When AE Works President Michael Cherock gets invited to business meetings, he says he’s often the oddball executive in the room. His unique perspective comes from his years on Navy submarines.
“My captain used to say ‘The boat doesn’t turn around. If you forgot something, or something doesn’t work, you’re not going to go back and get it,’” Cherock says. “You have to be very innovative in getting things to work.”
But as the person who operated the boat’s nuclear power plant, he also had an appreciation for process.
Today, he sees correlations between submarines and his business with a balance between entrepreneurism and professional management.
“Not that we were selling anything, of course. We were just going out, sailing underwater, chasing bad guys,” Cherock says.
“But in that culture — you were it. You had to make things work. You had to get things that broke, fixed. You had to do it. And you lived — you ate dinner, you slept, everything was right there. Your whole world was inside that boat.”
Balancing it out
A natural entrepreneur, Cherock founded several companies. However, AE Works, which offers architecture and engineering consulting services, is more his life’s work.
He started the company in his basement in 2007. The firm has grown every year and was on the Inc. 5000 list in both 2014 and 2015.
“We were very entrepreneurial from the beginning, but kind of loosely run. The culture has been that we focus on results only,” he says. “And it has presented some scale issues; buy-in and alignment come into play as you grow, like in any business.”
Cherock says he’s not a professional manager who easily implements processes and discipline. Instead, he’s an innovator — “a guy just running around, causing fires.”
“One of my weaknesses as an entrepreneur is I devalue that,” he says. “I’m a disciplined guy. I get up the same time every day. I work out. But when I look at businesses, I’m like ‘Whew, we should have a one-page handbook that says: Don’t be an a**hole.’”
Cherock says he’s come a long way to realize the need for balance.
Professionally managed companies gain market share and then start to lose their position because they lack entrepreneurial spirit, he says.
“We’re the opposite. We’re trying to bring in some of that discipline,” Cherock says.
For profit, for good
Cherock’s entrepreneurism, however, led AE Works to become a B Corp, or benefit corporation.
B Corps must meet rigorous standards of social and environmental performance, accountability and transparency. Cherock says a triple bottom line company makes decisions that aren’t only for fiduciary benefit.
Many businesses put together a company picnic or create a corporate social responsibility committee.
“As a CEO—as an entrepreneur—I look at that as small ball. I get bored with stuff like that,” Cherock says. “What we look to do as a company is to have more impact.”
