This week I had the pleasure of attending the ITechLaw international IT conference in Stockholm Sweden and the honour of speaking there. Several people thanked me for speaking and a few said, to my great surprise, that they had been inspired to work on IT outsourcing contracting by talks I had given at previous conferences.
I was quite taken aback and it made me think how each of us in our daily working lives can unconsciously be an inspiration to other professionals, without necessarily setting out to do so. Indeed, I suspect if we did it just would not work.
I remember as a young lawyer observing the senior partner from a leading London law firm participating in the first European bond issue in the service industry. He was only standing in for his regular partner for some reason. It was all very intense with negotiations going late into the night. I first met him in the foyer of the merchant bank reading the Times, looking very relaxed and as if for all of the world as if he was coming to a networking breakfast. However, this was a very misleading impression – he had a very sharp intellect.
We were adapting standard documentation most of which was taken as read. This new lawyer quite calmly and carefully refused to accept this. He kept surprising the other (very seasoned) corporate finance lawyers in the room by pointing out that some complex provision or other just did not work in this new context. They huffed and puffed but almost invariably he was right. He wouldn’t accept that what he was being shown was necessarily correct and insisted on looking at it from first principles. There is a word that describes his approach – sapiential – containing, exhibiting or providing wisdom.
He inspired me to take a calm and collected approach to negotiation always questioning what is presented in a draft. He could never have been aware he had this effect.
I think this is something about recognising that we are part of joined up professions and that we can and should influence and learn from each other. Mother Teresa said: “I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the water to create many ripples.”
And it is also why taking the time to physically attend a conference or other event provides an opportunity to step away from the daily pressures of clients, customers or patients and find out what others think or do – either in formal sessions or in networking breaks.
Maybe the key is being prepared to take the time to be out there and to look and participate, getting away from the desk or the laptop and listening and talking and sharing. Mark Twain summed this up: “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
I was quite taken aback and it made me think how each of us in our daily working lives can unconsciously be an inspiration to other professionals, without necessarily setting out to do so. Indeed, I suspect if we did it just would not work.
I remember as a young lawyer observing the senior partner from a leading London law firm participating in the first European bond issue in the service industry. He was only standing in for his regular partner for some reason. It was all very intense with negotiations going late into the night. I first met him in the foyer of the merchant bank reading the Times, looking very relaxed and as if for all of the world as if he was coming to a networking breakfast. However, this was a very misleading impression – he had a very sharp intellect.
We were adapting standard documentation most of which was taken as read. This new lawyer quite calmly and carefully refused to accept this. He kept surprising the other (very seasoned) corporate finance lawyers in the room by pointing out that some complex provision or other just did not work in this new context. They huffed and puffed but almost invariably he was right. He wouldn’t accept that what he was being shown was necessarily correct and insisted on looking at it from first principles. There is a word that describes his approach – sapiential – containing, exhibiting or providing wisdom.
He inspired me to take a calm and collected approach to negotiation always questioning what is presented in a draft. He could never have been aware he had this effect.
I think this is something about recognising that we are part of joined up professions and that we can and should influence and learn from each other. Mother Teresa said: “I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the water to create many ripples.”
And it is also why taking the time to physically attend a conference or other event provides an opportunity to step away from the daily pressures of clients, customers or patients and find out what others think or do – either in formal sessions or in networking breaks.
Maybe the key is being prepared to take the time to be out there and to look and participate, getting away from the desk or the laptop and listening and talking and sharing. Mark Twain summed this up: “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
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