Larry English, President of Centric Consulting, Forbes Contributor On The Future Of Work
Leaders,
How do you create leaders in todays digital first era?
How do you create community in todays digital first era?
How do you grow sustainable professional service models in a digital first era?
Enter Larry, a pioneer that was 20+ years early in building a remote consulting firm.
*Paid readers find full transcript at the bottom.
Some of our favorite quotes from Larry:
His thinking on Centric
Since the beginning, the why has never changed
The same way you would think of Disney from an entertainment standpoint, those unbelievable customer experiences, that's what we're trying to do from consulting, and that we didn't see that in the marketplace. Same thing, from an employee standpoint, one that just values, employee culture, you know, the culture of our company, and making it consulting Nirvana, the best place for consultants to work. Those are very audacious goals, and very meaningful. And that's what we've been trying to set out to try to do.
What does the upcoming generation expect?
Now we see kids coming out of college, they want to work for a company that cares beyond just making money, that really cares about and takes care of the community that they're a part of, and really cares about them.
His take on remote work
So for us, it was interesting, during the pandemic, we were already a remote model. And then a pandemic happened. And we saw the world change overnight, and clients were much more accepting about delivery of remote services.
Part of that whole thing I was talking about what made somebody happy and bleed, is there is still this, this human interaction social interaction component. And so even though we don't have office space in those cities, we're still getting together quite often face to face, because it is a part of what makes you complete as a human being.
And also part of that is, what we found with our clients is even though they're okay with us delivering remote services, they still want to have a relationship, they want a deep trusting relationship, to solve their toughest problems. And so if you do that, you can't it's you can't do that and just call and dial up and be, you know, 1000 miles away, you have to interact you, we coach, our kids, soccer teams, and our clients are on the same soccer team.
And then so part of that also is, as part of that formula is giving back to that community to make it a better place. So we're remote and we're pulling in the best remote talent anywhere in the world to help that client. But we're also balancing the relationship of physical contact and deepening that relationship through physical interaction.
So the data shows during the pandemic, people moved out of the big city, but they didn't go very far. They went to the suburbs. And so that was really the people with kids is that what you're talking about, there was a little bit of more of that balance.
Freelancers vs FTE Percentages
We've had about around 60% full time employees and then a 40% wide range of labor. It’s 1099, it's temporary, and then there's freelancers in there.
Why not 100% freelancers?
Culture, I mentioned is hugely important. And to make that culture happen, you have to have people that know how to lead and they've been trained to lead, but they need to be able to lead with your value system. And so you've got to train people, and it doesn't, it can't be in two months, it's, it is a longer period of time to lead with that.
And so for that, for the core of how to operate that company and make it happen. We have to have people that stay with us for a long time and want to stay with us for a long time.
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