As firms grow, alignment, accountability, and execution become the difference between getting bigger and getting stronger.
We just wrapped up our Executive Roundtable in Charleston, where a group of firm leaders spent two days talking through strategy, succession, talent, growth, and everything in between. On paper, most firms in the room are in a good place. Backlogs are strong. Revenue is trending up. Hiring demand is there. By most traditional measures, things look strong.
That’s not just anecdotal. The latest ENR Top 500 Design Firms release showed another strong year for the industry, with overall revenue growth in the 7%-8% range and the vast majority of firms reporting increases. By any objective measure, this is a healthy market.
But the tone of the conversation told a slightly different story.
There was a consistent theme that kept coming up, regardless of firm size or geography. Growth is happening, but it doesn’t feel easier. In a lot of cases, it feels harder than it should. One person said it in a way that stuck with me: as we grow, it feels like we’re slowing down.
Part of that is the environment firms are operating in. Growth isn’t happening evenly. Certain sectors like data centers and telecom are surging, while others are flattening out. That creates a more uneven and unpredictable operating environment, even for firms that are performing well overall.
But that only explains part of it. The bigger issue is internal. Most firms don’t have a strategy problem right now. They have an execution problem.
Most of the leaders in the room already have a strategic plan in place, and many have updated it recently. But when the conversation shifts from having a plan to actually using it to drive behavior across the firm, the confidence drops. Even in our own survey leading into the roundtable, only a minority of firms felt their strategy was truly clear and actionable, and the biggest gaps weren’t ideas. They were accountability and follow-through.
That shows up in familiar ways. Leaders are stretched thin. The broader organization isn’t fully bought in. Metrics exist, but they don’t consistently influence decisions. Priorities are agreed on, but progress is slower than expected. At that point, it’s not direction. It’s follow-through.
Leadership alignment is part of the challenge. Most teams would describe themselves as “pretty aligned,” which sounds positive, but in practice that middle ground is where friction tends to live. Leaders leave the same meeting with slightly different interpretations of priorities, and over time those small gaps compound. Decisions slow down and execution becomes inconsistent. No one is completely off, but no one is fully locked in either.
Layer growth on top of that and the pressure increases quickly. More people, more complexity, and more decisions require a different level of discipline than what worked at a smaller scale. Without it, organizations start to feel heavier. What used to be intuitive now requires structure, and without that structure things begin to slow down.
At the same time, the talent side of the equation hasn’t gotten any easier. Even with strong demand, firms are still struggling to fill key roles, and in many cases are trying to do more work with roughly the same number of people. The conversation around talent wasn’t just about hiring. It was about how to identify future leaders earlier, how to create a real pathway to ownership, and how to keep high performers engaged before someone else recruits them away.
Some firms are building more formal development tracks, including “Pathway to Principal” programs and younger professional cohorts tied to long-term leadership growth. Others are focusing on simpler, more immediate actions, like recognizing people for good work in real time instead of waiting for annual reviews. Those smaller moments tend to matter more than firms expect, especially in a tight labor environment.
Culture came up in a similar way. Most firms have defined values and talk about culture often, but as organizations grow, culture stops being something that happens organically and becomes something that has to be reinforced. One comment that stood out was that culture is defined by the worst behavior you tolerate. It’s a simple idea, but it forces a harder look at who gets promoted, who gets coached, and what behaviors are allowed to persist.
Execution itself was another recurring theme. Many firms try to solve execution challenges by increasing communication, adding more meetings, more follow-ups, and more check-ins. That works for a period of time, but it doesn’t scale. The firms making progress are shifting away from reminders and toward systems. They are building operating rhythms where accountability is visible, progress is measurable, and the right behavior becomes the default. In those environments, strategy shows up in day-to-day operations, not just in an annual planning document.
That distinction matters, especially in a market where growth can hide underlying inefficiencies. It’s easy to confuse activity with progress. As one participant put it: volume is vanity, margin is magic. Being busy doesn’t necessarily mean the business is improving. If execution, alignment, and accountability don’t keep pace with growth, firms end up larger but not stronger.
The conversation didn’t stop in the meeting room either. During a sunset sail around Fort Sumter, the same themes kept coming up. Alignment, clarity, and the ability to adjust quickly matter just as much on the water as they do inside a firm.
And there are early signs of that strain. Even as revenue continues to rise across the industry, hiring in some areas has started to slow, putting more pressure on existing teams to carry the load. That imbalance only makes execution harder.
Toward the end of the discussion, we asked a simple question: what decision are you avoiding right now that you know your firm needs to make? It’s not a comfortable question, but it tends to surface the real issue quickly. Most firms don’t need more planning. They need to make the decision they’ve been putting off and follow through.
The firms that separate themselves over the next five to 10 years won’t be the ones with the most sophisticated strategies. They will be the ones that execute them.
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Chad Coldiron is a principal and director of client relations and development at Zweig Group. Contact him at ccoldiron@zweiggroup.com. |
