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P R O F I L E
Family business: H. Miller Caldwell, III CEO of Caldwell Associates, a firm that’s not afraid to fail, and that’s strong enough to pick up and keep going.
By LIISA ANDREASSEN Correspondent
A seventh-generation Pensacolian, Caldwell, or Miller 3 as he’s known around the office, is CEO at Caldwell Associates. He enjoys discussions about building business and educating other local businesses on how to create and develop value and the metrics associated with a culture of owner mentality within an organization. “Our priority is our team and culture because that’s what drives the quality of our work,” Caldwell says. “We have never and will never be a firm that hires and fires based on sudden increases in workload. If that means we pass on projects, then we’re OK with that.” A CONVERSATION WITH H. MILLER CALDWELL, III. The Zweig Letter: What are the three to four key business performance indicators that you watch most carefully? Do you share that information with your staff? H. Miller Caldwell, III: It really depends on the type of project and how we’ve negotiated the fee. The metric we use the most is net service revenue or NSR/FTE. We also
keep a close eye on utilization, however you can have great utilization, but not produce anything on a per project basis. To ensure we stay on track and are productive, timewise, we complete monthly project status reports to assess time spent versus the percentage of the job complete. Our younger staff has developed widgets on our accounting/project management dashboards to allow all team members access to real time data – this allows for better decision-making. It’s critical to give project teams access to information that will help them and the organization be successful. TZL: How much time do you spend working “in the business” rather than “on the business?” MC: Since becoming CEO, this has been my greatest challenge. We’re in the process of training members which will allow me to focus more “on the business” rather than “in the business.” There was a time when I really didn’t know what that meant. Being a business owner and growing a firm is not the same as producing and running projects. They’re different skill sets. For example, delegating to team members is now on my to-
THE ZWEIG LETTER Octo
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