11
O P I N I O N
Extreme ambition
O K, two years might be a bit of an exaggeration. Or maybe not. We once had a young engineer who had been with the firm for only a few months after college. Upon meeting the president of our firm, the young engineer said, “Great to meet you, sir. Thanks for keeping my chair warm for me.” After just two years, they want to be the CEO. Molding the go-getters (early on) is crucial if you don’t want them to leave for better opportunities at another firm.
Mitch Fortner GUEST SPEAKER
Extreme personal ambition. How do you manage it in a consulting firm? After all, unless your firm is growing at warp speed, there are limited opportunities for rapid advancement of personal careers. The typical career progression for an engineer goes something like this: summer internship, full-time engineer in training or engineering intern, design engineer, project engineer, project manager, group leader, and then advancement to either a technical leadership position, business development leadership position, or corporate leadership position. It’s very rare for an individual to demonstrate such extreme leadership skills that they skip a significant portion of that career path. So what about the younger professional who desires an expedited ride to the upper levels of management? Is there some way to challenge and prepare them for upper level management without losing them
to a company with more opportunity for their immediate advancement? Over the years, KSA, just like every other consulting firm, has struggled with this issue. We have lost our fair share of talented and ambitious young professionals due at least in part to unmet career development expectations. These losses are exacerbated by a hyper-competitive employment market with extremely low unemployment rates. We are working hard to arrest this trend and find ways to channel that ambition into areas that are productive for the company and satisfying for the employee. Extremely ambitious young professionals are typically very talented and quite often among the highest performers in their peer group. Rather than resent them for being yet another problem to
See MITCH FORTNER, page 12
THE ZWEIG LETTER August 6, 2018, ISSUE 1259
Made with FlippingBook Annual report