How many facets do you consider when changing your contracts or contracting process?
At the very least, you need to consider branding, process and content (these are my three focus areas when delivering a speech). Jacqueline Horani spoke at the World Commerce and Contracting Vibe Summit 2023 about eleven aspects of contracting in her wheel of interdiscplinary contracting (www.legallyunconventional.com).
Things to consider
Jacqueline’s wheel looks at:
- The customer journey ie how do clients end up hiring your company and what happens after that? [operations]
- Whether your values are reflected in your contracting or customer sales experience [culture]
- How the process affects your staff ie those who provide the scope [human resources] and the everyone – both internal and external – using the contract [UX or user experience]
- Does your contracting seamlessly communicate with customers and align with your other documents? [communications]
- Is your contracting effective for creating success and reinforcing your brand? [risk management, social impact, PR]
Your contract can become an asset for you to share widely for you to get excited about that feels amazing and different in your industry, according to Jacqueline. She wants to remove the focus from big disputes – those that get reported in the courts – and towards the ‘small preventable tensions’ (as she calls them) aka friction items, that damage commercial relationships.
As you can see, taking a wider view of contracting will require a multi-disciplinary team of people to get it right. Lawyers are part of that team but not the whole story.
What should you do?
Consider what you could do as a business to make contracting your most effective process and contracts your most valuable asset.
