My business experience

Over a 14 year period between 2000 and 2014, I was Senior Partner and Managing Partner of CMS Cameron McKenna LLP and Executive Partner of its European business, having previously had a successful transactional practice as a mergers and acquisitions lawyer. In those roles, I had significant exposure to the leadership challenges in a people-based business and to the different phases of the economic cycle. The heart of my approach to leadership was to bring out the best in people in order to deliver business results.

I was elected to be Managing Partner when I was 39. In the following eight years, the firm's fee income and profit per partner increased by 75% and 150% respectively, the latter being greater than in any other City law firm over the same period. The firm also won 'The Financial Times' Innovative Lawyers Award for innovation in management and featured regularly in 'The Sunday Times' Top 100 Companies to Work For. The driver for this was a values-led strategy, which I devised in conjunction with David Maister (www.davidmaister.com), who is widely acknowledged as one of the world's leading authorities on the management of professional services firms.

My experience includes:

- as Managing Partner, managing the operational aspects of the firm's business and leading a team comprising the heads of it's client-facing practices and business support functions

- making difficult decisions about office closures and people's pay and jobs - I was reluctant to compromise the bottom line for the sake of my personal popularity or to save the firm's face

- as Executive Partner of CMS across Europe, leading the integration of an international business with total revenues of over €935m which now has 59 offices in 33 countries and employs more than 5,500 people

- building consensus within a leadership group comprising 20 Senior and Managing Partners from 10 firms, for the vast majority of whom English was their second language

- as Senior Partner, chairing the firm's Board, carrying out a strategic review and leading the processes by which the firm made important decisions about its new London premises (its biggest investment for 25 years), international expansion and its merger with Dundas & Wilson (a 60 partner Edinburgh law firm). During my three years as Senior Partner, the firm’s profits grew by over 20%.

- leading the process by which the firm re-organised its partner model. This involved fundamental changes to how partner performance is managed, measured, supported and rewarded. The new model reflected the different stages in the partner lifecycle, and also codified the ‘one-firm’ set of behaviours expected of partners.

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Contact Dick: dick@dicktyler.com

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