You Have Various Institutions Like Law Firms

Wall Street Is At Best Ambivalent. The Size Of The Accounts Is Nothing Big. How Many Wall Street Firms Do You Know That Are Running After People With $5,000 Accounts?

You Have Various Institutions Like Law Firms And Accounting Firms Which Bill By The Hour. I'm Really Against That. You Have An Incentive To Go Slowly, Be There As Long As Possible, To Over-research Things And Over-staff.

From The Law Firm's Perspective, Billing By The Hour Has A Certain Appeal: It Shifts Risk From The Firm To The Client In Case The Work Takes Longer Than Expected. But From A Client's Perspective, It Doesn't Work So Well. It Gives Lawyers An Incentive To Overstaff And To Overresearch Cases.

It's 5 P.m. At The Office. Working Fast, You've Finished Your Tasks For The Day And Want To Go Home. But None Of Your Colleagues Have Left Yet, So You Stay Another Hour Or Two, Surfing The Web And Reading Your E-mails Again, So You Don't Come Off As A Slacker. It's An Unfortunate Reality That Efficiency Often Goes Unrewarded In The Workplace.

I Am A Great Believer In The Ohio Principle: Only Handle It Once. When You Read An E-mail, Decide Whether Or Not To Reply To It, And, If You Need To Reply, Do So Right Then And There. I Have Found That About 80 Percent Of All E-mails, Whether Internal Or External, Do Not Require A Response.