Dr. No — Issue # 39 - Want to change your team? Trick their brain first

For GCs who lead like founders,

This week: How to move your team (without pushing)

1. Question for You

   What if your team isn’t resisting change…
   They’re just trying to stay consistent with who they think they are?

   Here’s the brain hack:
   
   People don’t want to be right.
   They want to feel consistent with their past decisions.
   Use that, and you can shift culture without forcing it.

2. Book Insight – The Art of Designing Behaviour (Astrid Groenewegen)
   

   Astrid Groenewegen drops this gem:

   If you want to change minds, don’t start with mindset. Start with action.

   Why? Because once people behave in a certain way, they start believing that’s who they are.

   The book’s core idea: Don’t change minds. Change routines.

Here are 3 powerful techniques straight from the book — with a GC twist:

• Use “pre-commitments”
  Ask your team to publicly commit to a principle:
  “I believe legal should help us close deals faster.”
  Once they say it, they’ll bend over backwards to act in line with it.

• Anchor new behaviors to existing ones
  Example: “Every time we review a contract, we ask: ‘How does this drive business value?’”
  You don’t need new meetings. Just new defaults.

• Design for micro-success
  Big change feels scary.
  But sending one well-crafted, business-focused legal memo?
  That’s doable. And it rewires how your team sees themselves:
  “We are a team that gives actionable advice, not just legal flags.”

Start small. Repeat. Watch the identity shift.

3. Munger Mental Model – Commitment & Consistency Bias
   Charlie Munger called this bias one of the most powerful forces in human behavior:

The brain wants to stay coherent.
So if you help someone act differently once, their brain will rush to justify it.

Tip: Use this bias for team rituals.
→ “Every Friday, we share 1 legal win that added business value.”
Repeat it. It becomes culture.

4. AI Tool – ✅ DropFlow
   

   Extract and summarize emails to turn them into actionable insights.
   Perfect for legal teams drowning in info but short on clarity.

Examples:

• Instantly digest contract negotiation threads.

• Turn stakeholder emails into to-do lists.

• Make the inbox your team’s secret strategic weapon.

5. Quote to Reflect

At Ambar, we help high-performing GCs build elite legal departments — fast.

How?

• By giving you on-demand access to top-tier independent lawyers, wherever you need them.

• No overhead. No long-term costs. No lag in expertise.

• Need someone cutting-edge in niche contracting, regulatory, AI or payments?
  We’ll get you a specialist who’s “professionally in the gym” — staying sharp in real-time.

You don’t always need more full-time staff.
You need better talent, when it matters.

Let us know what you’re up against.

Until next time,
 Rosa & Manuel