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P R O F I L E
A small group of WSB staff showcasing company- wide fundraising stats for the firm’s annual food drive that takes place each November-December.
Conference call: Bret Weiss, part 2 Co-founder, president, and CEO of WSB (Hot Firm #34 for 2018), a 475-person full- service consulting and design firm based in Minneapolis.
By LIISA ANDREASSEN Correspondent
“T he best PMs create their own brand, support- ers, and clients,” Weiss says. “They quick- ly become ‘go-to’ people inside and outside of the firm …These high-level performers are not ones to complain until it is too late. Regular communica- tion and sometimes action steps are necessary to lighten workload and protect these important com- pany assets.” A CONVERSATION WITH BRET WEISS. The Zweig Letter: There are A/E leaders who say profit centers create corrosive internal competi- tion for firm resources. What’s your opinion on profit centers? Bret Weiss: While we don’t believe that inter- nal profit centers are helpful to providing quality work and positive relationships within the firm, we do use metrics to guide the success of each of our groups. We have found that internal profit centers cause managers to hold on to work to reach their goals, but in reality, the work would have been
better suited for another specialist who has more expertise in the area. This can create risk for our firm and our clients. We subscribe to the philoso- phy that we are “One Company.” While this isn’t the only measure of our success, we believe that it drives cross-selling of services and increases our quality. “As a society, we are inundated with information so we try to be strategic in our information sharing. We believe that information overload TZL: What’s your policy on sharing the firm’s financials with your staff? Weekly, monthly, quarterly, annually? And how far down into the is real and it’s important that we manage that consistently and effectively.”
Bret Weiss, Co-founder, President & CEO, WSB
THE ZWEIG LETTER Aug
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