Brands, trademarks and patents are gaining ever more high profiles and importance.

They are generating

unprecedented coverage in popular media, not least due to the copycat culture being facilitated by readily available
technology. Not surprisingly, business is booming for leading Patent Attorneys like Gill Jennings and Every LLP (GJE).
Philippa Hardman describes her work with them.

Governance choices for growth at GJE

Founded as a partnership in London nearly 100
years ago, GJE currently consists of some 100
staff, made up of 14 Partners, associates and
support staff. The founding Partners may be
long gone but the firms expertise continues to
be replenished by talent from disciplines such
as natural sciences and engineering. While
the stable for their talent might have been
the same as that of the founding Partners, the
business they are joining is operating in a far more
complex, global environment. For example, GJE
is now an expert in opposition and appeals at the
European Patent Office activity which has led
to the firms presence in Munich as well as in the
City of London and Cambridge.
GJE people are highly professional and
knowledgeable about their day to day business,
but like many partnerships, they have found
themselves facing challenging issues about the
future of their organisation. Recognising the need
for a coherent approach in preparing for the future,
they asked Ashridge Consulting (AC) to help them
take stock of their current position and help them
think about where the organisation is going. AC
initiated an inquiry process that involved staff at all
levels: this involved one-to-one conversations and
focus groups, exploring everyones understanding
about where the business is now and where it
needs to be in the future. Some of the issues that
emerged will resonate with many consultancies
and Partnerships that reach a critical point in their
growth and lifecycle of the business:
Is the involvement of all Partners in both the
strategic and the more mundane resulting in slow
decision-making processes and duplication of
effort? What can be safely delegated?
To what extent should business won by Partners
be serviced by them personally or might it be
shared to ensure more even workloads?
Does GJEs reputation lie with the firm or does it
rest on loyalty to individual Partners?
Are the right people doing the right things?
How can this size of business best handle
issues of modern working life, such as work/life
balance and flexible working?
Is there sufficient shared clarity about
important business issues such as profitability,
risk and the operating environment?

The results of the inquiry were fed back

to Partners in a one-day workshop. To some,
the feedback was familiar in its themes, whilst
for others it bore elements of surprise. But the
Partners unanimously acknowledged that issues
around how the Partnership is managed and
governed were getting in the way of any other
conversations about the future. Earlier attempts to
address this, through the appointment of focused
committees, had simply resulted in duplication of
time and effort and the creation of silos.
The days discussion resulted in the 14
Partners decision to elect a three-person
steering group. The steering group, as well as
AC Consultant Philippa Hardman, undertook to
explore issues of management and governance
at other similar Partnerships, looking to identify
examples of best practice, efficiency and
effectiveness. Three good models emerged from
this investigation, and in another workshop with
the full Partnership each option was presented
by one of the steering group members. They
each talked to a couple of Partners about their
particular model, gaining their thoughts and
feedback, before the Partners moved on to
discuss the next option. In this way, each member
of the steering group was able to gather the
thoughts and reactions of all the Partners to the
different models and identify where preferences
lay. In addition, a lawyer visited to talk about the
experience of changing the governance structures
within his firm. Not only sharing practical details,
he empathised about what such changes could
actually feel like: it might involve taking power
for some and relinquishing it for others. It wasnt
just about appointing leaders it was also about
becoming followers.

It was overwhelmingly clear to the steering

group from their conversations that Partners
preferred model of governance was the
appointment of three Managing Partners and a
Chief Operating Officer. AC helped them create
an election process whereby each Partner was
automatically a nominee unless they chose to
deselect themselves, and each Partner could
exercise three votes. In November 2009, their
vote resulted in a decisively clear outcome,
with the appointment of Robert Skone James,
Alasdair MacQuarrie and Helen Jones as
Managing Partners. Jeremy Dutton was recruited
as Chief Operating Officer, joining the firm at the
beginning of 2010. This team of four now take
all the business decisions and in the event of
stalemate on any decision, Robert Skone James
as Chairman holds an overruling vote.
Its still early days and the process of handing
over professional work, to free up time for more
management and governance duties, is still in
progress. But the managing team are starting their
roles from a secure base, as a result of the highly
participative process by which the management
model was arrived at and by which they were
elected. All Partners are supporting them in their
new role and are far more optimistic about being
able to make headway in preparing the firm to
face the future

AC were able to help us address not just

our vision for the future but the very practical
people and management issues that were
blocking our own attempts to move forward.
They really understood the issues that face
professional services Partnerships and brought the
right blend of understanding and challenge.
Robert Skone James, Chairman GJE
27

Ashridge Business School

http://www.ashridge.org.uk