Lisa Leighton, every day is a learning day

Lisa Leighton is joint Managing Partner of BHP Accountants, who have 350 staff in five offices across Yorkshire. They are the only Sheffield business named in The Sunday Times Best 100 Middle-Sized Companies to Work For. They have tripled in size in the last ten years.

They act primarily for SMEs, but also in the healthcare sector, and for charities and not-for-profit organisations.

Their strap line is “Reassuringly Straight Laced”, a phrase that reflects the personality of a business which has a family culture and doesn’t take itself too seriously.

Initially a shy only child, Lisa had to dig deep when her dad died while she was in her second year at university. His heart attack at 46 has shaped Lisa’s life ever since. “I was almost searching for a new family” and she made BHP that family. “Everyone looks out for each other” she says.

It also awakened her to the fact that we have one life and “you need to live it. There is no point in not doing things on account of nerves or thinking that you can’t. Just try.”

She feels that Sheffield has given her “so much” and so she is committed to returning some of that: she is Executive in Residence at Sheffield Hallam University and was treasurer at Cavendish Cancer Care for a five year period.

Lisa doesn’t understand why people would say accounting is boring. It gives Lisa the privilege of “being nosey” and asking questions in a huge range of businesses, without being asked why! She loves the human contact and arriving at solutions in partnership with her clients.

What is it that makes BHP a great place to work? Becoming one of the Sunday Times Top 100 Employers became a formal part of BHP’s strategy in 2010. Some of the changes they have made are simple and straightforward but mean a lot to their staff. They have introduced an email curfew between 7pm and 7am (anyone who works in professional services will understand how radical that actually is), they have introduced a volunteering day, free fruit, and a wellbeing week with Katie Bell Physiotherapy.

The ‘Why’ of BHP, the outcome of an exercise prompted by Simon Sinek, is “to support, develop and inspire our people and our clients so that they are able to realise their true potential.”

The firm is investing heavily in technology, as Lisa believes a lot of the services that BHP provides will disappear in the next five years and that technology skills, for example data analytics, will be essential to the employability of the next generation of accountants.  

Technology and people skills in fact are the top priorities of the business, which recently won Audit Team of the Year. The organisation is on a journey from audit to advisory. Transforming young people into rounded advisors is challenging because some of the grass roots experience that was the foundation of Lisa’s training is no longer available to the profession. In lieu of that, partners take younger staff to meetings in order for them to listen to what is going on.

I asked Lisa if the auditors of Thomas Cook and Carillion had been doing their job. Lisa acknowledged that the profession had been coming under pressure in relation to audit quality. Her view is that training is key. But data analytics also helps.

Lisa is Joint Managing Partner (with Hamish Morrison). It is working well. She personally had not appreciated how lonely it is at the top and being able to share on a daily basis with Hamish has helped a lot. They have complementary skill sets and work in complementary geographies. However, they work hard to ensure that they manage BHP as a single unified practice.

Lisa has moved around in the business, at her own volition, from audit to small scale advisory to corporate finance. In between she has had two children. She picked up the role of staff partner on returning from maternity leave, assuming responsibility for the HR function and this proved significant for her development. In particular it enabled her to hone her coaching and mentoring skills.

Lisa considers becoming Managing Partner one of her big achievements. She credits her supportive family, in particular her mum, as instrumental in this. Going forward she wants to make sure the business is there for the next generation.

The mistake she’s learnt most from she calls “crashing and burning.” Five years ago she was at a partners meeting and they experimented with some ‘post-it feedback.’ The feedback Lisa received was consistent and made her question the long hours she was working and the toll it was taking on her family. She acknowledges that resilience is a two-edged sword and can enable one to sustain unhealthy routines as well as to cope with change and adversity.

She started to look after herself and to “say no” and now makes the most of her PA. She has kept the ‘post-it’ notes from the meeting.

The people who have inspired Lisa include her mum, Stephen Ingram, John Warner (other partners in the practice) and plenty of young technology enthusiasts, and clients. Her philosophy is “Every day is a learning day.”

Her advice to aspiring young leaders would be “believe in yourself” and take responsibility for your career.