The Godspeed of Trust

The Godspeed of Trust

Mark and I were interviewing Neil Churman, president and CEO of Woolpert (Dayton, OH) (ENR #47) (and Morrissey Goodale alum), for the Word on the Street podcast last week. (The episode will drop—as the kids say—later this month.) During our chat, Mark asked Neil a (surprisingly) insightful question about trust and how Neil builds and sustains it with his leadership team and throughout the firm. In his response, Neil discussed the importance of being genuine, authentic, and logical as it pertains to the concept of trust. This got me thinking about trust in the AE industry—specifically, the trust that a firm’s shareholders/investors have in their CEO and how that is built.

1. “Trust takes years to build…”: Tenure. It’s important. Take one look at the demographics of AE industry CEOs and you see the painstaking work of building trust over time. The median tenure of the CEO of an ENR Top 500 Design Firm is 27 years. (It’s worth noting that this is 36% longer than the duration of the median U.S. marriage, which begs the question of what a “median” marriage is, but I digress.) The vast majority of industry CEOs have spent most of their careers at the firm that they are now leading. They have built trust over almost 10,000 days (that’s a LOT of leftovers being put in the company fridge for lunch)—with their colleagues, their erstwhile bosses, their employees, their clients, their subconsultants, and their vendors. Importantly, in showing up and doing the right thing for (most of) those 10,000 days and being genuine, authentic, and logical, these CEOs have gained the trust of their firms’ board of directors and enough shareholders to entrust them with leading the firm into the future.

2. Seven years and counting: Seven years. That’s the median length of time that…Read more