Dave Brockman is focused on the economy. But he’s more focused on the growth culture that has allowed BCG & Co. to feel little effect from the downturn.
The accounting and consulting firm is growing because of its commitment to excellence and its clients.
“The biggest thing is, it takes an effort and it takes concentration,” says Brockman, who oversees 100 employees. “You have to set goals. Then you have to hold people accountable and reward them for what they should be doing.”
Smart Business spoke with the co-founder and managing director about developing a growth culture.
Q. How do you determine how much time to dedicate to growth?
It partly boils down to how important is that to you as an organization. I can’t think of too many organizations that growth is not important to them. In terms of organizationwide, how important is it to you?
Then you have to look at each individual and say, ‘OK what is their role as it relates to growth, and how much other responsibility do they have within the organization? Looking at the whole picture, how much time should they spend on growth-related activities?’
I don’t think there’s any magic formula in terms of what makes sense, but each organization has to make a determination in terms of how important is growth to them. What most people will find is it’s easy to do routine things; it’s easy to do things that you’re comfortable with. CPAs are probably not known for being extroverts and being salespeople in terms of their traits, so we probably needed to be pushed a little more in terms of thinking about getting out there and doing things that we’re not as comfortable with.
The whole point is to try to move you from where you’re at, whether you’re at 15 percent or you’re at 40 percent, currently. If you think you need to be at 50 or at 40 percent, then try to move people up a notch or two. That’s what we’re trying to do is get people to do more of the things that they should be doing.