6
P R O F I L E
Destination employer: Brent Wright Founder and CEO of Wright Engineers (Best Firm #1 Structural for 2018), a Vegas- headquartered firm where perfection is the goal but excellence is tolerated.
By LIISA ANDREASSEN Correspondent
“I n 21 years, I’ve only had to terminate one long-time leader who, over time, began to behave entitled and above the rules,” Wright says. “I tolerated it much longer than I should have. Everyone in the company knew he need- ed to go. When he was terminated, it was like a heavy steel ball had been cut loose.” A CONVERSATION WITH BRENT WRIGHT. The Zweig Letter: Engineers love being engineers, but what are you doing to instill a business culture in your firm? Brent Wright: If I have one complaint about engineers, it’s that they love engineering so much that they have a ten- dency to neglect that other “dumb stuff I gotta do” like con- tracts and invoicing and managing the business side of the project – all the other stuff that’s necessary to be a profit- able business. We share our financial numbers for the com- pany, for each office, for each department, and for each proj- ect. We train our people carefully and often about business practices. Profit sharing is directly tied to our business per- formance and everyone sees the numbers for that. Each PM
knows he/she is responsible for the profitability of their project and their project is not done until we’ve been paid. TZL: A firm’s longevity is valuable. What are you doing to encourage your staff to stick around? BW: From day one, part of our company vision has been to be a destination employer. The last thing we want to do is train the best and brightest so they can leave us and join (or become) our competition. Of course we do our best to offer pay and benefits and perks that are representative of a des- tination employer, and we’re constantly looking for ways to improve, but we also focus on profits. You need to be prof- itable to afford the best and we focus on training since the best and brightest want to continually learn. We also fo- cus on growth and advancement opportunities and on do- ing excellent work that will challenge and be interesting. We regularly hold fun company events where team members can bond. Our monthly one-on-ones help each team mem- ber to reach their career goals. TZL: Do you tie compensation to performance for your top leaders?
THE ZWEIG LETTER Mar
Made with FlippingBook Annual report