Brent Longnecker has authored six books and more than 200 articles on executive compensation and corporate governance, but his most valuable piece of writing was furiously scrawled onto an airsickness bag.
Twelve years ago, Longnecker, then a newly minted Deloitte & Touche principal, was sitting in seat 6A aboard a commuter flight when the one of the propellers shredded and the plane dropped like a stone from 18,000 feet toward the woods of Pine Bluff, AR. Ignoring the screams of his fellow passengers, Longnecker scribbled letters to his wife and five daughters, emphasizing his love for them and urging them not to be bitter about his death. He stuffed his message into the middle of his carry-on in the hope that it might survive the crash.
The plane's pilot was also thinking. He had opened the flaps and landing gear to create drag as the plane plummeted. The downward-spiraling craft caught a gust of wind at about 5,000 feet. Minutes later, Longnecker and the other 30 people on the plane — all of whom survived (as did his note, which his wife keeps close today) — emerged from the smoking fuselage that had come to rest in a rice field the pilot had managed to reach in a terrifying crash landing.
That the downed, fuel-soaked plane did not combust was as surprising to the Federal Aviation Administration as the seemingly featherlike weight of the exit door was to Longnecker when he flung it open and saw a fleet of local farmers speeding toward the wreck in their pickups to help the survivors.
The ensuing 12 years have not diminished the effect of the flight, which Longnecker says has motivated him to give 150 percent every day and to take every opportunity to express his feelings to family members and his staff.
The near-death experience did not push him to the sort of fresh start you often expect of survivors for a simple reason: His career and life were already rich with new beginnings. After earning his MBA, Longnecker served as a compensation and benefits manager before flexing his entrepreneurial prowess with a series of financial-planning and investment firms. When a Watson Wyatt manager pointed out that he could enable Longnecker to consult with more companies than he would ever be able to buy, Longnecker entered the profession and soon met an influential mentor in the form of Peat Marwick's Bill Bradley.
"He put a fire in you to be a consultant," Longnecker recalls. "He carried a special sense of purpose. He was proud of being a consultant, and he made you not want to let the profession down."
When Deloitte & Touche offered Longnecker a position he could not refuse, as a partner in charge of building a national practice, Bradley gave his blessing for Longnecker to move on.
Longnecker's compensation and benefits practice flourished, and soon he was publishing books on his specialties — including Stock Option Alternatives and The Power of Restricted Stock, both of which are scheduled for updated re-releases from Worldatwork later this year. Deloitte asked him to serve as an internal liaison on a management-led buyout of Resources Global Connection in 1999. He was then asked to join Resources as the second in command, a position from which he helped guide the firm's IPO and gained firsthand experience in dealing with analysts on a quarter-to-quarter basis.
After four years with Resources, Longnecker says, "I realized that I could be a good manager, but I still loved being a consultant."
In October 2003, he launched his eponymous firm, which focuses exclusively on executive compensation and corporate governance — subjects he believes are at an important crossroads that require a "sound and thoughtful process as its anchor."
After an exciting and, in one case, nerve-racking series of new journeys in the executive compensation field, Longnecker seems to have landed right where he was meant to be. — Eric Krell
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