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BUSINESS NEWS WESTWOOD PROFESSIONAL SERVICES INC. OPENS NEW OFFICE IN MADISON Westwood (Hot Firm #9 and Best Firm Multidiscipline #32 for 2015) announcd the official opening of its office in Madison, Wisconsin. Leading the office is Drew Szabo, an electrical engineer and senior project manager with a focus on Westwood’s utility-scale wind and solar energy engineering. He has more than 20 years of experience managing renewable energy design teams and complex projects in the U.S. and Canada. Szabo said, “The new, larger office provides a more functional space and enables the team to expand and do their best work. With the increase in wind and solar energy development, the demand for Westwood’s services is high. So, our move is timely and more important than ever to make certain we maintain the high level of service our clients expect.” Jason McCarty, Westwood’s vice president of operations, said, “Westwood positions our operations in locations that best serve our people and our clients. We are able to attract and retain the best talent, which naturally enhances our capabilities. Drew has done a great job building our operations in Madison.”

DLR GROUP CELEBRATES 50 YEARS OF DESIGN EXCELLENCE During the 1965 Thanksgiving weekend, Irv Dana, Bill Larson, and Jim Roubal solidified plans to launch what they envisioned as a new kind of design firm. With a decade of professional experience under their belts, the three DLR Group founders shared a vision for a firm grounded in shared ideals of design quality, fairness, opportunity for professional growth, and ownership. On April 1, 1966, Jim Roubal marched a cardboard box of personal effects out of his former office and into a 144-square-foot space in Irv Dana’s basement where the fledgling enterprise would begin. Dana Larson Roubal and Associates – the firm that would ultimately be known as DLR Group – was born. Today the firm staffs 750 employee-owners in 24 locations around the globe. DLR Group will celebrate its 50th birthday through September. “At DLR Group there is so much opportunity for personal and professional growth,” said DLR Group CEO Griff Davenport, AIA, who joined the firm in 1980. “Sometimes it dangles itself in front of you and sometimes you have to go looking for it. But it was there on day one, and the opportunity for employee-owners to positively impact the success of the firm

continues today.” The firm will celebrate its golden anniversary through the spring and summer: z On April 1, the DLR Group Omaha office will host a reception for surviving DLR Group Co-Founder Jim Roubal. This will include a closed-circuit interview with Roubal shared in all DLR Group locations. z Each office will host an open house reception for clients, current and former staff, and business partners. Additionally, offices are scheduling a DLR Group Day of Giving. This will be locally driven with each office shutting its doors for a day this summer to provide a day of volunteer service with an organization of its choice. z The firm’s website will feature a detailed history of the firm. This includes a historical project gallery documenting the firm’s design work from 1966 to present day. Each week a new group of projects will be shared at dlrgroup.com and via the firm’s social media channels. Since its founding, DLR Group has championed the tenets of design excellence and employee-ownership. Today these ideals remain as foundational elements of the firm.

MARC FLORIAN, from page 9

similar assignments of revenue. In the first and third examples, there is a clear pyramidal shape to the source curve, which implies the collaborative involvement and contribution of an entire team of individuals ranging from the seasoned rainmakers and sales executives on the left, to the junior-level staff on the right. Conversely, the second example suggests an over- reliance on one or two rain-makers, and implies a failure to train, mentor, or effectively engage mid- and junior-level staff in the sales effort of this particular business unit. In an organization where bonuses or other rewards are tied to marketing executive credits or similar assignments of revenue, the second example might also indicate a situation where ME credits are being intentionally manipulated or "hoarded" by a marketing executive, to the detriment of subordinate staff. Regardless, the non- pyramidal curve suggests vulnerability, an unsustainable sales effort, and the potential for over-reliance on a single individual. TEAM. The intent of this article isn’t to tell you how to struc- ture your sales reward program, only to suggest that the manner in which rainmakers and marketing executives are incentivized to build top line revenues can affect the suc- cess and sustainability of your firm’s sales effort. Equally important, it’s meant to suggest that a well-conceived program can help drive the development of the TEAM cul- ture throughout your organization and cultivate the next generation of rainmakers and marketing executives among your ranks. MARC FLORIAN is vice president for Environmental Consulting & Technology, Inc. He can be reached at mflorian@ectinc.com.

to work! Likewise, they don’t want to wake up tomorrow to find that the process for incentivizing their rainmakers has generated so much resentment as to cause an insurrection among their mid-level staff. Instead, owners and board members want to rest easy knowing that if something catastrophic was to happen to their lead sales executive, the overall impact to their business development effort would not be equally catastrophic. Is your firm suffering from a poorly-conceived reward or sales recognition program? Is your reward program building a collaborative salesforce or generating internal competition and resentment toward those being rewarded? Answering these questions might be easier than you think. ASSESSING THE VULNERABILITY. The strength and vulnerability of an organization’s or business unit’s sales effort can be visu- alized in terms of a pyramid. By way of example, let’s look at how the overall health of a salesforce can be evaluated in a typical A/E firm where sales are tracked using credits or "Owners and board members want to rest easy knowing that if something catastrophic was to happen to their lead sales executive, the overall impact to their business development effort would not be equally catastrophic."

THE ZWEIG LETTER May 16, 2016, ISSUE 1152

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