As you know if you’ve been following my Twitter stream, or checking Zen in the last couple of months, last week, I attended the Legal Marketing Association’s Annual Conference in Orlando.
Tuesday morning, the conference business sessions officially kicked off with our keynote from Jeff Williford from the Disney Institute, who talked about Disney’s Approach to Business Excellence. When he began by telling us that he’d be speaking for 90 minutes, I think the audience was worried, but the presentation was so engaging and informative that the time really flew. And although his presentation was about how Disney creates a truly magical experience here, there were a lot of parallels for the legal industry – we’re also a service industry after all! Any of the particularly important points that relate to law firms will be in bold throughout the post.
He told the audience that Disney employs more than 60,000 people from 65 countries, with 10% of those being interns, and warned us that his presentation on Disney’s approach to business excellence would be like drinking water from a firehose. But he did say that Walt Disney reminded everyone in 1955 that "it all started with a mouse."Continue Reading Disney’s Approach to Business Excellence – An LMA Recap
The second half of Alex Larkin’s presentation addressed the opportunities for foreign and domestic investors in the electricity generation sector. He began by saying that the government needs to make some good decisions to facilitate this, specifically when it comes to electrical pricing. Electricity is just too cheap at this point to attract foreign investors to come in and build power plants. They won’t make any money if they’re forced to sell at 5 cents per kilowatt hour.