Tools business executives use to improve the performance of their organizations (Bain survey)

Bain & Company’s 12th annual survey of management tools identified the top ten, seven of which can be in the tool-box of corporate general counsel.

With the approximate percentage of survey users in parenthesis, the seven are strategic planning (78); benchmarking (73); outsourcing (73); mission and vision statements (72); core competencies (65); strategic alliances (63) [in the sense of close relationships with select law firms]; and business process re-engineering — BPR (61).

If “outsourcing” includes retaining external counsel, and if “core competencies” find there way into most evaluations of lawyers, and if best practices and changing how you do something could be taken to be watered-down BPR, law departments could be common wielders of these tools.

As to the remaining three, I don’t think general counsel do much with customer relationship management, in the sense of tracking data other than satisfaction ratings; customer segmentation, which has a pricing and marketing air; or growth strategies (hiring another lawyer doesn’t quite make it).