Noted Bulletin Board Post

We were wandering around the National Power Corporation (NPC) Building in Roxas Blvd., Manila waiting for our case to be called (the NPC Bldg. houses some branches of the Manila Regional Trial Court), when we chanced upon this management maxim from the Secretary of Energy (now Secretary of Finance) Lito Camacho posted on the bulletin board.

Five S's of Management from the Secretary

SORT
The needed from the not needed
SIMPLIFY
A place for everything and everything in its place
SYSTEMATIC CLEANING
Always ready for inspection
STANDARDIZE
Common methods for common tasks
SUSTAIN
Constant improvement and maintenance

It's so amusing to find that the five S's are perfectly in sync with the management tasks of a lawyer. When we started practicing law in 1996, everything appeared to be simple: not that much paper to manage, tasks are always novel, and our legal knowledge was state of the art. Yet, after five years of practice, a lot of administrative issues have come up --i.e., what do we do with the tons of files? Is there a faster way to draft a deed of sale?To help us deal with them, we studied the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. The book gave us some insights -- i.e., first things first, deal with the important and not urgent so they won't become urgent and important. Our problem of paper management, however, remains unsolved. But Sec. Camacho's Five S's appear to offer us some help. I know I've read that stuff somewhere in bits and pieces. But bundled together they make a good battle cry for the weary lawyers and their weary staff.