Legally on the Move: Professional Training – Ian Noble – E05

Transcript

Welcome to Legally on the Move, Professional Training, a brand new mini series from the Legally Speaking podcast sponsored by Clio. I’m Rob Hanna and in this exciting new series, we’re coming to you live from BMA House in London, where senior leaders from across the legal profession are gathering to explore a critical question. What really makes high performing teams in law? From leadership and communication to resilience, trust and psychological safety,

We’ll be speaking to experts and industry voices about what it takes to build teams that perform at their best in today’s legal world. So let’s get into it.

Welcome to the Legally Speaking podcast. Please kindly introduce yourself, name, title and organization. My name is Ian Noble. I’m an account executive at Cleo EMEA. So helping grow the UK and Ireland business. Absolutely. And proud sponsors of the show as well. It’s always good to catch up with Cleons here live from BMA house in London. I know you’ve flown over specifically for it, but let’s talk about it then. Today is all about high performance and it’s often measured in revenue.

and utilization. In your own view, what is the most misunderstood driver of performance in teams? Well, I definitely don’t think it should be revenue. I think it’s around clarity, you know, and to refer back to Emma Wiggs, was really impressive. It’s not about the gold medal at the end of the race. It’s about what we can do to get that boat moving faster. So our vision, clarity on how we get there, removing the dead weight, that’s going to help us get there faster.

Yeah, I think that was such a good point. And for our listeners, I think Emma’s won 12 world gold medals, continuous success. And she’s never focused on the gold medal. She’s focused on that one particular question that you say was what makes the boat row faster? And that is her drive, her motivation. I think for organizations and people thinking about this, what is that one question that’s going to motivate you to continue to deliver success? Which clearly Cleo has had absolutely tons off, particularly in the last 24 months.

In terms of culture, which has been a large theme of today, what is the difference between a culture of accountability and a culture of fear? I think for accountability, it’s meant to empower you, right? You’re meant to know what exactly our role is, what foundations do we need to get us there? the fear, that doesn’t help anybody, you know, it’s second guessing, how do we get somewhere? And then when things don’t go to plan, ultimately the results are on your head. You know, we need to be empowered.

You should own this. This is your book of business, for example. Yeah, I agree. And I think the whole accountability piece also works super well when you have a mission focused company, which Cleo clearly has, and yeah, we fully support the mission to transform the legal experience for all. And I know Cleons within the organization can see their direct impact to that mission, which is awesome. And a large part that is through good collaboration, which I think Cleo has. So we’re talking about cross-functional collaboration here between teams can be pretty complex at times.

What have you seen work when aligning different incentives and priorities? I think it’s, if we’re to get the best collaboration possible, for example, it’s about understanding the why, you know, what are we, what are we doing here today? What’s, what’s our goal? What can we do to move the needle? Everything that’s not a priority that doesn’t help us move and grow as a business. Is that something that we can shift to elsewhere? So only when we all understand why we’re doing this, that’s how we get best collaboration.

And I think like you say, going deeper as well, bit, I know not just at surface level, why we do this, but why, why, why? I think through that, um, you can really get good, um, good results and good performance. And talking of today’s theme is all around resilience. You know, a key word has been discussed a lot today in the networking sessions, in the workshops and indeed with MoXMBE, um, keynote, which again, I thought was brilliant. Um, at what point though does resilience become unhealthy endurance in your view and how should leaders recognize that line?

I think it becomes a bit unhealthy when you don’t know when to pause and reset. Yes. Yeah. So for example, resilience is great, but it has to be sustainable. The moment you feel as though you’re just doing something to grind it out and not necessarily know what result it’s going to bring. That’s when you’ve already lost it. That’s when it starts to become unhealthy. You need to know when to press pause. And it’s so true. I remember when a mentor said to me, and this is when I thought I was working all the hours when I first started my legal recruiting business.

It says to Rob, the power is in the pause. Yeah. And I if you really sit with that, sometimes you do need to do that and you can come back stronger. And again, Emma was talking very briefly around that, you sometimes it’s better giving her own advice to taking it, but actually when she has actually leaned into that, she’s come back so much stronger. again, that’s led to sustained success given the amount of world championships and titles she’s won. Sure. Okay. What stood out most to you about today’s conference? I guess going back again to Emma’s

talk earlier, she described a scenario in which she felt that there was a competitive disadvantage. Yes. And ultimately it wasn’t somebody else’s advantage over hers that was the challenge. It was her mindset, how she approached that. Yeah. So it was the process of the performance. Ultimately, what can we do to change our mindset and get there faster? Yeah, I love that. And I love the

Jack Newton, CEO of Cleo, of course, one of his keynotes at one of the Cleons, think Cleo Con is probably one of the first I went to in Nashville. And he said something around, know, everyone talks about, you know, what if it goes wrong? You know, what if this happens? And he just said, what is, what is the opportunity? Let’s flip that mindset. What is the opportunity if we embrace this technology and the results that we can get from it? And I think just changing that mindset from, like you say, how…

Emma and people like Jack position it can be super, super powerful, reframe things and you can come back stronger. What motivated Clio to sponsor this particular conference? so many out there and how does it align with the organization’s commitment to high performing teams? guess, you know, we don’t just care about the software. Ultimately, we care about why people need it. So it’s great to give law firms and all of our different customers the correct tools to help improve their offerings. But we also got to remember who’s the end user.

You know, our aim has always been transform the legal experience for all. care about the people who need legal support as much as those who need our services. you know, being present at conferences like this reminds us that we’re here to spread that message. Yeah, absolutely. And yeah, we can attest to obviously Clio sponsoring our show for many years now. You genuinely care and community is key. And I think, you know, one of the best things is getting out there, seeing people and I can see the Clio stand over there. You’ve had lots of people around today and it’s just a great energy and Clio has been.

such a great energy and with that in case people are unfamiliar with Clio, which is highly unlikely given we’re in 2026 and the huge years and great work that’s gone into it. Where can people go to find more about Clio or indeed yourself? Feel free to share any social media handles, any websites. We’ll share them with us. said for you too. Yeah. Well, clio.com and our goclio account and Instagram is always there. One that I tend to keep an eye on. So yeah, there’s plenty of information out there. Perfect. Well, just give me to say Ian, thank you so much for joining me live here at BMA house for the

professional training conference. It’s been an absolute blast chatting to you, wishing you and all the team at Clio lots of continued success with delivering on that mission to transform the legal experience for all, which we fully support here at the Leagues Sweden podcast. But for now, over and out. Thank you for listening to this week’s episode. If you like the content here, why not check out our world leading content and collaboration of

the Legally Speaking Club over on Discord. Go to our website www.legallyspeakingpodcock.com. There’s a link to join our community there. Over and out.