Playbooks are a very useful concept that comes from American football where they have many types of “plays” that might be used in a game.
 
In this sense a playbook is “a book containing a sports team's strategies and plays.”
 
However, playbooks have moved out of sport into the business world where they are rather:
 
“a set of rules or suggestions that are considered to be suitable for a particular activity, industry, or job”.
 
A playbook can be used for anything from setting out a series of tasks to be followed to achieve a particular business activity, to rules for running a company. It is a way of capturing processes relating to a complex transaction in a concise way that is easy to follow.
 
Say a technical function such as legal or finance wants their business sales or operational colleagues to comply with some detailed and difficult laws or financial procedures to avoid and mitigate risk. Intricate wordy policies are very often “more honour'd in the breach than the observance” as Shakespeare said in Hamlet and even good presentations can go in one ear and out the other.
 
But set out a series of logical steps, perhaps with graphics and flow diagrams, in a playbook and the complex regulations can be reduced to practical actions that are easy to understand and follow.
 
They can also be used as a means of instructing say professional staff in an offshore location on how to carry out contract or compliance reviews with minimum supervision.
 
I recommend playbooks as a very useful way of removing the fear or lack of interest associated with compliance with complex rules. They can convert sceptics or people who are just too busy to bother into useful and enthusiastic allies who are on board with the team.
 
To adopt a quote from A.A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh:
 
 “Piglet was so excited at the idea of being Useful that he forgot to be frightened any more, and when Rabbit went on to say that Kangas were only Fierce during the winter months, being at other times of an Affectionate Disposition, he could hardly sit still, he was so eager to begin being useful at once.”
​

This week I was at various training and networking events where the theme seemed to be all about compliance – with data privacy, competition law and most notably and memorably the Modern Slavery Act 2015. Who would have thought there is still slavery in the UK in the twenty first century?
 
It’s very easy in a big organisation to write a policy saying the business complies with the relevant regulatory regime. It is duly published and maybe some interactive training takes place. Job done.
 
But is that real compliance? Does it change behaviours and embed compliance in the culture of the company? Does, as somebody said this week in one of the sessions I attended, the issue “come off the page” and be real.
 
It will probably only do this because of pressure of some sort or other. I used to work in the oil industry. On 28th August 1928 at Achnacarry Castle in Scotland three dominant oil companies entered into a price fixing agreement. Many years later an American antitrust action was settled against the major oil companies on the basis of a Consent Decree.
 
Violation meant huge fines and for the oil industry this was very real. If as a salesman you received a call from another company and price was even mentioned, unless you stopped the call immediately and went to tell your lawyer – you were sacked. Fear led compliance maybe but compliance all the same.
 
It’s really important nowadays to actively and effectively comply not only because of legal sanctions but peer pressure and the impact on reputation with bad news in this respect spreading around the Internet like wild fire when there is for example a data privacy leak.
 
“Ethics in business is extremely important; your reputation is all you have in life.“ - Sir Freddie Laker - one of the first airline owners to adopt the "no-frills" airline business model that has since proven to be very successful worldwide with companies such as Southwest Airlines, Ryanair, and easyJet.
 
Notional compliance won’t work. At some stage, it will find you out. It has to be real, off the written page, and instilled in the very fabric of the business.

​I remember that first time when I drove a car alone after passing my driving test – the sense of being in control, and also being slightly scared by the responsibility. I had been under pressure to pass first time as well because every prefect at my school had done so since time immemorial!
 
I was now let loose on the roads where a friend described me as a fast but safe driver. Actually I think I was fairly careful. By contrast I went to visit a friend in deepest Sussex and one of his mates was in a different league. He was slightly crazy and drove around the local lanes like a racing driver. Completely stupid thing to do, but he opened my eyes to a completely different way of looking at driving. He wasn’t just concerned with the road and keeping on it, but what obstacles were there on the side of the road, what were the verges like – how much space there was if he happened to be forced off the road.
 
Years later driving our family Volvo I was indebted to this way of thinking – one of the children had distracted me as I came to a queue on a dual carriage way and I had no time stop. I swerved onto the grass verge and avoided a certain shunt.
 
Recalling this made me think how in working life say in a contract bid sometimes we expect to stay on the road and be safe, but things go wrong. The other side throws a curve ball, maybe introducing a new form of contract at a late stage or requiring a different pricing model. Or a key subcontractor decides to throw in the towel and join a rival bid.
 
Or the nice friendly and sensible in house lawyer is suddenly supplemented with an aggressive external adviser determined to make a mark on the transaction even though they have arrived very late in the day. Suddenly all those liability issues you thought were closed down are opened up again.
 
It is then that we need to think not about staying on the road because we are simply not able to, but about how to react and deal with the new circumstances. Maybe we will run out of the tarmacadam road, but there is still space to drive forward on the grass and mud if we look for it.
 
Oscar Wilde said “To expect the unexpected shows a thoroughly modern intellect”.
 
I think it shows a thoroughly prepared professional who even when the crisis arises keeps the car going in the right direction and the deal on track.

We are living in a different working world partly because of technology but also because of changes in working practices which affect the professions as much as anybody else.
 
Gone are the days when a professional person joined a practice for life. Even that stalwart of home grown talent the law firm Slaughter & May has hired its first London lateral partner.
 
Nowadays there is far more movement between firms and into industry. And more than this the very professional model of coming into an office and working 8, 9 or 10 hours a day is looking outmoded. Virtual firms without offices which attract experienced professionals seeking far more flexible working practices have quietly sprung up to create significant alternative ways of working in the law and in the property markets.
 
Big businesses see the advantages of having a workforce that can flex with demand. Uber and Deliveroo are examples of this phenomena. So in a different way is airbnb. Individuals of all ages are developing portfolio lifestyles carrying out different roles which add up to a “whole” working life.
 
I am indebted to my fellow professional lawyer Richard Stephens of LORS who introduced me this week to the phrase that sums all of this up – the gig economy. It’s like musicians going from one gig to another and being paid per performance rather than being rooted in one place with a salary.
 
Here’s a definition I found on the Internet.
 
A gig economy is an environment in which temporary positions are common and organizations contract with independent workers for short-term engagements. The trend toward a gig economy has begun. A study by Intuit predicted that by 2020, 40 percent of American workers would be independent contractors.
 
Another quote from John McAfee the American computer programmer and businessman sums it up nicely:
 
The gig economy is empowerment. This new business paradigm empowers individuals to better shape their own destiny and leverage their existing assets to their benefit.
 
We’d better all watch out and adjust – as Bob Dylan sang “The times they are a-changing” - right in front of our eyes.