By Dr. Bruce Piasecki, president and founder of AHC Group and author of DOING MORE WITH LESS: The New Way to Wealth (Wiley, March 2012)

So many firms stop growing in their third to fifth decades, limited by the personalities and preferences of their founders and friends. My firm, AHC Group, struggled with stagnation as well. For us, the answer resided in figuring out the connection that exists between freedom and fate. There were times we had to tie our fate to the ship of others for proper buoyancy and lift. We had to concede freedoms and transform them into the intensity of group action.