207 - TZL - Burke Pemberton

Randy Wilburn [25:26] No, it really isn't. And I love that because as I do leadership training, I always look at people that are chomping at the bit to have an opportunity to be a leader. But it sounds like you empower your folks from day one to operate with a leadership mindset, to take ownership of things and not wait for permission but go ahead and do it. Be intentional about some of your actions which is really important. And I see more firms trending toward that way in the design industry and I'm encouraged by that because I think that's the only way that this industry will continue to grow. That's the only way that this industry will continue to attract the biggest and best talent. It's not always the work that individuals are doing but it's also how you set somebody up for future success. And a lot of that is predicated upon how people are able to develop themselves, right? I always say personal professional development goes hand in hand with everything else you do at work. And if you're not getting that, if you're not being fed that, that aspect of it, you're missing out on a whole side of professionally and personally developing your employees or your colleagues to be the best version of themselves. Burke Pemberton [26:41] Yeah, you hit it dead on Randy, and leadership, it's not about a title. We have a very clear pathway to ownership in our organization. We want to be an employee-owned organization and we tell people that we only hire people who we think have the potential to be a partner, and everybody's a leader in this organization. And we talked about the strength finder a little bit but somebody might have some strong analytical strengths, and they become a subject matter leader. And we focus on how they can become an industry thought leader and become a technical mentor, or to help with technical sales as you know that's a very involved process, or somebody has high empathy and communication and we put them in a role like the people role where they can work with their colleagues to help provide them with resources to learn how to self-manage and solve their own challenges. Leadership is about finding people's strengths where their strengths and their passions align and giving them the tools and resources to empower them in that area of expertise. Randy Wilburn [27:55] You're preaching to the choir here and I love hearing that. That's actually one of my goals with this podcast is to expose as many firm leaders and owners to different mindsets and different approaches to how organizations are run, because there's no one perfect way. But there are certainly systems that if we tap into them properly, because I believe we find success through systems. If we tap into those systems properly, we can find success. And I know other firms that are very similar to

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