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O P I N I O N
I ’m a millennial. Gasp! There, I said it. A lot has been made of my generation. The good, the bad, our desires, our beliefs. Are we in fact the “We” generation, as the Wizard of Ads, Roy Williams, postulates in his book, Pendulum: How Past Generations Shape Our Present and Predict Our Future ? The millennial era If you want to groom the next generation of leaders, you’ll have to make sure your firm is changing with the times.
Phil Keil
underdeveloped and unprepared the second tier is. Oftentimes, this leads to a founder, hoping to leave a legacy, being required to sell the firm since there isn’t anyone on staff that is ready to take the “Millennials don’t really want to work at one place their entire career. And while they’re at your firm – and if you want to have an outside chance of keeping them for a meaningful amount of time – they need something to believe in.”
I get it, there’s some baggage here, but nothing can change the fact that we are the future of the A/E industry, the future of leadership. With that being the case, firms need to think about how to best position themselves for that future. Zweig Group’s Randy Wilburn, director of executive search, wrote a great article, “The Gig Economy,” that recently appeared in The Zweig Letter . In his piece, Wilburn talked about a new mindset in the A/E industry. Millennials don’t really want to work at one place their entire career. And while they’re at your firm – and if you want to have an outside chance of keeping them for a meaningful amount of time – they need something to believe in. Knowing this, firms have to learn how to attract, retain, and develop millennials as their second-tier leadership. Working in M&A, it’s surprising how
See PHIL KEIL, page 12
THE ZWEIG LETTER December 5, 2016, ISSUE 1178
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