No matter what you do and how good you are at your profession or job there will always be somebody who disagrees with your approach either generally or in specific situations.

If, for example, you believe in teamwork and not individualism, or at least that teams are  a framework for individuals to thrive in, somebody will always disagree and point out something like "statues were never constructed for teams". 

When Columbus sailed off in 1492 in three sailing ships the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria and discovered America, or at least the Caribbean, instead of a route to the East Indies there were still people who thought that since the earth was flat he would fall off the edge of the world.

It is almost always the case that someone somewhere will see things differently and as far as you are concerned be a "non believer". A different opinion is healthy and  helps to sharpen and test your view. The existence of an opposing view does not mean however that hard won ideas  and perspective should be abandoned. If Columbus had listened to all the naysayers he never would have set sail from Spain and left the relative safety of Fifteenth Century Europe behind - and history would have then been very different.

I gave a short talk this week to an audience of lawyers on the part that understanding process plays in transformation.

Any practitioner of "lean" thinking will advocate breaking down an activity into its component tasks, understanding these and then seeing if they can be done more efficiently or economically or maybe even missed out altogether.

In a manufacturing process this is straightforward enough. In looking at say the legal role in a corporate or an outsourcing transaction it seems at first site more difficult to disaggregate the tasks of a lawyer. In fact any legal transaction has different stages and once perhaps a certain professional pride is put on one side these can be quite readily discerned.

For example, in both corporate and outsourcing deals there is usually a first stage of due diligence where a considerable mass of information is organised, disclosed and evaluated. Is this a task that should be done by highly paid lawyers or by their trainees - or maybe nearshored or offshored to teams of lower paid professionals in Belfast or Mumbai?

What struck me in the conversations after the talk was how much progress we as a legal profession have made in understanding the need to understand process and then to find ways to improve. Maybe when Richard Susskind posed the question in his book "The End of Lawyers?"   a few years ago he sparked a change in our profession, or at least a recognition of the need to change as technology advances. 

I find this both exciting and encouraging for the future of the profession.

I came across the acronym W.A.I.T. for the first time recently. It stands for Why Am I Talking in the context that you should be listening instead of expressing your opinion.

It is very easy as a professional, when you tend to have seen lots of types of similar problems, to listen to a new client for a short time and then jump in with a swift conclusion "Ah I understand = here is the answer". Q.E.D. and on to the next client.

Apart from being extremely discourteous this is also presumptuous as it is often the case that the initial story hides a deeper problem that is only drawn out by active listening and careful questioning.

So instead of talking we should listen more and practice W.A.I.T. in our professional lives. I suggest that not only will we be more respected as a result but we will provide a much better and more relevant service to our cients.

In the old days you went to an office as a professional person, spent many many hours there and then went home. If you had a meeting people came to your office or you went to theirs. The law firms I worked in had splendid meeting room suites just for this purpose with lot of leather chairs and original artwork.

Now not only has technology freed us from this daily grind by enabling remote working but n the last 10 years a new phenomena has evolved - the coffee shop worker.

Now if I am early for a meeting or perhaps can't find a work station in my regular office I drop into a nearby coffee shop, buy a cappuccino, take out my laptop and work. If I am really lucky I can find a power point as well.

And if I want to meet anybody why I simply invite them along. And the convivial atmosphere can be quite conducive to doing business - I once held a potentially awkward appraisal in a coffee shop and it went really well.

So society has moved on here for the better in my view and I now have my favourite coffee shops all over London where I can work and hold pre-meetings or whatever I need whilst partaking of my favourite beverage.