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OPINION
The culture transplant
As your firm grows, this person ensures you will maintain your core competencies, values, and environment with your newly added team members.
Y our firm is growing. Are your brand and culture keeping up? Growth involves more than filling existing seats within your geography. It requires maintaining who you are as a firm while investing in your teams and giving them the autonomy to transfer your culture to new offices, geographies, and client bases. One effective way of doing so is to identify and enlist a culture transplant.
David Doxtad, P.E.
CULTURE TRANSPLANT; NOUN. A culture transplant can be defined as: ■ A person who knows how and why a firm ticks and can easily share the how and why to others. ■ A person who inherently unifies people into teams – whether in day-to-day business or over a coffee. WHY A CULTURE TRANSPLANT? Opening new office locations, mergers, and acquisitions are obvious strategic ways to grow your business. Are you maintaining your core competencies, values, and environment with your newly added team members? Understanding the culture of the other firm before you join forces is critical. Both firms must have a tight grasp on culture to blend the good of each group and synchronize all employees. Merging without transferring your culture will result in backtracking, picking up the pieces and starting over with team integration, or, even worse, a siloed
office that does not represent the firm. People who are not integrated into the firm, ultimately, make a less profitable team and result in lost revenue. A culture transplant combats this and positively affects your profitability by ensuring new team members are situated for success, allowing them to focus on projects and clients. In fact, Forbes reports that companies with strong culture have seen a fourfold increase in revenue growth. THE IMPACT OF A CULTURE TRANSPLANT. If you strategize correctly and select the right ambassador of your firm and brand, you will expand into new geographies or office locations and build a team that represents your core values. With a solid team that operates as one and conducts business using proven business methodologies, you will have a better and more profitable team – a win-win. Whether planting a new flag or blending two firms
Andy Brandel, P.E.
See DAVID DOXTAD & ANDY BRANDEL, page 4
THE ZWEIG LETTER JULY 22, 2024, ISSUE 1546
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