How to map a contract for productivity

You always think to the Checklist Legal Podcast, digital thinking for lawyers. Hi and welcome to the Checklist Legal Podcast. I am Tharity White, corporate lawyer and contract productivity enthusiast. Checklist Legal is a blog, a podcast, an e-book, all designed to help you as a lawyer or legal professional craft contracts that your clients love, design innovative tools to increase access to justice, develop new skills as a T-shaped professional and supercharge your personal and professional productivity. This is episode 10 of the Checklist Legal Podcast and today we are going to be covering how to map a contract for productivity. Very visual episodes, so we'll see how we go during this on the podcast. But as usual there is lots of show notes and links and templates and diagrams at checklistseagord.com/podcast. Let's go to episode 10 for the show notes. Today's mindset is it's complicated brackets but it doesn't have to be, so that's our mindset today. We are starting out complicated and mapping things out so that they don't seem as complicated as they used to. Today we're going to cover how to create a mind map and my favourite application for making mind maps, how to create a swim lane process map for more complicated contracts with lots of moving parts, and of course our actionable challenge will be later on in the episode that we have each time. So in the last episode we learnt how to apply triple-o productivity to the contract process and we covered why a lawyer's process expertise is sometimes as important as their legal expertise. We looked at why for a contract to operate an optimum productivity all the users of a contract must row together with complete trust in each other, the contract document and the contract process. The last episode was that why overview of contract process mapping, just broadly covering the way to use triple-o productivity to improve your contract processes and productivity, this episode is going to delve deeper into the how of contract process mapping by looking at specific tools we can use to map out our contracts. Academics and professionals are now realizing it's not enough to know how to write well, lawyers must also learn to engage others in their process, illicit information from them and communicate core messages effectively to different stakeholders. This is where mind maps and visual mapping tools like swim lane diagrams can really help. So what is a mind map? A mind map is an easy to use tool that you can brainstorm thoughts organically without worrying about order or structure. It allows you to visually structure your ideas to help with analysis and recall that is the definition from mindmapping.com. At a basic level, a mind map can be a pen and paper or a whiteboard and a marker. You pick a starting point, for example a customer is interested in a product and a salesperson presents them with a contract and then you map out each step in the process. I think mind maps are awesome. Studies seem to show different levels of effectiveness for their use in students, but there's also a lot of positive studies on mind mapping. Although these are from an admittedly biased but well-educated source, Tony Buzan, who is the inventor of mind maps. There's links to the show notes, links in the show notes for all of those resources and academic studies. Now you can use a pen and paper if you choose or a whiteboard to do your mind maps, but I love an online application called Coggle, C-O-G-G-L-E, for quickly mapping out processes and of course link in the show notes for that. Why are Coggle mind maps so great? I think they're great because they're easy to make. You just point and click drag and drop, types of time. They look cool because you can use pretty colors. They're really quick to make. They're easy to change if the process changes. There's an app so you can get it on your phone and they're online. You can present on them if you need to when you're talking to people over a conference call. You don't need to develop a slide deck. You can just easily present. You can save them as an image or a PDF. They feel really brainstorming and collaborative when you're doing them in groups as you're mapping out processes as a team. You can upgrade from the free version to a premium Coggle account for around $5.00 dollars a month. This is an advert. You can go out and get it. I'm not affiliated with them in any way. I don't think I have a referral link on the web page but I don't know that I get anything out of that so feel free to use any mind mapping technology that you want to. This is just one that I know works for me but there's lots out there so test and find the one that you like. How do you create a contract process mind map? I've tweaked Tony presents 7 steps for mind mapping for contract process mapping. Step 1 is to start in the center of the whiteboard or page. For using pens or whiteboards or sticky mud notes, starting with a central idea in the middle gives you the freedom to go up, down, left or right anywhere around that central idea. You might have process mapping on one side and then you might have random ideas you get for document improvements on the other side. Starting front and center gives you space to think creatively in any direction. I reckon Coggle which has no real boundaries in any direction also means I can move branches around easily. I can add in emojis or icons and no one can see my terrible handwriting. Step 2 is to name it and picture it. Confidently write the contract you are mapping in the center of the page and if you can draw a small picture of some kind or use emojis that are relevant to the agreement. Images and headings help keep you focused on what you are mapping out and make those branches easier to find when more processes are mapped out. Step 3. Use different colours for different branches. Working with different colours you can highlight which processes are problematic by making them red or working well green. You could colour code branches by who is doing the task with a different colour for each person or team. You can set aside a certain colour for questions that arise about a particular step in a process. I do this and I use pink so I always know that pink is a question branch. It's fast and easy to take notes that make sense later and overall colours make the whole map more interesting to take in and also more presentable to show to others. Use curved branches not straight lines. Straight lines make your brain bored so curve your branches away from your mind map to help your brain ease into the process. Step 5. Limit each line to one distinct action that is undertaken in the process. You don't need to go down to the level of click here, open this file, say file as kind of detail but try to keep the tasks as one line so you can clearly see what's going on. Step 6. Work your way through the agreement steps as you know them. Build up the story of the contract process as you currently see it. Go systematically from first interest in having a contract such as a customer approaching a salesperson and they discuss a product purchase. It's good to go back a few steps before and after your current knowledge of contract creation to really help nut out links in the contract process chain. Because of course the first step in a contract process is not when someone comes to you with a contract. There's a few steps that go on before that that you need to find out about. After you've completed your initial draft of the mind map, go through the mind map process again with each of the other stakeholders like an interview and get feedback on how they see the process working currently. And then you can also get their ideas for improving the process. As we said in the past episode, the visual mapping of the contract process is a great way to work with different clients and draw out different reactions from stakeholders much more than any verbal or written description of a process. Now some processes are more complex than others. This is often caused by a new type of contract which people aren't really sure how to do or no one knows how it's going to go and it can lead to throwing extra people at a problem. When there are more cooks in the kitchen, there are more bowls in the air and a higher chance of bottlenecks. Once you have the general overview of the process end to end in a basic mind map, it might help to break down that complex process more formally so that each player can see their exact role in the contract process. This is really important for chunkier processes with many moving parts. But you might not need a swim lane diagram if the mind map is clear. Or there's not many people involved and the steps are relatively simple and linear. Swim lane diagrams are useful when there's several independent actions needed by different players at separate times. The basic idea of a swim lane diagram is that every person in the process gets a lane to swim in. The process moves forward one step at a time. Imagine the electronic world record timeline that you see in Olympic swim events. We can see who is responsible for which part of the process depending on whether the task sits in their lane. Obviously as I said before, mind maps and swim lanes are very visual. So please head to the show notes to see examples of these visual maps. By way of example, franchise agreements are often very long by themselves but are also weighed down by strong laws which cover the kinds of information that potential franchisees must be given. There are also timing factors where a potential franchisee must receive certain information and then have 14 days to review those documents. I first got into swim lane diagrams when I wanted to give the key franchise contract process players a checklist for all the items they needed to complete to successfully set up a new franchisee. It took a fair bit of mapping and discussions, but we got there in the end. The result was a colourful swimline diagram where each person could look for their lane and colour to confirm what they needed to do. Then they could also see how their role slotted in with the rest of the contract process overall. There are some fancy applications that you can use to map out swimline processes, which look fantastic in the demo, but I'm much harder to build from scratch when you try. So I made my own basic version and Excel. You can download a copy of this very, very basic template from checklistlegal.com/podcast and head to episode 10 to find the link in the show notes. As you'll see, it's a very simple template. Each person who needs to approve or see a copy of the contract is down the left side. Each part of the contracting process is slotted into the relevant lane, depending on who completes the task. One of the process players want to receive notifications at every stage. This might be needed at the start, so you can include these informational lists to begin with. However, once people start to trust the process and understand the steps has gone through, you can then obliterate these further steps in the contract process. So now we have the why we use contract process maps and we have the tools, which give us some basic how-to's of contract process mapping. Remember that each step in triple-o productivity towards making a contract process more productive is very closely related. So when you optimize one area of a process, it might mean that process could now be outsourced. Work your way through your process map, focusing on the task that's slow the process down. Challenge yourself and the task owners to explain the reason why that task takes so long. As you start to apply triple-o productivity to your contract process, you'll start to see patterns appear and common contract process problems arise. If you start on a problematic contract process, remember to work through the triple-o productivity steps for each part and build a visual map of the end-to-end process. The main problems that slow down contract processes can fall into two main categories. Number one, the process is too slow. Number two, missing or accurate information. Number one, process is too slow is a classic reason for blaming legal. Legal is slowing things down again. Oh, the business prevention unit is added again. If people keep complaining, the contract process is too slow because of legal. The key questions to test are, who owns these contract process steps that are slowing everyone down? Check in with that contract process owner and ask how you can make life easier or speed things up for them. Look at ways to reduce the number of people in the process. Gather clear and accurate information as early as possible. Try to link in with an existing customer database to reduce data entry, which people often find boring so they put off doing, which can slow down the whole process. Missing or inaccurate information is one of the main reasons for slowing things down. Make a firm requirement to get all information from clients or customers before the contract process kicks off. For example, in an application form or web form collection method, include hard stops that mean people cannot proceed without entering required information. Use drop down menus or check boxes instead of free text fields to eliminate errors and speed up data entry. Create and report on measurements for information accuracy. Remember what gets measured gets managed. If you aren't collecting information on inaccurate data entry into contracts, then you are missing an opportunity to correct and speed up your processes. A quick reminder before you skip off the start and mapping is to avoid the process picks. Go for those low hanging fruit processes. We're just warming up in our reverse sandwich journey, so start small and work your way up. Stick with documents that have linear workflows. For example, I send to Justin, Justin fills in information, signs and sends to Brittany, Brittany signs and we're done. Once you master those basic workflows, you'll be process mapping like a pro and will easily spot areas that you can speed up with triple-o productivity. If your process is simple and the contract is now structured correctly like a reverse sandwich contract outlined in episode 1, and it's ready for the electronic processes we talked about in episode 5 when we learned how to delegate like Beyonce, there might not be much more for you to do in terms of triple-o productivity for the contract process, but keep an eye on it and apply it as needed. So our key takeaways from this episode, we've got over the basic steps to make a mind map for straightforward contract processes. We've covered how to make a swim lane contract process map for complex contract processes with lots of stakeholders or steps. We've looked at tactics for common contract process problems including whether process is too slow or missing inaccurate information. And remember we're going to start simple. Start with a simple process, avoid the process pigs. Today's actionable challenge, which you've probably guessed, is to pick a basic contract that you work on regularly and go to Coggle, C-O-G-G-L-E and map that contract out step-by-step. I would love to see what you come up with, so feel free to either tweet at me at Checklist Legal or send a tag me in it on Instagram. Checklist Legal again on Instagram. Thanks so much for listening. It's been really exciting to run through contract mapping with you. I'm really passionate about it and I hope you enjoy mapping out your contracts. I'll talk to you next time on episode 11 where we look at how to make a reverse sandwich contract and put together the overall secrets of productive contracting that we've been working through over the past 10 episodes. Very exciting. I'll talk to you then. Bye for now.