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OPINION
Secret sauce
Firms often have the same “ingredients” for creating great places to work. Your success really boils down to how you choose and blend these elements together.
L ast year, I attended Zweig Group’s ElevateAEC Conference – a unique event that draws AEC firm leaders from across the country to network, learn, and celebrate. The conference included many sessions where peers discussed lessons learned and ongoing research regarding trending topics. Additionally, firms were recognized for several prestigious awards, including the Best Firms To Work For Award. As a representative of Patel, Greene and Associates, a multiyear winner in the category, many of the conversations I had at the conference started with the question: “What is your firm’s secret sauce?”
Joseph Lauk, P.E.
I had previously thought about this question in the sense of “What is our secret ingredient?” rather than “secret sauce,” which explains why I have struggled to answer it. Firms often have the same “ingredients” for creating great places to work. Tangible items like quality staff, competitive salaries and benefits, and the intangible items that we develop, like culture, professional experiences, and advancement opportunities. Rarely do we, or other firms, have that one “thing” to point to that is completely unique. Since the question is about the sauce and not the ingredients, it boils down to the best blend of all these individual elements and, in most cases, the
process in which those elements are chosen, that makes everyone want to be a part of it. To be honest, unlike a can Bush’s Baked Beans, our sauce is not a secret. It often changes as we adapt to the market, industry, feedback from staff, or as a result of conversations about topics our leadership learns through conferences like ElevateAEC. However, it is really our mission that guides us and the principles by which we operate that allow us to continuously tweak, try, and adapt. Our firm is driven by our core principles of Integrity, Commitment, and Excellence, meaning
See JOSEPH LAUK, page 4
THE ZWEIG LETTER JULY 25, 2022, ISSUE 1450
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