When employee-owned AEC firms ask why younger professionals seem less interested in becoming owners, the conversation often turns to money.

I have been spending time with an architecture firm whose owners brought me in as they want to grow their firm. But as I watched how they work and experienced their culture, I began to see what matters most to them.

I have spent much of my career working in and advising employee-owned AEC firms. One thing I have learned is that the ownership model, on its own, does not make a firm last.

I was on a call last month with a principal at a mid-sized #AEC firm. Two of his younger engineers had figured out how to use AI to cut a modeling task from three days to four hours. He showed me the output, genuinely good work.

In my advisory work, I sit in on a lot of meetings with principals of AEC firms. A common scenario unfolds after losing a significant pursuit to a competitor. The response is immediate: hire more BD staff, add a service line, open another office, expand geographically.

“An outsider could never possibly understand the special nature of our company.”

I have heard some version of this line more times than I can count. 

I have sat through many conversations about Board succession, and most eventually arrive at the same tool.

The skills matrix.

Everyone assumes the small firms are the most exposed. Fewer resources. Thinner margins. Less room for error. I think the opposite is true.

In Part 1 last week, I argued that AI is forcing professional service firms to rethink a simple assumption: Hours are no longer the best measure of value. That does not mean every firm should eliminate time-based billing.

For decades, time and materials billing rested on a simple assumption. The hours a firm invested were a reasonable proxy for the value it delivered. That assumption is becoming harder to defend.

One of the most important questions in employee-owned firms is surprisingly simple. Why do we have ownership at all?

Many firms would answer that ownership rewards contribution.

There is truth in that.

We spend a lot of energy in AEC firms celebrating founders.

The risk they took. The firm they built. The culture they shaped. And rightly so.

In evergreen firms, we talk a lot about stewardship.

• Protecting what was built.

• Honouring the people who came before us.

• Passing the firm on stronger than we found it.

We talk a lot about entitlement in younger partners. We talk almost nothing about entitlement in senior ones. 

That asymmetry is worth sitting with. 

We built this firm on loyalty. 

How many times have you heard that?  How many times have you said it?  I felt subject to this sentiment at times and I would be willing to bet many others have too. 

Boomer partners and Millennial associates are having two different conversations about ownership. 

I wanted to share a pattern I am seeing more frequently in my work.

I am being brought into a growing number of firms in the 100 to 500 person range and asked to help coach their Controller into a CFO role.

Not because the Controller is not capable, but because no one has really shown them what the next level looks like.

That’s an uncomfortable statement in many employee-owned firms. And I am sure I will get some flak for putting it out there.

Because the instinct in employee-owned companies is to be inclusive.

Most leadership teams I work with would say they are aligned.

And on the surface, it often looks that way. Their meetings are constructive. There is little visible conflict. Decisions appear to move forward.

But when you spend more time in the room, a different picture starts to emerge.

Most professional services firms track the same things.

• Revenue
• Backlog
• Utilization
• Profit

All important.

But there is one number that matters just as much, and almost no one is tracking it.