When my Centric Consulting co-founders and I began the company 25 years ago, our primary goal was to build a different kind of consulting company, one that would deliver unmatched experiences for both clients and employees.
Our goals with Centric were lofty: We wanted to build a company where we could do great work but still have a life. We wanted to be part of an organization with a fun culture that operated with honest, deep relationships. We didn’t want the aggressive “up or out” culture so common in consulting.
At the time, being fully remote was a almost unheard of, but we thought untethering employees from the office would grant them a lot more flexibility and work-life balance.
We hit on a winning formula. A quarter century later, we’ve earned countless awards for our culture and have grown to nearly 1,500 employees across the U.S. and India.
I’m proud that we’ve made it to 25 years, a milestone few companies achieve and I have confidence that many more such milestones are ahead of us. Centric’s history has been filled with moments of excitement, worry, connection, hard work, and basically any other up and down you can imagine.
Here are some of my biggest lessons learned through it all:
Knowing our core values — and sticking to them — has saved us time and again. Whenever we’re up against a challenge or making a big decision, our core values guide the way. By anchoring everything in our core values, we’ve successfully navigated every challenge and come out on the other side feeling like we made the right decision. Our culture has evolved over the years as needed, but our core values remain unchanged.
For example, we’re a people-first organization. We always get input from employees throughout the organization (Centric’s Voice of the Employee (VOTE) and Voice of the Leaders groups) before moving forward with anything major.
In the early days of COVID-19, Centric’s leadership team planned a potential worst-case scenario of losing significant business and furloughing employees. Our idea was to rotate people being furloughed to lessen the impact on everyone. We quickly abandoned that plan after talking to VOTE. Their unanimous preference was to keep everyone together, taking pay cuts if necessary.
The big test of your commitment to your values is when things get difficult. From the beginning, we decided to design our business model around always delivering for our clients and keeping our word. Living up to that value hasn’t always been easy.
For instance, when a project went south, we had to ask team members to work extra hours and take a hit to the profitability that all our employees share. While this hurt financially in the short term, the message was clear to clients: We were going to treat their business like our own. The sacrifice paid off with deeper, longer-term relationships.
Culture is everything… When I reflect on what I’m most proud of, at the top of the list is helping create an organization centered on employee and client happiness. We routinely have high employee and client satisfaction scores, and you can feel the positive energy of employees and clients — and that’s possible because we’re fulfilling our core purpose of providing unmatched experiences.
And yes, there are studies that link employee happiness to better output, but that’s not why we chase employee and client happiness at Centric. We do it because it’s a better way to live your life. You spend so much time with coworkers and clients, so why not make it a great experience?
… But work certainly isn’t everything. One of the core principles we started with was living a balanced lifestyle. This desire for balance comes from personal experience. I spent the first part of my career working insane hours for one of the big international consulting companies. It was soul-crushing. I got burnt out and ended up quitting, a decision that eventually led me to be Centric’s co-founder.
My experience is hardly unique in consulting. Burnout is rampant, and competition can be fierce. We wanted to start a company where that didn’t have to be the case. I love hearing from newer employees who are surprised to learn we truly live our culture and value of balanced lifestyles. Of course, there will always be times we need to put in extra hours or push for a hard deadline, but overall, Centric’s culture allows people to enjoy their life outside of work.
You can be kind in business and succeed. Making a profit and treating people well are not mutually exclusive. We strive to truly treat every relationship like a long-term friendship, which changes the nature of our client engagements: We’re trying to help our friends succeed. The next sale is important, but less so than whether we’re doing a good job for our friends. It’s just a different mindset of approaching business than you’ll find with many other consulting companies.
Starting Centric has been both the hardest and most satisfying thing I’ve done. To start a new company, you must have passion for what you’re trying to build and resilience to see you through the many initial “valleys of doom” – the term co-founders Dave Rosevelt, Eric VanLuven, and I coined for the very difficult times any new business goes through.
When we founded Centric, the economic environment was hard. On top of that, we were attempting a new business model. During those early days, I heard “You are crazy” much more than “You’ve got this.” The adage “If I had known how hard that would be, I would have never done it” certainly applies. But there was a big reward for taking the risk and climbing out of the valley of doom multiple times — we created a company with a truly special culture that brings happiness to so many of us daily. It is worth the ride.
Here’s to 25 More Years of Centric
What’s next for Centric? I feel like we’re just getting started as an organization. There’s so much potential ahead of us. AI is going to be transformative for all businesses, and we’re working hard to be a winner in this environment. And, of course, we want to continue being the best company to do business with and the best company in the industry to work for. I’m excited to achieve that vision and can’t wait to see what’s ahead.