“A successful partnering on a project includes clear and agreed purpose and objectives, good communication and all stakeholders delivering on time” — Tommaso Di Chio, Associate General Counsel, Kambi, UK

How do you plan to plan? No, it’s not a riddle, but it is a “chicken and egg” problem. At the beginning of any legal project, the lawyer needs to understand the client’s goals in order to take the next steps — resource planning, budgeting and strategizing.

On the other hand, the lawyer can’t do any meaningful planning work without knowing something about context and goals. So which do you do first? Agree on client goals and then see if they are feasible, or investigate the project and then find out what the client wants to achieve?

Part of the answer is to reframe the context as ‘desired outcomes’ rather than ‘goals.’ But there is more. The next step is to visualize it as an Anticipated Range of Outcomes (ARO) and then place it as the first component of the planning stage. Then, at the end of the planning stage just before execution, revisit it. The first iteration of ARO is a working premise, which we call the “Blunt ARO.” The final, agreed iteration, prior to launch is a “Sharp ARO.”

Interestingly, clients have no problem with this approach.