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Piano and trombone A visionary rather than a command-and-control type of leader, Mike Sanderson has a musical side to him that some might find surprising. P R O F I L E

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By LIISA ANDREASSEN Correspondent H e doesn’t like the word “client.” He prefers “customer.” “It sounds warmer and friendlier,” says Mike Sanderson, president of Sanderson Stewart , (Best Firm Civil #31 for 2016) of Billings, Mon- tana. And since he and his current partners pur- chased the firm 15 years ago from his father (the firm’s founder, Bob Sanderson) and long- time partner, John Stewart, he’s been focused on not just creating exceptional design, but a memorable customer experience, too. Sanderson started working in the family busi- ness as a surveyor while a junior in high school and to date, has done just about every job imaginable. Today, this 60-person firm focus- es on multi-discipline engineering, planning, surveying, and landscape architecture, and its leader is careful to avoid being pulled down into the weeds. A CONVERSATION WITH SANDERSON. The Zweig Letter: How have you seen Sander- son Stewart evolve over the years? Michael Sanderson: Firms change over time to reflect changes in people and the marketplace; ours has been no different. Beyond the organ- ic changes, we’ve undergone significant stra- tegic change, too. We’ve evolved from being a one-office civil/survey firm working in one lo- cal market to being a multi-disciplinary design firm working for several distinct client types in multiple geographic markets. We did this in- tentionally to diversify our client portfolio and to target what we call ‘A’ clients – those seeking a high-level of planning and design that isn’t easily commoditized. TZL: As a business leader, what are your key strengths? MS: I focus on the big picture, how all the moving parts of the business are interrelat- ed and on how that fits into the external mar- ketplace and macroeconomic environment. I have a mindset that won’t let me get immedi- ately pulled down into the weeds to solve the TRAILS WEST SUBDIVISION

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Mike Sander- son, President, Sanderson Stewart

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TRAILS WEST SUBDIVISION Ben Steele Middle School, Billings, Montana. Sanderson Stewart was part of the team that built four new city schools. / Sanderson Stewart details. I think that’s the downfall of a lot of engineer- ing leaders. TZL: How would you describe your leadership style? MS: I’m a visionary and definitely not a command-and- control type of leader. I’m the one always looking up and forward, assessing the changing environment and projecting into the future. After that, my job is to paint the pictures and tell the stories that are going to compel people to work hard to achieve that future. As a result, I need to make sure I have strong task masters on my management team to keep things on track. TZL: To date, what’s been your greatest challenge? How did you handle it? MS: Managing our firm through a massive downturn while not losing sight of our long-range vision. Keeping our focus while working on those two seemingly dis- parate goals was an incredible challenge. We’ve always done a lot of work in land development, so the reces- sion hit us pretty hard. But, even as we downsized and adapted to a new economic reality, I still insisted that we take the long view and keep innovating for the fu- ture. We were often cutting in one area while investing

See Q&A, page 4

THE ZWEIG LETTER October 17, 2016, ISSUE 1172

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