If your firm is "two-tier" (equity and non-equity partners), would you ever consider going back to single-tier? Ridiculous, outlandish question—preposterous, beyond the pale, unthinkable?
I’m here to remind you that CMS Cameron McKenna, #13 on the UK 100, just finished doing that very thing. First, some background in case you’re unfamiliar with CMS: Their revenue last year was £181-million, or about $US335-million, and their profits per equity partner £476-thousand, or about $US880-thousand.
In terms of client base, roughly 100 of its 4,000 clients account for two-thirds of its revenue, and deepening its penetration into this group is the firm’s strategic goal. To become the "go-to" firm of choice among this group means focusing on absolutely nothing other than how to deliver the best-quality result for the client and having no monetary or other incentives that conflit with that. Hence, at the turn of this young century, CMS Cameron McKenna began the process of eliminating its salaried partners and returning to its roots as pure lockstep: The better to encourage unvarnished collaboration.
Hard? You bet.
Although the article chronicling this (in brief) doesn’t touch on the thorny topic of managing the elimination of the rung of salaried partners, it pulls no punches about what it means to be a lockstep firm:
“Lockstep works only if you’re prepared to be intolerant about underperformance,” argues [Dick] Tyler [managing partner of Camerons]. “This means you’re helpful and visible in terms of managing people, but people have to succeed by reference to what we believe to be an acceptable level of contribution.”
Saying you’re "intolerant" is one thing; doing it another. Camerons does it by having frequent, as in quarterly, partner reviews, posing three questions to every partner in the firm:
- What did you say you were going to do?
- Have you done it?
- What are you going to do now?
Partners are not the only ones being queried: Camerons does the same in face-to-face interviews with some 150 clients annually, although there of course the questions are more along the lines of meeting service expectations—and even asking for numerical grades on a score of 1-5. The goal? To score at 4.5 or better, and then to improve from there.
Sound a little too MBA-like for you? Consider the model Tyler dropped into the conversation: British supermarket-er Tesco, which reporting period after reporting period beats its previous results. When asked to explain how they do it, Tesco CEO Terry Leahy respnds simply, "We just listen to our customers."
But as far as Tyler is concerned, the statistic of which he is "most proud" is that of all the new partners made in the past five years, 71% trained exclusively at Camerons. He believes that the war of the future is for talent, and that "five years hence the firms at the top of the tree will be the ones that crack this."
If you thrive in an environment intolerant of underperformance, ready to be grilled every three months on how you’ve lived up to your promises, then you are ready for Camerons—and its clients may be ready to rank you as a 5 out of 5.
Not for everyone? Indeed not. But as the profession muses somewhat fecklessly on how to define, and attain, "work/life balance," we have in our sights a few clear alternatives. If you belong at Camerons, Godspeed.
