When Jonathan Carson and Eric
Kurtzman founded Kurtzman
Carson Consultants LLC in 2001, the former restructuring attorneys welcomed the opportunity to leave what
Carson calls the “suits-and-ties world” of
corporate law.
“Let’s just say we’re not business casual,” Carson says of the Los Angeles-based
restructuring consultancy firm.
Though the office attire at KCC reflects
a laid-back mindset, the company’s performance does not. Employing a “work
hard, play hard” philosophy, the firm
posted 2005 revenue of $17.4 million, a three-year growth rate of
more than 1,300 percent.
Smart Business spoke with
Carson, president of KCC, about
the importance of collaboration
and the benefits of planning ahead.
Q: How would you describe your
culture?
We have created a collaborative
environment that allows people to
create opportunities, and it’s been
a very telling piece of our growth
and our success in the last few
years. We created a young culture
that was focused on togetherness
and collaboration, and we really
didn’t allow for any hints of competition to enter the realm.
We work very much in team
environments, and also we have
a very flat management structure. We obviously have a few
people who lead the efforts in
various high-level departments,
but in terms of how the
machine works on a daily basis,
it’s flat, and people respect that,
and it’s done a good job of minimizing
competition and corporate politics.
If you foster a system of competition or
true straight-up-and-down hierarchy, you
tend to lose the team concept. We believe
those groups are teams that work together carrying forward the mission of KCC,
not their individual agendas.
Q: How do you plan for growth?
You have to expect the growth. You have to believe in what you’re doing and
know that if you really do believe in it,
you’re going to grow as a business, and
you have to stay ahead of that from
every perspective.
We hired a COO before we needed a
COO. It was a great talent fit for what we
did and we brought him in at a very senior
level and he grew into that position. We’re
moving into 42,000 square feet but we’re
really only going to be able to utilize
maybe 30,000 of that, but we know as six
or nine months go on, that will quickly
eclipse.
If you expect it, you can execute it more
effectively.
Q: How can you benefit from past experiences?
You learn from every experience as
you go through every process of life,
whether you’re going through school or
you’re running the company or you’re on
the board of directors of a nonprofit.
Every experience you live through, you
learn something, take it with you to the
next level and repeat.
As you get further down the road you
look back and say, ‘Wow, I’ve picked up
a lot of cool things along the way.’ You
have this larger arsenal of ammunition
that you can pull from to attack whatever issues that you’re facing in your business or your personal world.
It’s crucial that when you learn something that’s part of your business, when
you learn something in one of your core
competencies, everyone learns that
same thing.
You want them to live it with
you rather than just hear about it
after the fact. As a management
team, as you make mistakes and
gain new insight, you have to
make sure everyone understands
the implications of that.
Q: How do you motivate your
employees to work toward your
vision?
You have to make them really
invest in the vision. We did a
rebranding campaign earlier this
year where we were a 4-year-old
company with a Web site that looked
4 years old. We brought a whole
resource in, people as well as tools,
and we now have a phenomenal-looking corporate identity.
When we did that, we brought everybody into the process. People got to
look at logos and help choose them
and see what they thought looked
best. They got mugs with logos on
them and bags and notepads, and you
make them invest into it and they
understand the reasons behind what
you’re doing, and they really become
cheerleaders, and that’s one of the best
things you can have.
I can count on one hand the number of
full-timers we’ve lost in the last five years.
It’s a very small number because you treat
people well, you provide for them and you
let them know you respect them, and that
comes back 10 times over.
HOW TO REACH: Kurtzman Carson Consultants LLC,
www.kccllc.com