11
FROM THE FOUNDER
Reallocation of time and energy
These three things are important to your firm’s success, but they may require a reallocation of your time and money.
C onventional wisdom is often more “conventional” than it is wise. Many – if not most of us – who run AEC firms need to rethink some of what we take as the gospel about leadership, management, and business.
There are three things I want to go over that may seem unrelated but that I think are important to your ultimate success and each require a reallocation of your time and money. They are: 1. Working on the business versus in the business. I hear this a lot – almost daily. As a Vistage chair, I’m on a listserve where all the Vistage chairs share information. Hardly a day goes by when someone doesn’t talk about how one of their CEOs needs to work ON their business and not in it. I have even had architects and engineers whom I respect and consider friends say this to me recently. It sounds good on the surface. It makes sense to be sure you are doing your job as a manager and not just being one of the workers. But here’s my rub with that. People who get the idea they should be full-time managers,
who don’t engage with clients and employees by working with them on the actual work the business does quickly become disconnected. They don’t know what their business does well and what it doesn’t. They don’t know who on their team is good and who isn’t. And they lose the respect of their people. It’s hard to lead and manage people when you don’t ever demonstrate your competence in the work itself. Plus, you don’t want to be pure overhead. In short, I don’t accept this mantra as the gospel, especially when talking about a group of mostly privately-owned small and mid-size service businesses. They need to work on their business, sure. But they also need to work in it. You may be better served to reallocate some of your time and
Mark Zweig
See MARK ZWEIG, page 12
THE ZWEIG LETTER NOVEMBER 14, 2022, ISSUE 1465
Made with FlippingBook Annual report