When I began writing this little essay, I was looking out over the snow-covered rooftops in Minneapolis on an early morning waiting for the next session of the NACM conference to begin. This was the second external conference I attended as President of the NCACC. I attended COSCA in December. I truly enjoy these “field trips” because they give me an opportunity to appear as a fly-on-the- wall and observe the organization and process of other “conferences.” I have to say that, although ours can appear small, it excels in the spirit, collegiality, and cohesiveness of our members.
In addition to providing a perspective on the operation of our conference, these experiences also expand the mind on the possibilities for our conferences, including finding interesting and engaging speakers and programs. Apropos of our recent flurry of interest in remote proceedings, at the NACM conference, I was able to hear from and meet executives from “Tech Unicorn”, a woman owned, Dubai-based startup that has a unique spin on remote proceedings. Its product is, at this time, optimized for trial court proceedings, but seems to have some utility for appellate courts.
Thinking about Tech Unicorn and the disruptions, in both the positive and negative sense of that word, that have been laid at our feet recently, reminds me (reminds us?) that there is a problem with becoming too complacent in what we do, be that in relationships, our work, and in our engagement with the world.
As you all have heard, I am lately the Clerk of the Supreme Court of Maryland. That change carried a double disruption: Me moving to a different court (two floors up), and that court gaining a new and powerful sounding name, the SUPREME COURT. The floor change, was, frankly, the most disruptive for me personally. It’s easy to assume that an appellate court, is an appellate court, is an appellate court, but that isn’t correct. Despite the decade I spent managing Maryland’s IAC, it was a very particular appellate court. While the Supreme Court has a nominally smaller docket, it also carries with it many new things to learn: The bar admissions process, attorney discipline, judicial discipline, legislative redistricting. All of these carry a new set of responsibilities and stakeholders to engage. And, normally when you change jobs you don’t get to bring your loyal foot soldiers from your prior position. So, you have to learn a whole new set of personalities, skills, and abilities, to say nothing of learning about your new bosses, the justices.
So, what have I learned from this? Well, I have learned that I am very prone to becoming comfortable with the status quo and, as a result, I had settled into some bad habits that were limiting my ability to lead and manage effectively. Being exposed to a new set of rules and different paradigms, I am now forced to consider the work that I do anew. Mind you, it isn’t as if the work I am doing is vastly different than what I was doing before, simply that I could no longer approach the work in precisely the same forms that I had before.
Likewise, these changes forced me to accept that I wasn’t always the smartest person in the room (truth be told, me being the smartest person in the room is very rarely the case unless it’s just me and the cat). That is to say, with new processes and paradigms, I needed to find out what could and should be done. I couldn’t simply brute force my way through managing and leading using my tried-and-true processes and plans. Instead, I had to ask questions, observe, seek guidance, and read, read, read. That process freshened my perspective on even some of the more mundane tasks associated with being the clerk of an appellate court.
None of this is to say that I didn’t still have something valuable to contribute. While my new staff is very, very good at their jobs – diligent, conscientious, and dedicated – they too had fallen into an understandable complacency about how to do their work. So, I brought them a new perspective and a new approach to solving the very same problems. Together then, my new staff and I have begun to grow, mature, and improve the operation of the court.
Of course, none of this is easy and managing change is fraught with pitfalls and failures that can
cause one to become despondent. But that is where our conference and others like it are so beneficial. We get to come together, share common stories and problems, work through potential solutions, and gain the confidence that we are not alone. In essence, attending our conferences allows us to impart a small, if artificial, change in the works so that we can look at ourselves and our offices with a fresh perspective.
I am finishing this essay in Austin, Texas a week after I started. I am again sitting in my hotel room, but, instead of snow, I am looking over Austin’s riverside development and beyond are the gray-green colors of the foliage that dominates the landscape here. I am attending the Conference of Chief Justices and grabbing another opportunity to watch, listen, and learn about how we can all do business better.