11
FROM THE FOUNDER
Move over, Grover
If you want your business to be a multi-generational enterprise, you need to recognize when it’s time to step aside and pass the reins to your successor.
A huge problem in the AEC industry is the founders or CEOs who cling to their positions and will not get out of the way so an actual leadership (and often ownership) transition can occur. When this happens, it destroys morale and motivation at all levels beneath that top individual. And unfortunately, I have witnessed this way too often over my 42 years in this business and am still seeing it today.
Mark Zweig
The typical evolution of the problem goes something like this: A successful firm is led by someone who is good at what they do. It’s growing and profitable. They either started the business or assumed control of it at some point in the past. That person gets very used to the power and authority, as well as the perks and rewards that go along with the job. They like it – who wouldn’t? If they are lucky, they build a competent team of people underneath them. Then, they age in place. The world changes around them. Over time, their client base evolves and other people in the business start bringing in and maintaining their own clients. Those people naturally want to see their opportunities and rewards expanded. And they do – for a while. At some point, the awareness sinks in. The top person
isn’t going to hand the reins over to anyone else. This person may not actually say that but their actions prove that is the plan. No specific time frame for them to move over is ever established. Or if it is, that time comes and goes and there is no change, justified for any number of reasons – the economy, firm valuation is not high enough, no single person is ready to take over, the firm’s financial strength won’t allow them to buy their ownership back – or any variety of other conditions exist that “legitimize” no change. Then the second tier starts slowing down. Their motivation wanes. Maybe the best of them leave to go somewhere else. Maybe those people then take some of the best people below them. Revenues flatten, maybe they even decline some. The firm
See MARK ZWEIG , page 12
THE ZWEIG LETTER AUGUST 29, 2022, ISSUE 1455
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