11
O P I N I O N
An enticing aroma
If your firm makes a sincere effort to learn, teach, develop, innovate, and improve, old and new hires alike will notice.
A s president of a 400-person design firm, one of my favorite activities is one- on-one meetings with new employees. They share their personal story and first impressions of Shive-Hattery’s culture. A new hire recently summed things up by saying, “I like the smell of the place.”
James A. Lee GUEST SPEAKER
This was the most succinct way to say she liked our values – what we do, how we do it, why we do what we do, how we treat each other, and what we believe. Those that fit in our culture thrive; those that don’t usually move on. We once employed a super-sharp process engineer. He had a doctorate in chemical engineering. He was brilliant at analyzing a client’s product formalization and redoing the chemistry to make it better, but he wouldn’t teach others what he knew. He was afraid that if he taught others, we would no longer need him. He was not aligned with our fundamental values of teaching and learning. He moved on. It is a responsibility of everyone in our company to learn new things, teach others what they
know, and look for opportunities to innovate and continuously improve. Our employees, clients, and company benefit from this. CAREER PATHS. Shive-Hattery has multiple ways to help employees accomplish these goals. One re- source we’ve recently developed for our employees is career paths. In the A/E profession, there are basically four paths most individuals can pursue: design/technical, project management, business development, and managing people (operations). Each individual can choose one, two, or possibly three paths as they grow their career. Within each path, we’ve identified attributes that help each individual develop skills, knowledge, and
See JAMES A. LEE, page 12
THE ZWEIG LETTER September 17, 2018, ISSUE 1264
Made with FlippingBook Annual report