Case Study: CMS Academy and IMD

Author: Roderick Millar, Editor, IEDP.info

First Published: September 2007

There is a view taking root that the traditional corporate university model is becoming outdated. Josh Bersin of Bersin Associates, the US Human Capital consultants, wrote of the Death of the Corporate University, 18 months ago, in March 2006. The truth is that the concept of a high-cost physical campus offering an array of fixed programs for employees to sign-up to has been going out of fashion for a long while. The corporate university has been evolving from the dinosaur of fixed campuses to a variety of other models.

E-learning and the virtual university has had a lot of attention in recent years but it misses some of the real benefits the campus offered, namely net-working and interaction with colleagues both in the classroom and socialising around it. As with all successful evolutions the winners often appear unexpectedly and are hybrid versions of what has gone before.

CMS Legal Services, the alliance of nine major European law firms, has developed a corporate academy in partnership with the leading international business school IMD in Lausanne,  Switzerland, to further develop the human capital of its senior executives. This is an innovative approach combining the benefits of an in-house university with the expertise, breadth and physical assets of a leading executive education provider.

CMS Legal Services was established in 1999 by five founding firms in the UK, Germany, Austria, Holland and Belgium and has since been joined four further law firms in Switzerland, France, Italy and Spain. Law firms often have an unofficial network of foreign partners with whom they do business, the alliance was a recognition and formalisation of this, it now has around 2000 lawyers with 600 partners. The alliance allows the member firms to significantly broaden the reach of their advice to clients, with expertise being available across western and central and eastern Europe as well as in Latin America and elsewhere. The challenge is to draw the partners and senior associates closer together across the member firms without losing the independence each firm cherishes.

The alliance is managed by an executive committee based in Brussels, headed up by executive partner Robert Derry-Evans. Back in 2005 it was decided that it was of such a size that an executive development academy would be a beneficial way to develop executive skills across the alliance and also have the additional purpose of better integrating the partners enhancing the concept of “national expertise with international capability”. The executive committee believed that a world-class provider of executive education would provide the most effective structure to create the academy around. The steering committee looked at a number of high profile schools including INSEAD and Harvard before finally selecting IMD.

IMD won out on a number of criteria, not least their geographic position in the heart of Europe and previous links with individuals on the steering committee. Their expertise in being able to cover the core critical topics such as leadership, private equity and dispute resolution were paramount though.

CMS Legal Services were the first professional services firm that IMD had worked with on such a scale. This involved IMD having to quickly understand the different working environment that operates in such businesses; where each partner effectively runs their own business within the organisation. This entrepreneurial element is significantly different to the typical large organisation where profit and loss accounts tend to be worked across entire departments rather than individuals and their teams. This dynamic affects the entire operation of law firms from client relations, through marketing to use of administrative services and needed to be well understood by IMD. Peter Sommer, Director of Marketing for CMS Legal Services and a member of the Academy's steering committee says that IMD were extremely quick to appreciate this "as you would expect, as learning is what they do!".

Sommer`s explained that the Academy is run by the steering committee of senior CMS executives. The committee identifies a strategy that the development process should follow that fits the alliance’s current business focus and that the various programs and modules are designed to fit into. Some of the modules may be relatively straight-forward, such as enhancing presentation skills, and will be administered “in-house” by CMS and delivered in the relevant location. The bulk of the Academy offerings and IMD Programs are designed and developed in close collaboration with the IMD Program Director who is an IMD Faculty. The delivery, typically, in two-day sessions take place at IMD`s lakeside campus in Lausanne. Sommer's was clear that the campus setting was an important element in creating an atmosphere that made participants feel they were achieving something challenging and important – whereas a program delivered in the office or a hotel would not necessarily offer the same atmosphere. In addition, and importantly, the campus provides a neutral location for the participants away from their normal "fiefdoms".

The CMS Academy offered its first programs at IMD in March 2006, although some trial modules had been run prior to that. Initially the programs were offered only to senior partners in each firm that were responsible for cross-border leadership management roles. This was then extended to all partners and senior associates. The mix of participants, as with all executive development programs, is important as the experience of participants is a vital ingredient in the learning and feedback process. Sommer`s said that while the ratio of participants attending programs was ideally kept the same as that of the make-up of the member firms (the UK member, CMS Cameron McKenna, represents some 40% of partners in the alliance; and combined with the German, French and Belgian firms accounts for some 80% of the Alliance), the larger members clearly had more sector and industry focus group specialists and the smaller firms more generalists – and that this affected the participation in the more focused programs.

The CMS Academy has now been operating for 18 months and Sommer`s is clear that real benefits can already be identified. It is notoriously difficult to tease out specific ROI benefits from executive education programs, but there is a feeling that the levels of confidence and expertise in the commercial/management areas has improved. The most tangible progress has been seen in the improved networking between member firms. This could be clearly measured in the number of cross-border referrals between Alliance members now occurring as compared to before the Academy was in operation.

The Academy will continue to evolve as the alliance continues to evolve. Sommer's emphasises that they do not want to impose a structured change management process on the member firms but prefer to encourage a more gradual evolution, and that the Academy played a vital role in influencing that process. As far as delivery of programs is concerned they are examining the opportunity to develop some e-learning elements to some modules, particularly as part of the follow-up process to programs.

Operationally CSM Legal Services are very satisfied with the interaction with IMD. Sommer`s felt there was an excellent level of communication between them and that any issues that appeared were effectively worked through. His only problem is that all the programs need to be scheduled many months in advance as not only are the CMS participants extremely busy but so are the IMD faculty.