More - Better - Different

Frequently legal professionals ask me how do I get better? How do I grow? How do I improve? Which are all good questions, and if you don’t ask yourself these questions, you should!

The first step in getting better, growing, and/or improving in our client development process is to figure out where you are starting. Without knowing the starting point it is impossible to know how to get to where you want to go. Not only how to get there, but also how long it will take, how difficult it will be, etc.

So how do we evaluate the starting point? The best way is to use three simple questions: 1 – What went well? 2 – What went okay, but not really well? 3 – What did not go well?
Now asking yourself the questions is not the key to growth and improvement – the true benefit comes in answering them. However, you must ask them to be able to answer them.

1 – What went well?

When we ask ourselves this question it allows us to understand what worked, and why. Understanding this helps us identify what we need to do more of. (MORE)

2 – What went okay, but not really well?

When we ask ourselves this question it allows us to understand what kind of worked, however did not work as well as we would like. Understanding this helps us identify what we need to do better. (BETTER)

3 – What did not go well?

When we ask ourselves this question it allows us to understand what did not work, and why. Understanding this helps us identify what we need to do differently. (DIFFERENT)

Think of this as MORE, BETTER, DIFFERENT – when we understand this, it allows us to understand our starting point. Once we know this we can chart a course to work on getting better at client development.

This three question concept works wonderfully when seeking to improve performance. Our clients find ways to use it for many things in their professional worlds – as well as many things in their personal worlds. So let me ask, what do you need to do MORE of, what do you need to do BETTER, and/or what do you need to do DIFFERENTLY? Define answers to those questions and you'll find yourself consistently improving.