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ON THE MOVE WARE MALCOMB ANNOUNCES PROMOTION OF LYNNE ORLOWSKI TO STUDIO MANAGER Ware Malcomb , an award-winning international design firm, announced Lynne Orlowski has been promoted to studio manager of the firm’s interior architecture and design practice in the Phoenix office. In this role, Orlowski leads and manages the office’s interior architecture and design studio and manages select projects. Orlowski brings 10 years of in-depth interior architectural design knowledge to the Ware Malcomb team, contributing strong design influence, team leadership and commitment to client service. Orlowski joined Ware Malcomb in 2015 as a job captain and was quickly promoted to project manager. Orlowski has worked on a variety of office, healthcare, industrial,
and retail projects. Her work on corporate office designs throughout the Phoenix area has been honored with numerous industry awards including NAIOP Arizona’s Best of and JLL Spaces Showcase awards programs. “Lynne’s positivity, energy and leadership have enabled her to build a strong team of talented interior designers,” said Kevin Evernham, principal of Ware Malcomb’s Phoenix office. “Her dedication and attention to detail have elevated Ware Malcomb’s service offerings in the Phoenix metro area, and we look forward to her continued growth and leadership in this dynamic market.” Orlowski holds a bachelor’s degree in design, interior design from Arizona State University. She also holds the National Council for Interior Design Qualification (NCIDQ) certification.
Established in 1972, Ware Malcomb is a contemporary and expanding full service design firm providing professional architecture, planning, interior design, civil engineering, branding and building measurement services to corporate, commercial/residential developer and public/institutional clients throughout the world. With office locations throughout the United States, Canada and Mexico, the firm specializes in the design of commercial office, corporate, industrial, science and technology, healthcare, retail, auto, public/institutional facilities and renovation projects. Ware Malcomb is recognized as an Inc. 5000 fastest-growing private company and a Hot Firm by Zweig Group.
MARK ZWEIG, from page 9
6)Hire a female outside BOD member or advisor. I’m not trying to stereotype or generalize here but let’s face it, guys – especially us older white guys – when put in a group don’t always see everything we should, and we don’t always make the best decisions. Get a woman on your board – someone who is strong and successful at doing what they do – and my guess is your highest level discussions will go down some new paths and take you in some new directions from where they have traditionally gone. And that could be pivotal to your future. 7)Get rid of most of your non-billable activity codes. The more of these you have, the more time people will charge to them. And what do you do with all this information on non-billable activities that you track anyway? Think about all the time wasted by people filling out their time sheets trying to figure out if they should charge their time to “corporate business development” or “project development,” or whether their training in how to use a particular piece of business software is considered “technical training” or “management training,” or some other such nonsense. Who cares? All you need is PTO, holiday, marketing, training, and “other non- billable” or “unclassified time.” That’s it. Keep it simple! 8)Train your people in how to properly use email. I’m talking about the need to respond quickly, the downside of wasting everyone’s time with “reply to all,” why using “out of office assistant” when we all get our email on our smartphones wherever we are connotes a lack of service, and more. People need training unless you just enjoy seeing time (and money) wasted every day on email. 9)Have the CEO or managing partner write a daily internal email to all employees. This is something I would do, especially now when so many people are working remotely. Tell them all the good news you can along with your thoughts about the company and its future. Keep it short, optimistic, and pithy. People will appreciate being kept informed and feel like they are part of something. Those are my thoughts for now – check in next week for more! And please email me with any questions or comments at mzweig@zweiggroup.com. MARK ZWEIG is Zweig Group’s chairman and founder. Contact him at mzweig@zweiggroup.com.
a list of 500 or more, or 156 releases a year. Once you get in the habit you will find you can do these quickly and the result will be a lot more name recognition and resulting new project opportunities. 3)Overhaul your website. Most of them are pretty bad. Besides the stale graphics and sterile employee mugshots, they do little to differentiate one firm from another. Yet your website is the first place 90 percent of potential new clients will go to learn about you. So make it interesting! Make it interactive. Add a weekly poll. Show all of the press you are getting. Pepper it with client testimonial quotes that float into the screen. Feature clients. Share the original thinking of your key people with links to your blogs and podcasts. Have videos from the field. Show people using facilities you designed. Do something that changes daily and gives people a reason to go back. 4)Make all new company vehicles unique and immediately recognizable. Why do so many firms in the business invest in company vehicles for their managers and let them get whatever they want within a certain budget? Or why do they have vehicles for their field people and then get the most boring white pickups with either black or blue lettering, so theirs look like everyone else’s in the same business? It’s not good marketing. I would have all my principals in some kind of unique car or SUV in a color that not everyone else picks. What’s new? What’s weird? What reflects your taste and philosophy? My field vehicles would be pink, purple, electric blue, some shade of green, black, or brown, instead of boring white, silver, or grey, so ours would be immediately recognizable as my people moved around town or visited a job site. I’m big on wraps, too. 5)Make “revenue factor” the most critical performance metric you monitor and track. Revenue factor is defined as net service revenue divided by total raw labor. You can do it for the firm overall, or any office, division, or team. It’s so simple. It tells you everything and is not easily manipulated, as are utilization (just charge hours to a job, billable or not) and labor multiplier (don’t charge time to a job you are actually working on to “protect” the multiplier). I don’t know why firm owners don’t put a stop to this by simply looking at the ratio of revenue to total raw labor cost, billable or not.
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THE ZWEIG LETTER NOVEMBER 16, 2020, ISSUE 1368
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