life?"

His elderly mentor sagely replied:

"Not a bit of it my young friend. Do not fear your future. One of two things will happen. First and most likely your new wife will be sweetness and light and always faithful to you and bear you many children and you will have a happy and fulfilled life. However if by chance she turns out to be inconstant and unfaithful then the experience will allow you to grow spiritually and you will become a great painter, poet or writer. So either way you win!"

This is excellent advice and not just for couples contemplating marriage. In a professional business life on many occasions things work out differently than planned, but with this attitude and approach every outcome can be seen as a positive - it's all just a matter of perspective and how you view the result.

All best wishes for a happy, positive and prosperous New Year in 2016.