The parallel CV opportunity – building early career blocks for your 40-something partners

This week we ran our latest Professional Services Retirement Forum, and I shared something that a senior partner said a few months ago. He said, “I encourage all the partners in my team to build a parallel CV”.

We were discussing how his own parallel CV now gave him numerous options for his next steps – planning for his unretirement. 

While this is now reaping benefits for John (as we shall call him), is it really feasible to ask partners to do this at the peak of their earning power and family commitments?

That was the topic of debate for our last forum.

In this blog I want to share the why and how of helping partners – and the challenges, risks and opportunities of encouraging this extra curricular activity for partners in their 40s. 

The brutal truth about non-exec roles

First, why would partners want to do this extra work?

We survey partners before every workshop we run. Consistently, around 86% say they want a non-executive role once they step back from the firm. It’s one of the most popular ambitions in the room, every time.

But here’s the brutal: wanting it isn’t enough. Most of the partners retiring today are still, overwhelmingly, people who’ve spent thirty years being brilliant at law, or audit, or advisory – and almost nothing else. To win these coveted roles they need to demonstrate NON-executive experience – influencing others around a table when you don’t have direct line management.

Over the years I have done a lot of research and work around helping women to get board roles.  I have interviewed many who have been successful to understand what they did to stand out in a highly competitive market.  Interestingly nearly all of them talk about thinking and planning their careers 20 or more years ahead and purposely getting experience to fill any gaps on their CV.  I have to say I have  been one of these and took on my first board role at the age of 24. That was not intentional – I was asked to do this for a charity, but I was definitely planning career moves ten to 15 years ahead. I’ve since held board roles including founding Chair of WILD Digital, Northern Ballet and the University of Leeds Management Advisory Board. I realise now that I didn’t apply for any of these but was asked to do them – and that is another message.

Partners need to be out and about – in their Cities, on industry bodies, active in their firms around ESG initiatives (sustainability and more). 

Most partners that I have helped seriously under-estimate the value of what seem modest roles such as sitting on a parish council or being a governor for a school or Academy Trust.  These all demonstrate skills in working with others from very wide backgrounds, influencing and often handling specific issues such as managing inspections, involvement in mergers and take-overs or having to turn around poor performance.

Why the 40s are exactly the wrong time – and exactly the right time

At our Forum, we asked everyone to join a breakout room and look at different angles around the topic.  One of the key discussions was around age and timing: what timing is best and realistic for partners – is the 40s even the right age to start this conversation? Honestly, the room split.

The case against: partners in their 40s are, by every measure, the squeezed middle. They’re pushing for the next partnership gateway. They’re billing harder than at any other point in their career. Many have young children. Ask them to think about a trustee role or a governor position on top of all that, and you’re not being supportive.

But here’s the case for, and it’s the one we all kept coming back to: the 40s are also, for many people, the moment their children are at school – which is precisely when school governor roles, sports coaching and parish council seats are actually available and useful. One of our attendees mentioned a managing partner who has coached his children’s football team for years. He didn’t fit it in around partnership. He built it in before the extra layers of responsibility arrived. Wait until 55 and that runway may have gone.

The uncomfortable conclusion is that there probably isn’t a single right age. What there is, definitely, is a wrong approach: waiting until a partner is coasting towards retirement to startthis conversation.

What I’d actually do if I were you

If you’re an HRD reading this, here’s where I’d start:

Don’t link taking on external roles to retirement. The firms getting this right aren’t badging trustee roles and industry committee seats as “retirement prep.” They’re badging them as leadership development, client relationship building, and brand. Reframe it, and a 42-year-old will hear you. Say “retirement” to a 42-year-old and they’ll switch off, understandably.

Use ESG as your easy win. It’s the one area every firm already has live initiatives in, it’s genuinely useful for winning client work, and it doesn’t cost partners billable credibility to get involved. Start there.

Make it recordable, not just encouraged. The firms with real traction have folded this kind of activity into investment-time targets, not left it as a nice-to-have that quietly loses out to fee targets every single time.

Talk about planning ‘long term futures’.  There are all sorts of sensitivities, to say nothing of age discrimination legal issues if the word ‘retirement’ is used.  Instead, start normalising long term career planning for both partners and employees – and ensure this extends beyond working in the firm.  In my book Expiry Date Never (coming out in September), I predict that there will not be a concept of ‘retirement’ in 100 years.  Changing your firm’s career support will be part of making this happen.  Retirement is outdated and unhealthy.

We recently asked partners who came on our workshop and have now retired, to comment on the workshop – what worked and what should be improved. We also asked everyone what one piece of advice would they give their peers?  We were delighted that most people were saying the workshop was excellent and didn’t need improving (tweaks would have been to have more on financial planning).

But the advice they would give? Start early and you can’t start too early.

We would say ten years out is not too soon. These things take a long time, even to find headspace for thinking.

So what did delegates at our forum conclude?  They said yes, to help partners plan early. They generally thought 40s was too young – more like early 50s.  And they couldn’t really see negatives for the firm – the win of getting partners out and about is they are visible and memorable to go on tender lists, be asked to advise on issues and become part of a city’s fabric, advising and helping shape the future.

I’d say the same thing to you, about your partners in their 40s. Don’t wait until they’re 58 to start the conversation you could be having now.

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If you’d like to talk about how Next-Up can help you build this into your own partner development programme, get in touch – we’d love to help you get ahead of it.