Ten tips on how best to survive in the managing partner hot seat

I became managing partner of Birkett Long Solicitors on 1 June 2002, and handed over to my successor, Adrian Livesley, on 31 March 2010.

During my time in the role, I saw many changes, both internal and external, laughed a lot, saw more than a few tears (mine and other people’s), and had the privilege of undertaking a most satisfying job. The role combined the academic challenge of practising commercial and corporate finance law, with the practical challenges of running what was, by the end, a reasonably complex medium-sized enterprise, with a turnover exceeding £7m.

In this article, I offer a few survival tips, both for those contemplating taking over as managing partner in a similarly sized organisation, and for those already in the post. The views expressed are my own, and are based on what worked for me; I cannot, of course, guarantee that they will work in the same way, or at all, for people in different organisations.

1. Handle the handover
Before I became managing partner, I spent a year shadowing the then managing partner, Chris Holmes. This period was vital. I saw at first hand how the firm operated, I was intimately involved in all strategic decisions, and I gradually took over more and more responsibilities. For instance, I was primarily responsible for writing the business plan for my first year in office. This meant that, when the date for handover arrived, the transition was smooth, both for me and for the firm, and the change was achieved with a minimum of disruption.

In light of my experience, I ensured that there was a similar 12-month handover period before my successor took over.

2. Consider firm culture
Between 1989 and 1995, before the formation of Birkett Long in its present form, the firm was part of the much larger Birkett Westhorp & Long. I think, with hindsight, that those of us who put that firm together did so without considering its culture, believing that we could create a successful firm simply by ensuring it had the right skills set and was in the right location. It is vital that everyone in the firm understands its culture and feels happy with it. Otherwise, different parts of the empire may end up pulling in different directions.

3. Assemble the right team
Identify the key players in your organisation and put them in the right positions. There is no room for sentiment in business. Tempting though it may be to offer the role of – say – department head to someone because of their personality or length of time in the firm, these factors are not enough. Sooner or later – probably sooner – you will find that your key people are not able or willing to do what you need them to do.

New managing partners should identify and groom their successors as early as possible. It may seem strange to suggest that a managing partner should no sooner have taken up office than be planning an exit strategy, but identifying a successor early can ensure the firm is able to make plans for handover at the appropriate time, and avoid the current managing partner outstaying their welcome.

4. KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid)
I am a great believer in keeping everything as simple as possible. This must start with the business plan. The more complicated the plan, the less likely it is to be used in the way that it should be – on an almost daily basis, as a living and working tool, to set goals and targets and ensure that progress can be properly and regularly monitored and evaluated. I therefore introduced, early in my term of office, a one-page business plan, which was reviewed monthly by the board. The plan reflected the firm’s key performance indicators and showed all key strategies, divided into different sections – personnel, operations, marketing and innovation. It incorporated an action plan, with clear timing and responsibility for each individual task. It was underpinned by individual team plans (also single-page), reviewed by the teams at their own regular meetings, so that everyone in the organisation could begin to see the relevance of their work and its contribution to the overall wellbeing of the firm.

5. Identify and stick to your market
If a firm does not know what its marketplace is, it can spend all the money it likes on marketing, but for little result. Firms must understand their target market and direct all their marketing resources towards attracting it in order to succeed. That market may be determined by price (for instance, bulk conveyancing or personal injury); by sector (because the firm has particular expertise in an area of the law, such as healthcare or education); or by geography (for instance, a wish to be the best firm of private client lawyers in, say, East Anglia).

6. Grasp the nettle
When decisions are difficult, it is always tempting to defer them and hope that they will go away. In my experience, they rarely do. In fact, generally speaking, the problem, if not immediately tackled, gets much bigger.

An example of this during my time at Birkett Long related to our Halstead office. It had existed for nearly 200 years and continued to contribute to overall profitability. However, we were finding it increasingly difficult to recruit young lawyers to it; our bright youngsters were preferring to work in the larger commercial centres in Colchester and Chelmsford. The Halstead team was therefore getting older, and there was a real danger that, if we did not do something about this, the office would die on its feet. The problem was such a large one that it was tempting to procrastinate, but we recognised that there was an opportunity to be grasped. Our much newer Chelmsford office had been opened as a commercial office only, but it quickly became evident that there was also a demand for private client services. We decided therefore to solve the issues at both offices, by closing Halstead and transferring most of the personnel to Chelmsford. This preserved and enhanced career opportunities for almost all our staff, while continuing to provide clients with the range of services they needed.

7. Don’t expect to be the most popular person in the office
You certainly won’t be! It goes with the territory that difficult decisions have to be taken, and it is inevitable that, in taking them, you will stand on some people’s toes. If popularity ­is important to you, don’t be managing partner. Respect, rather than popularity, is what you should be hoping to secure.

8. Don’t overstay your welcome
A firm’s managing partner should ideally have energy, enthusiasm and vision. You have a unique opportunity to influence and mould the firm’s identity and its direction. You are likely to find that, after a period of time, you will have achieved most, if not all, of what you set out to achieve. If you carry on much past this point, there is a real danger that you will outstay your welcome and frustrate your intended successor.

What is the ideal tenure of a managing partner? I don’t think that one can possibly generalise about this. It depends upon the circumstances of the firm at the time, and the characteristics of the managing partner. I served eight years; others may have a view as to whether this was about right or too long for our particular firm.

All I can say is that I was, and remain, confident that it was time for a change, both for me and the firm.

9. Plan for your own future
The managing partner’s life after they have passed on the baton can be very difficult. When I first became managing partner, I was budgeted to spend half my time running the firm and the other half on fee-earning work. Later, as the firm grew and the role became more onerous, the split changed to 75:25.

Managing partners at bigger firms will, of course, spend all their time running the business. It can, therefore, be very difficult to know what a firm should do with its managing partner once they finish in that role.

I was 50 when I took over as managing partner, and 58 when I finished. With two children still partially or completely dependent on me, retirement was not an option, even if I had wanted it (which I didn’t). However, a return to full-time fee-earning work in my field of company commercial was also unattractive. That area still remains slow after the economic downturn, and my colleagues would not have thanked me for competing with them for jobs in order to justify my continued existence with the firm.

The solution I have found is to work as an active consultant for the firm for about two days a week. The rest of my time is spent on a range of non-executive directorships and consultancies, both for former clients and others. In this way, I hope that I can continue to make a contribution, both to the firm and outside it, while satisfying my own needs, both financial and intellectual.

10. Make sure you have a life outside the firm
One thing is certain – the task of a managing partner is never finished, and it is quite easy to allow it to consume you 24 hours a day, seven days a week, if you wish it to do so. It is vital for your own health and, in the long term, for the health of the firm, that you should be able to switch off and come back to these responsibilities fresh each day. To do this, you need to make sure that you have interests outside the firm, to which you commit, and which will take you away from your desk and into a totally new world for regular periods.

• This article was first published in the August issue of Managing for Success, the magazine of the Law Society’s Law Management Section. For more details about the Section, call: 020 7316 5707 or email: lawmanagementsection@lawsociety.org.uk