Looking for inspiration for my first post using the Passle platform, I suddenly found it in the wonderful book I am currently reading by #Stephen Fry, "Mythos The Greek Myths Retold".

Fry is talking about the omnipotent god Zeus and his ambition for a new era for the world (cosmos), a new home from the bloody and brutal tyrannies that had gone before. He envisaged an assembly of 12 major gods, in Greek, dodecatheon. Then I found my inspiration trigger in the footnote on page 67. Fry explained that "since Zeus took his decision" to assemble these 12 major gods, "the number 12 seems to have taken on important properties. It is divisible by 2, 3, 4 and 6, making it twice as composite as the "stupid number 10"! The dozen can still be seen around us in the signs of the zodiac, the hours of day and night, months and inches, not to mention the disciples of Jesus, the tribes of Israel, the days of Christmas and the Asian 12-year cycle." Fry concludes "it's a duodecimal world".

This story got me into thinking that those firms which work in and around the business sector most closely aligned to my own career, namely the legal services market, can use the magic number 12 for many different and useful daily purposes. Of course, the magic number 12 is already and perhaps most closely associated with the number of jurors on a jury, which links back in history to the wonderfully named Welsh and rhyming King Morgan of Gla-Morgan around 725 AD.

In no particular order of importance, there is:

2 for a Buddy system and a separate Mentor system.

3 for a revenue making business Hub of partner (or director), assistant and support.

3 x 2, 3 x 3 or 3 x 4 for Value Creation or Value Capture Teams collaborating together as part of the firm's knowledge management programme with the objective of identifying new pockets and streams of revenue or cost savings through conversation and brainstorming (the twin and primary cores of any strategy being Value Creation and Value Capture).

3 to trigger the use of (more) Before Action Reviews, During Action Reviews and After Action Reviews.

3 to focus on the organisation triumvirate of People, Process and Technology, especially relevant today in the context of Legal Tech and Innovation, where there always needs to be a balance struck between each leg of the tripod. Without people, there is no business, so people need to remain as one strong leg of the ever changing allocation between the three parts. Technology without process and people operating in tandem is like a Greek god solutions provider flying the cosmos looking for a problem to solve!

4 for any kind of 2 by 2 matrix framework, e.g. SWOT Analysis.

6 as a trigger for my own 6S Model Frameworks for:

• organisation structure (internal people, external people, knowledge, matters, business development and marketing, and learning and development);
• transaction management (mandate, planning and preparation, document production, conditions precedent, signing and closing, and post closing); and
• managing Microsoft Outlook and the DMS (same as organisation structure, plus personal).

12 for a diverse Governance Board of six men and six women, and smaller Committees of 6, 4, 3 or 2 for other leadership or management activities. In thinking that 12 is an even number in the context of a potential voting stalemate, the participants can always elect one of their number in a secret ballot to have a casting vote, or conversely one member can be randomly chosen to participate but not vote, and rather to act in a special and new governance role, akin to a supervisory board (in a dual board system), as an observer monitoring how the other 11 governance board members perform. Such observer acts like a sports coach to offer constructive learning and development feedback to each individual on their performance and the board as a whole. How powerful might this be? If you like, the non voter would act like the overseeing Zeus and observe everything from his (or her) special vantage point and continuously improve the institution of governing from continuous feedback loops meeting by meeting. More importantly and also more fun, everyone gets to play being Zeus!

5 + 7 = 12 as triggers for:

• Porter's 5 Forces that determine industry profitability, namely (1) risk of entry by potential competitors (diagram left side), (2) threat of substitute products (right side), (3) bargaining power of buyers (bottom side), (4) bargaining power of suppliers (top side) and (5) rivalry among established firms (centre point); and
• McKinsey's 7S Framework of organisation alignment, namely Strategy, Structure, Systems, Style, Staff, Skills and Shared Values (Culture); or
• instead of/in addition to Porter, substitute another model of 5's, e.g. Mintzberg's 5 Ps of Strategy Process, namely Plan, Ploy, Pattern, Position and Perspective, which is also depicted as (1) intended strategy may lead to (2) deliberate strategy may lead to (3) realised strategy, but much more likely (1) intended strategy tends to result in both (4) unrealised strategy and (5) emergent strategy, which leads to (3) realised strategy. As Mintzberg said, "most company strategy starts out as a little thought which then grows into a major shift in how that company sees the world."

2, 3, 4, 6 or 12 for a social gathering or sporting tournament to keep a balance between work and play and hybrids which use play to promote work and vice versa.

The number 12 is indeed magical. It has many simple and practical uses. As Stephen Fry will have uttered many times when debating at the Cambridge Union, "I commend this to the house!"

I pray that this new post will be the first of many. I have a "back catalogue" of materials to re-publish or adapt and many new materials to write.

Thank you to Passle and, in particular, #Cam Dobinson and #Will Eke for giving me the inspiration to start writing more regularly once again. This first Passle post has already inspired a second post, which immediately follows, The 12 Passle Principles.