Much has been written here and elsewhere about the utter significant problems inherent in the billable hour system. Indeed, there seems to be something meaningful happening, if only rhetorically. The question remains, when will conduct match rhetoric? When will inside counsel begin to insist on budgets with meaning, on alternative fees, on their counsel having skin in the game? When will outside counsel offer, and really push, alternative fee arrangements that are mutually beneficial? When will we be sufficiently motivated to take that first step into the unknown?
Tom Peters has an interesting entry today about Steve Jobs and his commencement address at Stanford. The entire address can be read here, but the gist of the speech is captured in Tom’s slides. Speaking of the importance of work in our lives, Jobs says:
“ Sometimes life's going to hit you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love, and that is as true for work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work, and the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking, and don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it, and like any great relationship it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking. Don't settle.”
Having told us of the importance our job plays in our lives, Jobs has a few words of advice on how to do our jobs in a manner that is personally rewarding:
“But someday, not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it's quite true. Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice, heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is Secondary.”
Having told us of the importance of our jobs and the need to do things our way (think, Frank Sinatra singing “My Way”), Jobs concludes with this:
“Stuart and his team put out several issues of the The Whole Earth Catalogue, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-Seventies and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath were the words, "Stay hungry, stay foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. "Stay hungry, stay foolish." And I have always wished that for myself, and now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you. Stay hungry, stay foolish.”
Maybe we don’t need to be out there on the lunatic fringe (to quote Jack Welch), but then again, maybe what seems bold today will seem as mainstream as Apple just a few years from now.
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