The manufacturing industry is highly sophisticated at problem solving. In that world, some level of investigation is always a part of the planning. This often starts with identifying the PMK (Person with Most Knowledge). That individual is then co-opted into the planning.

In the legal services world, before reading anything or interviewing anyone, ask the client to identify the PMK, someone in the organization who knows most about the situation. Invite the PMK to help plan the work. What are the issues? Which are the key documents? Who are the fact-holders? In almost every engagement, there is a small core of documents to read before anything. This also allows you to isolate the key stakeholders and then have focused discussions with them, in a logical order.  These basic steps which most of us do instinctively get to a core concern reported to us by GCs — counsel need to learn my business and the most relevant issues for the engagement as quickly as possible; and don't ask me or my colleagues the same questions repeatedly. Smart collaboration with the PMK is a critical route to avoiding that complaint.

The importance of sequencing tasks can be illustrated by litigation where a common conundrum is whether to start with documents or start with interviews. The answer to the 'documents or people conundrum' is different for each project, but the approach is always the same. Do some careful planning, a key element of which is preliminary investigation in collaboration with the client.