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Gale employees at a staff clambake.

CONFERENCE CALL, from page 7

new geographic region with an existing discipline, we give it three years to show a return, even a marginal one, prior to making a decision. Based on my experience, investments in marketing and business development are critical to the health of the firm, in good times and, more importantly, in not so good times. TZL: They say failure is a great teacher. What’s the big- gest lesson you’ve had to learn the hard way? JL: The biggest lesson for me has been allowing margin- al, underperforming staff that are not excited to be part of Gale to remain. Marginal employees drag others down and do not put a proactive effort into their assignments, which can be a liability to the corporation. Poor attention to detail can be costly through “re-design,” design liability or staff morale. When workload is strong, it’s easy to allow this to continue. The lesson is – don’t let it. Address poor and mar- ginal performance immediately. TZL: Do you use historical performance data or metrics to establish project billable hours and how does the type of contract play into determining the project budget? JL: While we track all project financials to maintain histori- cal data for fees and profit, we do not establish fees based on this information alone. Each opportunity is unique. While we have learning lessons on many projects and clients, no two are identical. So, the response is – no, we don’t use his- torical data alone to determine new opportunity fees. How- ever, the information is useful when we consider client needs and expectations. TZL: What’s your prediction for 2018? JL: My gut instinct says that the current boom our pro- fession and industries are experiencing will start to soft- en by early 2019. We anticipate certain markets will re- main strong, such as healthcare and military. However, those that are tied more to speculation, like residential and endowment growth, may soften. But, I can say that my crystal ball is not always accurate. Gale will remain di- versified with our services and clients to help insulate the firm from the fluctuations of the economy. Not unsimilar to the balanced portfolio the investment experts tell us to maintain.

managing clients and staff, getting paid, making a profit, getting the clients to come back, and growing and mentor- ing staff. The list goes on. We attempt to spread the proj- ect manager assignments and provide the appropriate staff back up to avoid the “crash and burn” scenario. So far, it ap- pears to be working. We also support a healthy vacation al- lowance, flex time, and bonus sharing based on profitability, which also helps! TZL: What is the role of entrepreneurship in your firm? JL: At Gale, everyone has a voice. All ideas are considered and staff is encouraged to contribute to business and disci- pline development. Our staff, particularly our younger staff, are often the ones that recognize opportunity. Cross selling and understanding client needs in relationship to what Gale brings to the table results in growth. Growth is key to op- portunity. Opportunity is key to staff retention and the fu- ture of the employee and firm. TZL: In the next couple of years, what AEC segments will heat up, and which ones will cool down? JL: If I had the crystal ball for this answer, I would give up my day job. Given today’s political environment, I don’t feel anyone can be infinitely positive regarding the potential fallout from tariffs, immigration, and foreign policy. What I can be somewhat confident in is healthcare and our ag- ing population. Gale’s market is strong with higher educa- tion, healthcare, and institutional clients. We plan on stick- ing with and expanding this base. Downturns in the econo- my typically affect private industry more than public, so we will continue to service state, municipal, and federal agency clients. TZL: Measuring the effectiveness of marketing is diffi- cult to do using hard metrics for ROI. How do you evalu- ate the success/failure of your firm’s marketing efforts when results could take months, or even years, to mate- rialize? Do you track any metrics to guide your market- ing plan? JL: We have found it difficult to measure our success with marketing. Marketing costs and expenses are tracked to our profit centers so we can extrapolate our return on mar- keting and business development efforts. When entering a

THE ZWEIG LETTER November 12, 2018, ISSUE 1272

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