In our working lives there will come times when deals we are working on go wrong, potentially spectacularly. How we react in many ways defines us as professionals.

I recall working to conclude a complex commercial service contract involving a joint venture structure where I was acting for the lead supplier. As we moved into the day of completion and turned up with all the contracts ready for signature the customer suddenly claimed to have found a procedural problem with our bid which threatened the whole transaction. 

We were all sent off to a side room to await their decision. A very experienced corporate partner from my firm calmly asked what had happened - he had been waiting in the wings for the completion. Then he told us to make careful notes of what had transpired ready to mount a challenge to any adverse decision.

He changed the atmosphere from one of panic to a constructive approach, effectively saying well OK this  has happened, now let's decide what we will do about it.

I once worked for a boss who was a very determined character and reputed, on his commute home, to march across rush hour stations in London ignoring everybody and expecting them to get out of his way, which they generally did.

I tried this out at Waterloo station and just kept my eyes down and walked forward confidently. Amazingly I discovered that everybody moved out of the way. It's something  to do with realising, perhaps sub consciously, that the person coming towards you is not looking and so needs to be given a wide berth. Try it - the only flaw is somebody looking at their phone when the normal rules don't seem to work at all!

What it did make me think however is that whilst this is an interesting experiment it is a very poor model for business. If you just proverbially keep your eyes down and don't look ahead then how can you know what direction your business is going in?

Somebody once said that a characteristic of a great leader was the ability to think and look ahead. Not just to stay in the jungle but to climb a tree and see what lies ahead and what direction to march in.

"Leadership is lifting a person's vision to high sights, the raising of a person's performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations." -- Peter Drucker

Thomas Friedman argues that "The World is Flat" in his best selling book. The combination of fibre optic communications links and increasing computing power has made global deals not just a nice to have but a necessity. 

However it can be difficult enough to conclude say a major outsourcing deal which is contained within one jurisdiction. It is far far harder to do so if the transaction involves customers and suppliers in several countries.

There are many reasons for this chief amongst them being:

(1) the different legal regimes involved;

(2) the best contractual model to use - probably some kind of central master services agreement with a series of local agreements;

(3) tax and financial considerations;

(4) the required intracompany trading particularly in the supplier to facilitate service delivery; and

(5) last but not least the variety of cultures and customs involved. 

Whilst there are many skills and techniques a lawyer or other professional adviser needs for a multi jurisdictional contract the one I have found most useful is the "master document". This means simply creating  perhaps a spreadsheet in which all the countries, companies, services, charging mechanisms, tax treatment and other potential factors are captured identified and captured in an organised manner. This can then be used by all parties as a baseline to manage the creation of documents and processes to delineate the work needed. It should be treated as a live document that evolves as the contract development work proceeds.

This can then be coupled with a project plan to enable a path to be picked through the many intricacies of these complex and time consuming but rewarding transactions to work on.

I spent three days this week at the ITechLaw London conference attended by some 400 leading technology lawyers from around the world. I was privileged to present a session on tower outsourcing at the event. It was I thought an excellent conference at which to learn and to network.

It was great to meet old acquaintances and to make new contacts. As an in house lawyer I am a potential client and a target for networking. I enjoy this and actually relish the chance to meet new people in my field.

What did however strike me was the difference between the effective networker and the novice. The effective networker approaches you at one of the networking breaks and you discuss the conference and maybe some legal issues for a few minutes and establish a rapport and sort of get an idea of the other person and their legal practice. Then you exchange business cards and move on or maybe continue the discussion. If you meet again at the conference you do so as old friends.

The cruder approach is somebody who ignores the "foreplay" comes up to you as you are just going into or leaving one of the sessions, says who they are, how great it is to meet you and virtually thrusts a business card into your hands. I generally then have no idea who they are and have had not time to establish a rapport with them. If you meet them again at the conference they ignore you. This "novice networker" may well not get a LinkedIn invite from me as a follow up!