By Patricia Koopersmith

Anyone who has pursued a passion can imagine, it is hard work keeping a company growing for 8+ years—let alone guiding it to profitability—and it’s important to take some time to appreciate that. My team has accomplished a lot over the last decade. We have received exceptional ratings from our clients across the board, co-written the assessment and reports that formed the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency (DCSA), helped create the first ever Defense Security Enterprise Strategy, and hired, developed, and retained over 40 amazing consultants (among other things).

As much as these accomplishments are cause for celebration, they also mark an important moment for reflection. As a founder, you learn a lot about how to lead teams and drive progress (sometimes through hard lessons learned), and the best way to put those lessons into action is to take a step back and think about why they’re important and how, moving forward, you can use your hard-won wisdom to keep getting better.

Here are the five most valuable lessons that I have learned while leading and growing a business over the past eight years:

The job of a CEO is to establish and maintain a positive culture.

Workplace culture is the single-most important factor in recruiting and retaining talent. Culture, in this sense, is a set of norms and behaviors that an organization or community tolerates and does not tolerate. ​As a CEO, I set the tone for my employees. In seeking to cultivate a healthy work environment, I’ve dedicated a significant amount of my time to nurturing and growing a positive culture. Within the first week of onboarding, I brief every new hire on Rockwood’s culture. In this brief, I emphasize that Rockwood is built on a relentless client focus, continuous growth for clients and consultants, teamwork, diversity of perspectives, integrity, and meritocracy. We encourage constructive feedback through 360 peer reviews and other mechanisms, but do not tolerate gossip or office politics. By modeling the behavior that I expect to see and coaching staff at all levels to follow my lead, I continue to emphasize that whatever anybody says or does, you should always assume positive intent. In focusing on these behaviors, we have established an environment where staff thrive professionally and personally. Our clients feel the difference, experiencing the positive and mission-driven approach Rockwood consultants take to solving complex problems as a team. I guarantee these practices will lead to a more constructive working environment.

To be successful, a CEO must really listen to others and seek out their workforce in one-on-one situations to identify and play to their strengths as well as learn from them. This might entail asking questions like, what’s challenging for you? What do you enjoy about your role? How can I help make your role easier? What are your ideas to improve Rockwood delivery and culture?

To further create a supportive, healthy, and collaborative work environment, I conduct impromptu check-in calls with employees throughout the week. I also recently launched CEO roundtable lunches for more face time with employees who, as we continue to expand, I may not get the opportunity to work with on a regular basis. Both settings help me keep a pulse on the wellness and development of our workforce, the strength of the company culture, areas for improvement across the company, as well as gain a better understanding about our people.

A CEO must help the team understand the company and THEIR client’s mission and work in a way that inspires them.

When your workforce understands your organization’s higher purpose, they make more strategic decisions, generate higher levels of creativity and productivity in everyday tasks, and are more committed to the organization. By leading with purpose, you are showing your employees that they are each an important, valued member of the team and that even the occasional mundane task serve to advance the ultimate outcome.

I’ve always aspired to build a purpose-driven organization. Everything Rockwood does, we do with intent and a focus on our clients’ mission since the work we support impacts our national security. From drafting a cross-government strategy to counter our adversaries, to assessing the workforce skillsets and resources for an operational office, it is critical that an organization’s leadership help the staff understand how their support impacts the broader national security mission.

I believe the best way to inspire my employees is by being honest, dependable, approachable, attentive, and communicative.

• Honesty: In my experience it’s better that a leader knows what they don’t know and admits it. Being honest directly ties into your trustworthiness with the workforce.

• Dependability: Ensuring people feel they can depend on you is also crucial. When you say you are going to do something, do it. There are no small or big promises, only promises. Recognize when you’ve been requested to give your word and only commit when you are sure you can keep it.

• Approachability: Show blooper reels, share stories about what is important to you whether it’s your pet, family, or a passion. Demonstrate to your workforce that you’re not just a suit.

• Attentiveness: Provide opportunities for ALL parts of the organization to engage in bringing your collective purpose to fruition. Make people feel heard through vision and strategy engagement platforms, town halls, focus groups, and systems of feedback to allow your workforce to not only contribute their ideas but also take firm ownership over their behavior.

• Communicative: It is impossible to overcommunicate when leading with purpose. Communication is key to bringing purpose to light. The type of communication matters as well—the way you convey a message to an employee in finance should not be the way you communicate that same message to an employee in the warehouse.

Your employees are your #1 asset. As such, you should always care for them from both a professional development and personal wellness lens.

Especially in a professional services business like Rockwood, employees’ critical-thinking skills and ability to solve problems are what we sell. To deliver superior service, we need staff with superior abilities. That’s why investing in professional development is not just a perk for the employee, but a business growth strategy. Rockwood heavily invests both in recruiting top talent and in our employees’ professional development by reimbursing the cost of training, webinars, and certification programs. Our internal methodology training, hands on coaching, and mentorship program provide employees with the tools, advice, and career guidance to continuously grow through experiential learning.

No matter how much your business grows—whether you have 5 employees or 500—you always have an opportunity to show your employees you care for their wellness. While a CEO is working on the business rather than in it, they still need to keep a pulse on employees’ level of stress to prevent burnout. Rockwood invests in wellness benefits like Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) for counseling services, reimbursements for gym memberships, and trainings for emotional, physical, and mental health. We sponsor quarterly wellness challenges on the Givhero app, which encourages employees to engage in wellness activities while earning donation points for local charities. These points translate to monetary donations that the company makes to the charity of the employee’s choice.

In the beginning, you must be in the work, but as you grow, you must focus on becoming a force multiplier.

I recall when I had just launched Rockwood and I was the sole employee sitting at my kitchen table working on client deliverables across multiple projects. At that time, I was truly IN the work. I was the one who coordinated client schedules and conducted stakeholder interviews. One of the most challenging aspects of transitioning from an employee to a leader is that you must also transition from being a “doer” to a force multiplier. As a manager and consultant, I was exceptional at getting things done in a way that exceeded client expectations and was on time and on budget. In my role as an executive in the two businesses I established, I had to master the art of aligning my employees by clearly setting goals and guidelines, holding them accountable, all while motivating them to devise their own strategies to achieve successful outcomes.

Ultimately, I understood that despite my efforts, I alone couldn’t expand the business, so I implemented systems to scale it.

It’s important to develop methodologies as best practices, but leave room for your employees to innovate.

With more than 25 years of consulting under my belt, I have experienced numerous scenarios and gained extensive knowledge in executing strategies and managing change. Once I began Rockwood, I realized how challenging it is to remain impartial when the business is so personal. Therefore, I leveraged my expertise in devising strategies to formulate a Rockwood plan that was visionary, and then shared it with trusted advisors to refine it further.

In the early years, my first employees assisted in developing a collection of methodologies (or frameworks) referencing past client deliverables and case studies to position Rockwood staff to understand how others have successfully helped clients achieve their goals. This included developing a vision for their organization, bringing together a disparate leadership team to create a strategy to achieve a future state, establishing and running an effective program management office, and helping a client drive change throughout their enterprise (among other methodologies).

Irrespective of the methodology employed, I have come to understand the significance of being explicit when referencing them. Specifically, we recognize that the methodologies we document merely serve as a foundation or starting point. The client challenges we help solve are too complex for a one-size-fits-all solution. As CEO, I must create space to allow our consultants and partners to continuously bring new and innovative solutions to the table.

Being a successful leader means continuously learning and growing personally alongside your business. Every day, Rockwood's employees and clients share valuable knowledge that contributes to the organization’s projects and professional growth. Leading with purpose means empowering these contributors and working together toward a powerful goal.