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F R O M T H E F O U N D E R
Decide, then act!
Don’t become paralyzed by fear. Decide, act – and if that doesn’t work out, decide and act again.
A nyone who knew my late father, Frederick Stanley Zweig, who died a little more than five years ago at the age of 96, could tell you that he was an unusual guy. He grew up poor and his mother was married five times. His first job was in a junk yard during the Depression where he took apart cars 10 hours a day, six days a week. Then he got a job in a manufacturing plant that built gas ranges where he became the union shop steward until he joined the Army in World War II .
Mark Zweig
There, he rose through the ranks as an enlisted man to the rank of first lieutenant in the 6th Armored Division of Patton’s Third Army, got his Silver Star Medal for bravery in battle, and decided that if he made it out of the war alive he would never work in any factory job again. When the war was over he won several thousand dollars shooting craps on the boat on the way home, bought my mom a huge diamond ring, and started his career in advertising. By 1950, he was already successful, an owner of a decent-size ad agency with another guy, and my parents built a new architect-designed ranch house. By the mid-‘60s, he became disillusioned with advertising and made a decision to go into management consulting. And by the late ‘70s he
decided to retire and spent the next 37 years of his life doing whatever he wanted, which meant mostly studying quantum physics, philosophy, religion, and history. If you had any kind of issue you were grappling with, my dad used to like to say, “Decide, act! And if that doesn’t work out, decide and act again!” It was one thing he really understood – that being that so many people are so often paralyzed by fear – so they do nothing. I think this simple idea of making a decision and acting on it really applies to owners and managers of AEC firms as well. So many are paralyzed by fear and just don’t act in a timely manner. Yet,
See MARK ZWEIG, page 12
THE ZWEIG LETTER NOVEMBER 1, 2021, ISSUE 1415
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