Established in 1907, Digby Brown is a law firm specialising in Personal Injury and Employment work with seven offices across Scotland.

ChangingPoint had a very positive impact on the leadership team and our ability to change. We were really able to engage the staff and get everyone focused on results and push to make the objectives.

Fraser Oliver| CEO | Digby Brown

Situation

In 2006 the business was performing well, there had been a couple of good years. We had just developed our Vision “to be recognised as the best pursuer personal injury firm in Scotland.” There were some things we knew we had to change if we were going to get everyone behind this vision and achieve the results we were seeking.

Issues

Some of the issues for us were:

• Standardisation - at that time we had four offices and we were aware that they were operating quite differently. We were keen to establish the best practice and have that adopted across the firm.
• Communication- this was variable. It would depend on how much individual Partners knew, wanted to share, and was open to be influenced by their personal style. People in the firm did not share a consistent understanding of what the core objectives were and how we were going to achieve them.
• Leadership- we were aware that the leaders in the firm had become leaders because they were skilled and effective lawyers. The challenge of transforming into highly skilled and effective leaders was immense and we knew that supporting and enabling this change would be key to the success of our overall plans.

Action

We brought ChangingPoint on board to help us make the changes we wanted and achieve great results. Coaching was recognised as an approach that would fit with the firm as we were largely made up of motivated professionals.

ChangingPoint delivered Executive Coaching for all the Partners and senior managers in the firm. This was aimed at developing a good understanding of self and building techniques to stretch us out of our comfort zones. It also provided a common language for Partners to talk about development issues and increased the effectiveness of group leadership workshops that were carried out later by ChangingPoint.

Outstanding Results

These sessions had a positive effect on how we managed our business planning. We developed that over the years and our ability to communicate the plan across the firm with consistency, involving the Partners and the senior team.

ChangingPoint had a very positive impact on the leadership team and our ability to change. We were really able to engage the staff and get everyone focused on results and push to make the objectives.

This set us off on a journey of continuous improvement seeking each year to outperform what we had done the previous year and ChangingPoint continue with us on that journey today - supporting newly-promoted Partners with managing this transition to business leadership.

‍We have seen the benefits of this approach over the period:

Our people have increased from 99 to 240 and our Revenue has increased from £6m to £25m.

‍We have been ranked number 1 the Legal 500 and Chambers Directories for the last 10 years. We are now accredited gold standard by Investors in People and won SME 300 top business in 2015. In 2015 we swept the board with five awards at the Scott and Co Scottish Legal awards.

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