Larry, it's good to have you with us today. Thanks so much for your time.
Larry Bridgesmith:
Thank you, Erik, I'm delighted. I love the work you do.
ER:
Well, I appreciate that. But let's Larry and I full disclosure, go back maybe a little longer than either one of us. Want to admit, I don't know how you feel about that, Larry. But I met Larry when I was in high school and we both, you were a couple of years ahead of me and in school at what is now Rochester University in Rochester, Michigan.
Larry Bridgesmith:
That's right. Great memories.
ER:
Yeah. And two things that really, uh, I remember about that time. Number one, your lovely wife, uh, I saw her virtually every day as I grew up because she worked for my dad, who was a college administrator at the time. And so, um, I knew her really long before I knew you.
Larry Bridgesmith:
Well, you met the best already.
ER:
And the, um, at some point during our time in Michigan, you and, uh, your wife to be became married and, uh, you did something I was completely unaware, unacquainted with at the time. You combined your last name and her last name and that, and took that as, as your last name. Tell me what What brought that on and what was your thinking then?
Larry Bridgesmith:
Well, when your last name is Smith, as my born name was, and my wife Linda was Linda Smith, you'd be fascinated to realize how often you're confused for someone else. My wife was often stopped in a grocery store and said, "'No, you've got a bad check record.'" And she said, "'Are we talking about the same Linda Smith?' But for me, it was different, because as a new lawyer practicing in the Detroit area, there were five Larry Smith attorneys. And... just as soon as I had been sworn in as an attorney, I'd received a confidential psychiatric report on behalf of a client of a Larry Smith attorney, but
ER:
Ha
Larry Bridgesmith:
it
ER:
ha
Larry Bridgesmith:
wasn't
ER:
ha.
Larry Bridgesmith:
me. And I thought, well, you know, at this stage, this can be fixed if we act now. And so I had conversations with my parents. My dad told me, look, if I'd known I could do that, I would have done that a long time ago. So it was well received by family and we all went to court and we were renamed Bridgsmith. My wife's maiden name was Bridges, so I often say we dropped the S, the capital S and kept hers.
ER:
That's great. I remember, all I remember thinking is, well, that's creative.
Larry Bridgesmith:
Well, you know, in speaking of creativity, it's really amazing that I didn't realize at the time how that meaning of Bridg Smith
ER:
Uh-huh.
Larry Bridgesmith:
would become core to who I am and what I've been doing for the last many years. So I am a builder of bridges. That's what I love to do.
ER:
Talk about that a little bit more.
Larry Bridgesmith:
Well, you know, the whole notion of a Smith is someone who works on a particular skill or trade professionally. And as a bridge builder, you could be called a bridge Smith, but not in the construction sense, but as the topic of this podcast, the conversational sense.
ER:
Mm-hmm.
Larry Bridgesmith:
As a lawyer, I learned how to fight like crazy. I could take anybody to the mat in court and loved doing it. But I understood that for a period of time, that wasn't what my clients preferred. They were business clients. They'd rather have a problem solved than escalate. And so that's when I began to say, you know, there's probably more value in a lawyer advising and consulting on problem solving rather than problem fighting. And that was 20 years into my career. And that's really what brought me into the things that I love to do today.
ER:
So we talked a little bit, I gave some of your credentials in the introduction. Talk to me about what you do in Nashville today, the highlights, I know you're at the law school at Vanderbilt, correct?
Larry Bridgesmith:
That's correct.
ER:
And just tell me what goes on, what's a day in Larry Bridgsmith's life like?
Larry Bridgesmith:
Well, most of the time it's sitting at my laptop in my home office and pandemic didn't begin that. It was the case before. I was one of those few people who lived in Zoom before anybody knew what Zoom was. But most of my time is spent in either writing or teaching or the other part of my life is technology in law. And so I do a lot of bridge building. In the world of legal technology, we can talk at length about how difficult that is for lawyers to comprehend or embrace. But that's what I do for the most part. And I teach not only Vanderbilt Law School, but Arizona State University's law school, the Sandra Day O'Connor Law School. And that's all remote. So all of that teaching at ASU is spent in a hybrid context, There are lectures that they watch and listen to. There are readings that they do on their own time, but they also negotiate in real time. And so learning how to negotiate over a virtual meeting is really a part of today's business world. It happens every day, multiple times every day. So I love having that opportunity with not lawyers there, but mid-career professionals doing all sorts of things.
ER:
This is, this may be backtracking just a little bit, but you're the class you teach at Vanderbilt. At least one of them is legal project management, right?
Larry Bridgesmith:
That's correct. And legal, yeah.
ER:
And go ahead, talk to us a little bit about that.
Larry Bridgesmith:
Yeah, legal project management is one of those innovations in law that was kind of a slow slog getting to the place where project management, commonly understood, is really an engineering tool or a software development tool in which the entire project is laid out with precision and timeframes. with one orientation, that of the engineer said, well, I don't do that. What I do is far more skilled. It's more of an art than it is a science. But that's what caused me to be a part of the creation of a global internet-based and project management-focused group that are working in law. because project management in an engineering context really doesn't translate to law. So legal project management takes the key principles and practices of the Project Management Institute, PMI, which certifies project managers,
ER:
Mm-hmm.
Larry Bridgesmith:
and converts it, translates it into a legal context, much more akin to the language that lawyers use and the way they think about their. matters, whether it's a litigation case or a merger and acquisition, to help them understand that you can do law in a systematized and very effective and efficient way. These are the tools that you can use. Despite the fact that lawyers are somewhat at odds with the principle of efficiency, Because you know, we were born and raised on the billable hour, and the more time it takes, the more money we make. So there's a little bit of a, you know, there's a lot of discrepancy in those two worldviews. The difference is today, those corporate clients that every lawyer wants to represent, living in a global economy. demand of themselves and those who work with them or supply their services and goods, efficiency, transparency, and price predictability.
ER:
Hehe.
Larry Bridgesmith:
So that's what legal project management does, and the clients are expecting their lawyers that aren't within the company, outside lawyers, to provide those skills as well as being legally expert at what they do.
ER:
How have you seen discussions around the topic and practical application of the principles? How's that changed in the last decade?
Larry Bridgesmith:
Well, it was slow. But I think as work being done not just by the Institute for the International Institute of Legal Project Management, or IILPM, which we founded in about 2015, there are others that are doing the same work with a global impact. One of the things that we've done at IILPM, to answer your question, is we've conducted annual competitions and we host annual events to get the word out. The last annual event in 2022, there were 400 people, legal professionals from around the globe who took place in a virtual webinar. We're doing that again in 2023. But our competition or awards are given to those practitioners of legal project management in both big law, and small law and legal departments. And our first effort at that was last year. And what we were surprised and delighted to find is that the big law and much of the mid-sized law is working very hard to satisfy client expectations. And there's a much larger movement afoot today than there was 10 or 15 years ago. So... Recently I saw a piece that said legal project management is taking over the methodology of delivering legal services. So it's a growth that has now become exponential.
ER:
Can you give us a 30,000 foot view of what that looks like in the context of an organization, either a law firm or a law firm client?
Larry Bridgesmith:
Yeah, I don't expect that lawyers will become project managers. There are some that do, and I've known
ER:
Mm-hmm.
Larry Bridgesmith:
many lawyers who had typically an engineering background previously and had PMI certification that do both, but they're rare. So what we do is we help lawyers, whether they're in a legal department or in a law firm, understand the basics of legal project management. And what we are seeing is there's a new legal profession of legal project managers that's growing like Topsy. So what the big firms and a lot of the even middle-sized firms do are hire full-time legal project managers. And what they do is assist the lawyers and the legal teams in structuring their projects. Anything that has a beginning and an end is a project. So most everything that lawyers do satisfy that definition. So showing them how those projects can begin and end, be structured from beginning to end, and allocate resources and the economics of the choices made, and keep an eye on profitability, and manage the case or the matter to both firm expectations of profitability and client expectations of price. So you can do fixed priced billing. If you don't do it with legal project management, it's like throwing a dart in the dark.
ER:
Hehehehe
Larry Bridgesmith:
You're just guessing and you're likely to lose money if you've committed to that. So by systematizing and breaking the project down into its parts, Each of those tasks are defined. The timeframe around those tasks is assigned. The resources that are given to do those tasks are made in advance based upon skills and experience. And the economics of those choices are factored into the plan. So if you're billing out a partner at $750 an hour, That's your hope that you'll get that much for that hour, but you might get less. Or alternatively, you might get more in terms of real profitability because that $750 does not represent profit. It represents price. And all the expenses of that lawyer attributed to that lawyer's work have to come out of it before profitability is realized. And not a lot of lawyers understand that.
ER:
Mm-hmm.
Larry Bridgesmith:
They're beginning to, and there's a big shift in our understanding of that. So it's breaking it down to the task level, assigning the right person to do the task, giving them instructions as to how that task should be done, and then creating a task-by-task chart, or think of it as an Excel spreadsheet, in which each cell represents a piece of the puzzle with respect to how this particular matters should be delivered over what period of time and at what cost. And again, with the knowledge of those economics, at what profitability for the law firm.
ER:
Yeah. What, what, uh, in, in the, in the spirit of our topic, what
Larry Bridgesmith:
Hehehe
ER:
conversations aren't taking place around this particular topic around legal project management, or maybe a better way to put it, uh, firms where this is a, a, a, a relatively new topic where people are wrestling with how to implement, what conversations are the most productive to be having in the early stages.
Larry Bridgesmith:
Well, I think that with the advent of large language models or LLMs like OpenAI's chat GPT, there are many now. One is specifically dedicated to law. That's Harvey. And the knowledge and the awareness of lawyers, like everybody else on the planet, that there are these AI tools that I can use. I don't have to be an engineer. I can simply ask a series of questions and get amazingly accurate feedback. They're not perfect, and that's why a lawyer needs to be a part of every one of those exchanges to understand if the AI, generative AI, we call it, is accurate or needs to be adjusted or modified in any way. But the speed with which it can get you started has made lawyers, for the most part, aware and either terrified or exuberant about
ER:
Hehehe
Larry Bridgesmith:
these large language models. Terrified if they think they can't use them or they won't benefit them and it attacks their business model of what I call waste rather than efficiency. But enthusiastic if they understand that their clients the ones they want to satisfy. are expecting those efficiencies, and this is a great way to attain them.
ER:
So, again, if I'm inside a law firm, bottom half of the Amla 200 and smaller maybe.
Larry Bridgesmith:
Mm-hmm.
ER:
And this conversation, where does chat GPT or a large language model, where does it fit? How do we use it? Who uses it? What does that conversation look like? I get that the clients... the efficiency play that's going to always be pressure from the outside. Inside, what does that conversation look like?
Larry Bridgesmith:
Well, I think if you're a leader in a law firm, and now that everyone's aware of how these large language models can shape the work that we do, and our supervision of them is essential, then I think the conversation should be around, don't be afraid. Let's examine how these models will help you be a better lawyer. And in the process, we're going to explore how it can make us more money. Because I'm convinced that efficiency and project management is a money maker, not a money loser. Spoke to someone in a very large and recognizable global law firm, who whose firm converted from billable hour preference to fixed fee preference. And he was an IP litigator. You know, one of the most prestigious litigation rules a law firm recognizes, and a lot of money, depends upon you being able to retain your brand. And he said to me, you know, I'm really grateful that I've now learned that fixed fee pricing is more profitable. And I said, what do you mean? He said, well, if I gave a estimate of time, and that estimate proved to be less than accurate, then it's a money loser. But if I can beat that prediction, my billable rate in essence goes from $750 to $1,050, the equivalent of the efficiency that's brought into it. He said, with fixed fee pricing and understanding how project management applies to law. I make 10% more profit off of my work than I did
ER:
Bye.
Larry Bridgesmith:
under a fixed B model. I mean, excuse
ER:
Bye.
Larry Bridgesmith:
me, under a billable hour.
ER:
Yeah. Yeah.
Larry Bridgesmith:
So you just need to be able to have those conversations with skeptical lawyers who may never have experienced anything like that. And in law school, we're not taught economics. We weren't taught about profit and loss, P&Ls and budgets. Now we went into the practice of law with no financial experience or training unless we had come with an MBA as well.
ER:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The, um, I recall it. I think I might've shared this story with you once before, but I recall a conversation with a large client of a law firm I worked with years ago, who in a conversation in his office, pointed to a stack of papers in his inbox that was six inches thick or more. And he said, this represents last month's, my first of the month bill from three or four, half a dozen, maybe law firms. He says, I won't pay any of those bills. I'll pick them up first and make a call. And the mere fact that I'll make a call to the relationship partner will save my company 10 to 15 percent off of virtually every one of those bills. So the idea that project management in really a process that frames projects, that scopes them accurately can be more profitable, that rings true. What other conversations should law firm leaders or legal professionals, whatever the role they fill, what? conversations are really, in your view, central to where the profession is today and where we're headed.
Larry Bridgesmith:
Well, I think the term that best captures this moment in time probably isn't large language models. It's digital transformation. A few years ago, I was asked to come to speak to the legal group to train them basically in a two-day training, because this was a large global grocery distributor and retailer. I mean... hundreds of thousands of employees. Their legal group, in-house lawyers, were about 30. Then of course they had a whole passel of outside lawyers as well. But they wanted to know how digital transformation, which was being expected of them by the C-suite, worked. Well, the C-suite is driving the business model, and in every corporation, large or small, the only item by and large that is not certain or certified is the legal expense.
ER:
Legal
Larry Bridgesmith:
Today,
ER:
spend.
Larry Bridgesmith:
legal spin, today, those CEOs and CFOs are telling their legal department, you're going to cut your budget. We're not gonna add to it. Your
ER:
Mm-hmm.
Larry Bridgesmith:
budget is gonna be cut next year, 2024, by 40%. So get on the bandwagon. You can't be the sole exception in our organization to efficiency, price certainty, and transparency. That's the kind of conversations that the law firms need to be having because I'm aware that most requests for proposals today coming from corporate clients or potential corporate clients have an extensive section about project management.
ER:
Bye.
Larry Bridgesmith:
How are you doing it? Who leads it? What are your challenges? What are your successes? So you can either gloss over that and simply say, we got it covered, trust us. Or you can really mean it. And I'm convinced that the choices of those outside law firms that are engaged in embracing digital transformation of every sort, especially in project management, are gonna be the winners. And... And last year proved to be the case. When we look at the biggest profitability enhancements in 2022 in the large firm, top 100, the top five or six of them were fully engaged in project management, digital transformation, the use of artificial intelligence. They're separating themselves from the pack,
ER:
Hehehe
Larry Bridgesmith:
but you don't have to be big. to benefit from these digital tools.
ER:
In fact, it may be a bigger asset, the smaller you are, it seems to me.
Larry Bridgesmith:
I believe so.
ER:
Yeah.
Larry Bridgesmith:
Matter of fact,
ER:
Yeah.
Larry Bridgesmith:
the smallest law firm
ER:
Yeah.
Larry Bridgesmith:
I ever worked with in this regard was a single lawyer who did immigration law. And he lived on the border in New Mexico, and so he had an enormous caseload of immigration cases. But he had four non-lawyers, I hate that phrase, people who
ER:
Hehehe
Larry Bridgesmith:
didn't have a law license, who
ER:
legal
Larry Bridgesmith:
he
ER:
professionals.
Larry Bridgesmith:
worked with. I prefer that by a long shot. But the point is, he said, I'm losing my shirt because I can't know what's not being done. Can you teach us project management? And a year later, he said, not only did you save my rear end, you made me profitable like I've never been profitable before. A one lawyer law firm.
ER:
Yeah. Yeah.
Larry Bridgesmith:
was able
ER:
Yeah.
Larry Bridgesmith:
to, and immigration is virtually all fixed fee. There's a price you pay to get a particular immigration matter handled, and inefficiency will cost you dearly.
ER:
years ago at a large law firm, the firm brought in outside help to do a deep dive into what their client, what revenue looks like, where there was profit, where they were losing, and where they could increase profitability. And over a three year, they looked the outside group looked at three years worth of history, financial history, billing history, and found that in that period of time, the law firms served some 14,000 clients. And 1500 of those 14,000 accounted for 105% of gross profit in a three-year window, which... It seems to me project management might have a home there.
Larry Bridgesmith:
Yeah. Well, the whole point of what you've just said is that lawyers don't understand or haven't historically understand that for every dollar they bill, that's not profit. That's merely revenue. And how do the costs attributable to that hour impact the profit is the answer to the big question. I was a part of a large law firm. You'll never discover who it was, so you can't go back
ER:
Hehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe
Larry Bridgesmith:
and define it. And every year we'd have this compensation meeting and I served on the executive committee and profitability was never discussed. Instead, compensation was based upon the totality of revenue, hours billed and collected without reference to how much it cost. So the biggest slug of money went to those who put in the time without regard to whether it brought in any profitability at all. And it leads to all kinds of, I think, deceptive practices, because when you're billing by the hour, the challenge is to bill as much or more than anybody else. Just this week, I saw the award given to the largest billable hour lawyer in the nation at 37. almost 3800 billable hours. What does he do with the rest of his time? Nothing. Does he sleep? So the point is simply unless you understand that ratio, you really can't manage a law firm. And law firms in order to hopefully reach that budget goal of profitability. They do all kinds of unhelpful things. Like I knew of a lawyer who had spent two weeks on vacation in Europe and because he had 26 billable hours per day.
ER:
Yeah.
Larry Bridgesmith:
He got the biggest slug.
ER:
That's a trick.
Larry Bridgesmith:
Oh, well, it's worse.
ER:
26 hours a day. Yeah.
Larry Bridgesmith:
on vacation in Europe.
ER:
Well, ready for a little bit of a lightning round?
Larry Bridgesmith:
I'm already.
ER:
already. So,
Larry Bridgesmith:
I'm already.
ER:
um, in, let's, let's stay in the business arena, but, but you can make it bigger, broader than just, uh, the legal space right now. Uh, three conversations that you think could, should be taking place if they were taking place in the business community today would change the shape of the marketplace.
Larry Bridgesmith:
Great question. I think the attention given to digital transformation has to be a plank on
ER:
Mm-hmm.
Larry Bridgesmith:
every organization's high priority list. Knowing what it is and how to do it is critical for those companies that are gonna survive. Profit,
ER:
Mm-hmm.
Larry Bridgesmith:
nonprofit, government, whatever.
ER:
So
Larry Bridgesmith:
Right.
ER:
that's
Larry Bridgesmith:
Oh, another.
ER:
one, two other ideas.
Larry Bridgesmith:
Well, I'm thinking about my colleagues in the legal profession when I say this. We are the most suicidal profession.
ER:
Mm-hmm.
Larry Bridgesmith:
and there's an enormous lack of mental health among our numbers. What are the reasons for that? Well, there are many reasons and one of them is this expectation of time, but that's
ER:
Hmm.
Larry Bridgesmith:
not
ER:
Hmm.
Larry Bridgesmith:
the only cause. So making law hospitable to those who want to work in the industry and creating a culture that is favorably disposed to the lawyers and the employees of a law firm as opposed to pitting them against each other is an essential conversation that has to be held.
ER:
Yeah, great. That's great stuff. Okay. Um, one or two conversations that were pivotal in your personal life.
Larry Bridgesmith:
Well, one's a category of conversations and the other is a specific conversation.
ER:
That's
Larry Bridgesmith:
The
ER:
fair.
Larry Bridgesmith:
category is over decades of representing business clients. I can't tell you the number of conversations about price predictability, transparency and real-time information about the matter that you're representing them.
ER:
Mm-hmm.
Larry Bridgesmith:
And the ability to efficiently to the business's expectation get a problem solved and a job done. I've had that conversation with enormous numbers of client representatives. So there's this pent up need to break through the current culture of how we price and deliver our work. But the second one, I love this because I became friends first and then a business partner with a technologist who has a PhD in AI and trusted networks or blockchain. And one of the first conversations that we ever had, he hired me to help him with an employment matter to get out of a problem that he had, but we became close friends. And unrelated to that legal representation, he said, okay, you help me, how can I help you? And so I began spinning out this wild theory that I had that, you know, efficiency can actually be of greater benefit to the lawyer, perhaps even, than the client, but that's what they expect. So we had this conversation and he had a whiteboard and he was drawing figures on the whiteboard as I spoke. And when I was finished, he took a look at the board and he said, is that it? And he had developed on the whiteboard and architected a technology that would address this issue of price predictability, transparency, and efficiency. And so I said, okay, let's work together. But in the course of those conversations, he said this way back 15 years ago. He said, if I ever told you about the alternative universe. And I just sort of chuckled, you know, and I thought, well, he's lost his mind again.
ER:
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
Larry Bridgesmith:
But no, he went on to say, you know, there is another universe out there. It's parallel to this one, but it's different. And he had in his mind. Web three, the metaverse, this world of virtual reality that we're all becoming somewhat slightly more aware of.
ER:
Wow.
Larry Bridgesmith:
And he knew it. because he envisioned it at least 10 years before it became known to the rest of us. And that's what kept me focused on, okay, there's a lot about technology I don't understand, but if it can create an alternative universe, not exclusively alternative, but one that runs in parallel with this one, I wanna be a part of that.
ER:
Cool. That's very cool. Okay. Last book that you read that precipitated or instigated great conversations in your life.
Larry Bridgesmith:
Well, the one that I can't get past in my mind is a book by Frederick, spelled with a C, Lalu, ending with an X, a French name. And he wrote the book called Reinventing Organizations. It was a journey in my mind that said, oh, that makes so much sense. Because in his model, there are basically five different organizational models from family to church. to corporations, to egalitarian organizations where everybody has an equal say. But the one that he talked about and then gave proof of by case studies is what he called the Teal Organization. I have been so focused and fascinated by helping create a Teal Organization that it consumes much of my envisioning about startups. Matter of fact, we just had a conversation yesterday with a group of legal technologists, and we're gonna start a business based on the Teal model. The Teal model says that although there are superiors charged with responsibility for decision-making, the vast majority of decision-making in a Teal organization is decentralized, distributed, democratized, so that- It's an interdependent organization where each of us are given the opportunity to do what we do best to satisfy our need for purpose and meaning, but unique to the organizational objectives and then filtered and factored through a collegial model of management and production that the evidence is far superior to any other business model. in terms of productivity, profitability, market share. The businesses that have sought to achieve that are outliers in their industry. And it's not easy, it can easily go off the rails, but it proves to be the most productive and profitable kind of organization. And I don't wanna be a part of anything that isn't a T.O. organization.
ER:
It's got to be, that's got to be the ultimate environment for stimulating interaction and conversations that make a difference. That's,
Larry Bridgesmith:
Absolutely.
ER:
that's, that's cool. That's
Larry Bridgesmith:
When
ER:
cool.
Larry Bridgesmith:
failure is not a... is not a possibility. There's a lot of
ER:
Hmm.
Larry Bridgesmith:
hiding
ER:
Hmm, hmm.
Larry Bridgesmith:
the ball. When we can be open and honest with each other and know that we depend on each other and none of us are superior to the others, boy, the kind of productivity and waking up each morning wanting to get to that is radically different than most of the employment that I've experienced over time.
ER:
Yeah, yeah, right there with you. OK, one conversation we should quit having.
Larry Bridgesmith:
Oh, that's good. I think we should quit having any kind of competition, any kind of conversation that pits us against others. There's a book by two MIT data scientists called The Second Machine Age. And they pivot around the year 2006 as the beginning of the second machine age and their definition. The steam engine created in the late 17th century has driven human progress from that point until 2006 in a pretty linear and predictable manner, just a line of human progress. But with the computer, and we're seeing this now, we can't predict what the next legal technology is going to be because it's now growing exponentially.
ER:
Mm-hmm.
Larry Bridgesmith:
The outcome of that is twofold. And this is what captures my attention. One is that we've gone from a competitive economy to a collaborative economy, or we're staying in the first machine age, where individual competition as well as market competition is a part of the culture of every organization. But the call that the Collaborative economy is an economy of abundance. And if we don't see that in what's happening in the digital world today, we're not looking. Because you can bring a group of people together around the globe, focus on any particular issue, resolve it out of the diversity of thought and experience that they bring to the problem in rapid ways. that would never happen except collaboratively. So if we are truly in the second machine age, I believe we are, some call it the fourth industrial revolution,
ER:
Mm-hmm.
Larry Bridgesmith:
it's the technology age, the information age driven by these incredible processing machines, then the only way we're going to thrive and win is collaboratively. And there are even evidences of competitors in the marketplace who have learned to collaborate, not monopolistically, but business-wise, to their mutual advantage. So I do believe we're in the abundance age and I do believe we're in the collaborative economy.
ER:
Great, great, great response. Okay, two more. One or two people living or dead that you would love to sit down and have a conversation with and why.
Larry Bridgesmith:
Yeah. Well, one of them, I'm not a mathematician. As a matter of fact, I went to law school because I'm not a mathematician.
ER:
Hehehehehehe
Larry Bridgesmith:
And many of my colleagues will say the same thing. I'd love to sit down with Einstein. I mean, I would love, I mean, he was a futurist. He wasn't just a phenomenal mathematician. I mean, his theory of relativity is still proving true today. With new. mechanics and physics that are showing us he was right all along. He was holistic and he was an integrated thinker. That's the kind of person I'd like to know more and know better. So he's one, then the other is probably not quite so exotic as that, but I'll be honest there are people like your father that I wish I could sit down and have a conversation with. because he was a remarkable man. I knew him because of the long period of time my mother worked for him. And just a man of immense vision and courage and persistence. Yeah, I'd like to know more about that.
ER:
Well, I'd take another conversation or two with him too.
Larry Bridgesmith:
I bet you would.
ER:
That wouldn't be a bad thing.
Larry Bridgesmith:
Hehehe
ER:
Terrific. Terrific. Anything that, uh, I get to sit on this side of the microphone and ask all the questions. Anything that you want to bring to the table before we wrap up?
Larry Bridgesmith:
No, well, other than to say I have more optimism in our future than I've ever had before.
ER:
Mm. Mm-hmm.
Larry Bridgesmith:
I'm not, I'm not frightened of the future because I think we have tools that can help us realize this collaborative economy and an era of abundance. We haven't even mentioned some of those in this conversation
ER:
Oh yeah.
Larry Bridgesmith:
like blockchain and distributed autonomous organizations and non-fungible tokens, they can create a new economy that's democratized, that's transparent, and extremely secure from manipulation or what we would call hacking. That could provide a platform for the new economy that I envision will change everything unless we don't choose to do it.
ER:
So one final question, and this is broad and philosophical in nature. If you were going to itemize the characteristics of the best conversations, whatever the topic, what are your thoughts about one or two or three of characteristics of better conversations?
Larry Bridgesmith:
Well, you've just demonstrated them because you are a master at open-ended questions.
ER:
Hahaha!
Larry Bridgesmith:
So if we want to have great conversations with others, it's not about telling them what I know. It's about asking them what they know. And those open-ended questions lead to all kinds of more questions. And when we're asking questions about something that's important to someone else, as you have done, there's no end to the conversation. And then taking those responses and... asking more questions related to that. I don't know a person on the planet. I'm an introvert. I don't enjoy socializing with strangers. But someone who can ask me open ended questions, I'm gonna just talk and talk and talk and talk and talk. And
ER:
Yeah.
Larry Bridgesmith:
it begins conversation because that's where the commonalities are found.
ER:
Yeah. Well, in keeping with with you, you alluded to the fact that you're the name that you took on, Bridge Smith, almost was prophetic in terms of what you would do with your. I'm convinced that the best conversations don't end. They are just
Larry Bridgesmith:
Do
ER:
bridges
Larry Bridgesmith:
it.
ER:
to the next end. The more we can have this ongoing dialogue as opposed to I need to win this debate. Uh, then the better we better off we are. And, and, uh, you've certainly demonstrated that in, in your professional life, your career and, uh, and today. So
Larry Bridgesmith:
Thank
ER:
thank.
Larry Bridgesmith:
you, and you're right, we're wired to win and we need to change that wiring.
ER:
Yeah, yeah, there's that's that's conversation we'll have next time.
Larry Bridgesmith:
Okay, thanks Eric.
ER:
Thanks, Larry.
