Attending my first LMA Annual Conference in Florida over the past weekend I had the great opportunity to connect with many in the Legal Marketing industry. It was brilliant to meet so many people who are experts in their field.

On Saturday I attended a session which had four past Presidents of the LMA: Ashraf Lakhani Chief Business Development and Marketing Officer at Porter Hedges,  Adam Severson Chief Marketing & Business Development Officer at Baker Donelson, Lisa Simon Chief Marketing and Business Development Officer Lewis Roca and Alycia Sutor Managing Director GrowthPlay.

Ashraf Lakhani kicked the session off with a pretty simple but punchy message "Be the Spark". It sounds too obvious but it seems to be that frequently the catalyst isn't there. Anyone can be the spark, there just needs to be one. 

They then continued in more depth on the topic and introduced the acronym ADKAR

• A Lisa Simon began with A = Awareness - highlighting the importance to communicate the reason for change. If people don't know why then they will be a lot less receptive to it
• D = Desire  - Adam Severson took this one and pressed on the topic of trying to make it a personal decision to support and participate in the change. Building belief in the change.
• K Moving on we got to K = Knowledge - Teaching the best way to change and also how to sustain change. Providing them with the information to have the knowledge. Alycia Sutor gave us this gem of advice and then quickly followed up with 
• A = Ability - giving tools to implement change such as incremental change, name, and frame it, habit stacking and two-minute rule.
  Adam Severson closed the acronym with 
• R = Reinforcement - repetition is key. to reinforce the change keep the message the same and repeat

Change can include new website, re-branding, transient lawyer market and new managing partner. All of which will happen.

Just as the famous Sam Cooke song says "A Change is Gonna Come"