Pivoting 101: Caviar, Tattoos, and Bingo
I think we could all agree that the word “pivot” has dominated many of our conversations around business—and life in general—in 2020. Brian Canlis and his team at Canlis restaurant in Seattle are exemplars of the power of the pivot. From transforming the storied fine-dining restaurant to a drive-through, to creating a delivery program, to offering drive-in movies in their parking lot, the team has been on a constant path of adaptation and reinvention.
In this presentation from Tugboat Institute Summit 2020, Brian shares insight into the approach that has helped the business thrive over 70 years and the mission that drives the company’s commitment to continue to flex and adapt.
Want to Build a Truly Successful Team? Find Candidates Who Make You Think.
It won’t be news to anybody when I tell you that the construction industry is largely male and Caucasian. Traditionally, the leading sources of talent for firms like ours have been engineering and construction management programs that predominantly produce graduates who fit this profile. Given that landscape, it can be an uphill battle to develop a diverse team. But our Evergreen® construction company, Lease Crutcher Lewis, is committed to that fight because we know the benefit to our culture and the competitive advantage that diversity brings.
To be clear, when we talk about diversity, our priority is diversity of thought. We are not aiming to fulfill quotas, check boxes, or reach specific percentages of ethnic or gender representation. Instead, our primary objective in recruiting and retaining team members is to create a team comprised of different points of view, educational backgrounds, and personal and professional experiences.
We prioritize diversity of thought because research—and our experience—tells us that it leads to innovation and allows companies to be more nimble and more creative, leading to increased productivity and success. And, for us, seeking out diverse thinkers feels more genuine and authentic than hiring based on numbers and percentages. When we aim for diversity of thought, great diversity of all types follows. We think this approach has been a hallmark of our success in developing a diverse team.
Ten years ago, as I was beginning to really grapple with the topic of diversity, I had the good fortune to receive the resumé of a young international student for an entry level engineer position. Vishnu Jhaveri stood out to me because, among the stack of resumés I had received from recent graduates of engineering and construction programs, he had a degree in architecture. I thought that it would benefit us to bring on somebody who could see things from the design side and offer that perspective to our construction teams. When we interviewed him, we immediately saw that he was also a culture fit in terms of his values and operating style.
We hired Vishnu and put him to work as a young project engineer. The fact that he grew up in India proved to be an unintended benefit to our work. Not only did he provide diversity of thought through his professional expertise, he offered the perspective of growing up outside of the U.S. His thinking and approach to problem solving reflect this experience. He offers a different viewpoint that adds value to our business and richness to our culture. Fast forward 10 years, and Vishnu is one of our high-performing project managers. He's a leader within our business, a vocal recruiter for our company, and a champion in our efforts to continue to seek out diversity of thought.
That experience had a significant influence in how we continue to recruit and build our team. We have developed relationships with universities that enroll a higher percentage of international students, people of color, or female graduates. And, we have increasingly pursued “nontraditional” hires, those who may not have an engineering or construction management degree but have unique skills or a background that would allow us to train and develop them within our organization.
Four years ago, we hired Amy Rutz, a junior high school teacher who was looking for a career change. Amy had real passion for the building process and was a culture fit, but she had no experience in the field. We took a chance on hiring her and put her to work as a project engineer, a position she executed really well for three years. Recently, we transitioned her into a role as our training and development coordinator, in which she now pairs the powerful knowledge gained through years as an engineer with her teaching background to run our training and development curriculum for all of our employees.
In our experience, the success of building a team in which people like Vishnu and Amy thrive relies on a culture that consistently supports diversity of thought. I think you'd be hard pressed to find somebody in our company who hasn't heard the CEO talk about the power of diversity of thought and how important it is to us and how we operate as a company.
This messaging is reinforced by two of our core values—"Trust and Respect" and "Fulfillment"—which similarly support diversity of thought. Unless you trust that your teammates will listen to your point of view, be open to your perspective, ask quality questions to seek understanding, and respect you for sharing your opinion, you’re not likely to share your thoughts. If trust and respect are present, ideas are shared openly and diversity of thought rises to the surface, propelling innovation. And, when you are free to share your thoughts and ideas—to bring your whole self to work each day—you are much more likely to be fulfilled in your job.
I’m proud of our intentional focus on diversity, but I also know that we can do much more. I am looking forward to continuing to help our recruiters gain awareness of unintentional, subconscious biases that may be barriers to hiring. We will offer ongoing coaching to team members involved in hiring to help them understand how their personal background might produce biases when it comes to recruiting, hiring, training, and promoting people.
As a leader, I know that raising awareness of these issues can be uncomfortable and may require removing people from the hiring process who can’t move beyond these biases. That takes bold leadership and decisiveness, but if there are team members who are perpetuating unintentional biases and can’t rewire, we need to seek out someone else to recruit—someone who recognizes the value in diversity of thought. Because for us, continuing to foster diversity and growing our company to reflect the widest possible variety of thought, perspective, and experience is essential. It’s through diversity that we will continue to innovate and thrive for the long-term.
Bart Ricketts is CEO of Lease Crutcher Lewis.
Sustained Growth in an Unprecedented Time
Dr. Gary Kunkle is a leading academic researcher in the area of sustained company growth over time and Founder of Outlier LLC. In this interview with Dave Whorton, Founder and CEO of Tugboat Institute, presented during Tugboat Institute Summit 2020, Gary offers insight into several of the key variables that set sustained growth companies apart and perspective on the role these businesses play in the economy and in communities.
Buckle Up: Evergreen Inspiration Fuels Tugboat Institute @5HQ Road Trip
When Bill Roark, Co-founder of Torch Technologies and CEO of Starfish Holdings, was growing up in Eastern Kentucky, he had a dream: To own an auto parts store. With what he refers to as a “serious car habit,” the teenager spent every minute he wasn’t in school or courting his girlfriend—now his wife of 40 years—working on cars.
Fast forward, and Bill is living a dream he couldn’t have imagined then but has become his life’s work: “Lighting the pathway to freedom.” Bill leads a 100 percent employee-owned defense contracting firm in Huntsville, Alabama, with a mission to, as Bill describes it, “support our soldiers in the best way possible to make sure they have what they need to be successful and come home safe.” Torch Technologies, which generated over $500 million in revenue in 2019, develops, tests, and builds technical contributions for the military.
On October 13, Tugboat Institute members had the opportunity to learn from Bill and from Torch Technologies’ CEO John Watson, during the first stop in a series of Tugboat Institute @5HQ Fall Exemplar Visits to Evergreen® companies. The morning program at Torch began with a Fireside Chat with Bill and Tugboat Institute Founder and CEO Dave Whorton, which shed light on Bill’s personal story and key components of the business. John Watson then offered a deep dive into innovation planning and practices at Torch, and Bill followed with insight into the culture and compensation practices that attract top talent and help fuel sustained growth at the company.
Following the Huntsville visit, the event series continued, with three more stops at Tugboat Institute member-companies across the country. Each visit was attended in person by a small group of Tugboat Institute members, in accordance with local health and safety guidelines, and was live streamed to the wider membership. At each stop, members heard from company executives in the morning, participated in a Q&A session with each speaker, and connected via small-group breakouts (Zoom and in-person) to reflect on the morning’s content. For those who attended in person, the afternoon included a tour, lunch, and a Tugboat Institute Brain Trust.
The second stop was Boise, Idaho, on October 15, where Bret Moffett, CEO of POWER Engineers, along with CAO Jim Haynes and CFO Chuck Kemp, welcomed members and offered insight into the Idaho-grown global engineering firm. Through Bret’s Fireside Chat with Dave Whorton, members learned about the CEO’s upbringing and early affinity for computer science, key mentorship relationships that have led him to his current role, and the mission and values that guide the company. The Fireside Chat was followed by presentations by Jim Haynes and Chuck Kemp highlighting POWER’s culture of ownership and employee engagement.
On October 19, members visited ABC Home & Commercial Services in Austin, Texas, where they were welcomed by the company’s President, Bobby Jenkins. In a Fireside Chat with Dave Whorton, Bobby shared the incredibly close family connections that serve as a foundation for the company, Bobby’s love for the work that allows him to provide services that help his customers live healthier and safer lives, and his commitment to hiring exceptional talent to continue to grow and diversify. His dedication to philanthropic work in the communities he serves was also clear, as he described efforts he and his team have led in Austin, reflecting his philosophy that “Doing good is good business.”
Matt Burns, ABC’s Vice President and CFO, then presented the company’s story of diversification, from pest control to a now-wide array of home and commercial services, a model propelled by leveraging the existing customer base over time. The morning concluded with Bobby’s insight into the unique succession planning on his father’s part that led to his leadership of the Austin business, as well as to the establishment of two entirely separate companies led by his two brothers, and his current efforts toward planning for G2 to G3 succession.
The final stop of the Tugboat Institute @5HQ series, on October 21, was hosted by Chrissy Nardini, President of American Metals Supply Co. (AMS), a family-owned sheet metal distribution company headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri. Founded by Chrissy’s father in 1962, AMS has grown through his and her own leadership from one location in Springfield, Illinois to eight locations in six states. In a Fireside Chat with Dave Whorton, Chrissy shared the story of her entry into the family business, the unique, focused distribution model and laser focus on customer service that drive the company’s success, and the personal true north she has found in parenting her two adopted sons.
Following the Fireside Chat, Shelly Liley, Head of Employee Engagement at AMS, detailed the expansive employee benefits and People First orientation that drive recruitment and retention efforts at the company. COO Chuck Hitchcock then offered insight into the HVAC industry to provide context for the unique product niche AMS occupies in an otherwise commodity market. He described how this product focus, tied with high service levels and customer intimacy, drive customer loyalty and their above-industry profits.
There’s no question that Tugboat Institute events in 2020 have looked and felt different, and Tugboat Institute @5HQ was certainly a new take on the organization’s Fall Exemplar Visit experience. What remained consistent in this event series, as in all Tugboat gatherings, was the curiosity, generosity, and wisdom shared among these leaders, who, bound by their commitment to the Evergreen 7Ps™ principles, came together to learn from and support their peers.
Diana Price is Content Director at Tugboat Institute.
Recipe for Success: How I Incorporated Family and Community into My Business
Alissa Leinonen is the award-winning Founder & CEO of Seattle’s largest and longest running woman-owned catering and boxed-lunch company, Gourmondo Co. What began as a small, four-table lunch spot in Pike Place Market over 20 years ago is now a leader in the Pacific Northwest catering industry. There is much about Alissa and her success that is remarkable, but perhaps most inspiring is her commitment to People First—to her family, her employees, and her community.
In this presentation from Tugboat Institute Summit 2020, Alissa describes how that commitment to People First has guided her throughout her journey as an entrepreneur and through the challenges of the COVID period, when over 24-hours in the early days of the pandemic she saw 80 percent of her business disappear. Alissa’s remarkable pivot to serve her community and save her business is an inspiring Evergreen success story.
My Business Grows 300 Percent Every Fall. Here’s What that Has Taught Me.
[A note from Tugboat Institute: Please note the postscript at the end of this article, in which the author comments on the connection of this topic to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.]
As a manufacturer of industrial heating and cooling technology, our business, Cambridge Air Solutions, surges 300-400 percent each fall. Everyone generally wants to have those systems installed in new construction before winter, and if you’re replacing your system, you typically do so in the last few months of the year. To meet that cyclical demand, we hire a large number of seasonal employees.
Hiring, training, and integrating a seasonal workforce can present challenges, but we have developed an approach that is guided by our Purpose, which is to enrich every life we touch. We don’t want to simply hire temporary workers without considering the long-term. We want to enrich their lives and behave toward them as we do toward all of our employees, customers, and suppliers: with unconditional love and high expectations.
This approach toward our seasonal employees led to the creation of Cambridge Unleashed, a 4-6-month seasonal work program developed by our Vice President of Human Resources, Meg Brown. The goal was to provide opportunities for seasonal employees to develop hands-on lean manufacturing skills and experience that will help them either progress into a full-time position at Cambridge Air Solutions or, if we don’t have a position for them, launch a career at another firm.
A central pillar of the Cambridge Unleashed program is a video series that we developed to showcase our seasonal employees’ experiences and expertise as they grow and develop in their role—and specifically their innovations related to the principles of lean manufacturing.
Every seasonal (and long-term) employee is required to read Paul Aker’s book 2 Second Lean: How to Grow People and Build a Fun Lean Culture. This book lays the foundational understanding of lean and describes the simple, “fix what bugs you” approach to waste reduction. Alongside the skills training they undergo, this education in lean allows seasonal employees (who we refer to as “unleashers”) to step into the rhythm of our operation and their specific roles ready for success—and primed to offer insight into continuous improvement.
Our daily schedule includes a 15-minute morning meeting, which all unleashers attend, which includes a review of revenue and other milestones and highlights process improvements. After the morning meeting, we dedicate 30 minutes to non-production time, during which we don't want employees producing a product or jumping into their functional roles. Instead, we ask them to focus on how they can make their job easier, better, safer, cleaner, or a help somebody else solve a problem—and make a video sharing their improvement.
Each day, we highlight the improvements and innovations that our employees, including the unleashers, develop during this period in our daily Morning Meeting. Each video shares an employee’s lean innovation, showcasing employees’ creativity and skills.
The videos ultimately provide several important benefits to the employees and to Cambridge Air Solutions. First, if we do not have a position for the seasonal employee after their temporary position ends, their improvement videos are compiled in a playlist they can use to promote their skill sets and innovations to prospective employers. In addition to helping unleashers share their skills and innovations, the daily habits and continuous improvement mindset that these videos reflect, and which are central to our culture, serve to attract unprecedented numbers of candidates when we have open positions. This past year, we were seeking to hire 20 unleashers to fill seasonal roles, and we had 574 applications. And that was with a four percent unemployment rate.
Beyond the video series, the broader Cambridge Unleashed program provides seasonal employees opportunities to fully engage in our culture, take on short-term leadership roles, and connect with long-term employees. The additional focus on training and engagement for these employees has resulted in tremendous improvements to our safety record and production capacity and throughput. And, we've seen the morale of the plant grow across the board as unleashers and full-time employees connect and increasingly recognize that we’re all pushing toward the same common goals. Now, we train together, we innovate together, and we celebrate together.
Personally, watching the Cambridge Unleashed program develop and seeing the benefit to the individuals and to our Evergreen company has been extremely rewarding. When we help people tap into their creativity to solve problems at work, it not only benefits our process and productivity, it enriches and enhances lives beyond our plant. Whether they are working with us for six months or for many years, we want our people to go home at the end of the day knowing they have created valuable solutions because when they do, they bring the confidence and fulfillment of that experience into their relationships with their families and their engagement in their communities.
John Kramer is the CEO of Cambridge Air Solutions.
Postscript 09.11.2020
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, our company shifted all of our daily rhythms to a virtual format, which was an early practical step to ensure safety. In a broader sense, we have seen a significant impact to our ability to attract applicants, resulting in a lower volume in our Unleashed recruiting pipelines than prior years. However, we are able to close the candidates who do apply and get them onto the team, which I believe points to our ability to demonstrate safe work practices even during COVID. In addition, the “Protect This House” rallying cry, which we embraced in the early days of the pandemic, has been a key step toward preparing for the busy season. Our team members are motivated to bring in Q1 of FY21 and willing to do what it takes to keep themselves safe while also continuing to make product for our customers.
Leadership in a Time of Uncertainty
Navigating the wake of the COVID pandemic will continue to present challenges and uncertainty for Evergreen businesses. In this period, it can be helpful to look to leaders who have persevered through difficulty and maintained a focus on their purpose and their people.
In this welcome presentation from Tugboat Institute Summit 2020, Dave Whorton, Founder and CEO of Tugboat Institute, offers insight into George Washington’s exemplary life and career and shares inspiration from this early Evergreen leader.
From Venture to Growth Company
[A note from Tugboat Institute: Please note the postscript at the end of this article, in which the author comments on the connection of this topic to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.]
Kenny Rosenblatt and I started Arkadium in 2001 out of our apartment. Like many bootstrapped start-ups, we initially had no titles or processes—we just did what we had to do to make great games. But as our company grew, so did our scale of distribution and our number of employees.
Over the course of 15 years, we became great at building an inclusive, exciting culture alongside standout products. In 2016, we were recognized as Inc. Magazine’s “Best place to Work” in the U.S. By 2018, we had over 100 employees distributed between offices in New York and Russia. Our business was humming in many ways, but there was one thing that wasn’t quite right.
Kenny and I were so busy with our business strategy over the years that we didn’t put much thought into our organizational strategy. Our organizational structure just evolved over time. We knew that it wasn’t optimal. As we had grown, the “machine” driving our success started to show signs of strain. Kenny and I recognized that our organizational structure was becoming a constraint to further growth.
Specific Problems
To validate our concerns and expand our understanding of the issues, we surveyed our leadership team. And we got an “earful” of problems, the root cause of which was our organizational structure!
Authorities and accountabilities: One common theme was a lack of clear authorities and accountabilities. Key initiatives, like an update to our game platform, had no “owners.” Within multi-departmental project teams, it wasn’t understood who was in charge. This confusion sometimes led to finger pointing, despite our tightly knit culture. And it often fell to Kenny and me to resolve problems, make technical decisions, and coordinate the teams.
Misaligned priorities: Another common concern was misaligned priorities. Engineering teams independently decided the balance between R&D, new development, and maintenance of current products. Even though they were often interdependent, their priorities differed. So, when they went to look for help from others, their needs often fell to the bottom of others’ “to do” lists.
Silos: These difficulties with the team caused people to avoid teamwork, and instead work as independent “silos.” Some kinds of expertise were replicated in each silo, and there was no standardization across departments, which further impeded sharing and synergies.
Disempowerment: It wasn’t clear who had the authority to make decisions. Everyone had a say in everything, and the multiple voices often drowned out the advice of the real experts. No one was empowered with all the authorities and accountabilities to run each internal line of business.
Gaps: Some critical functions were just plain missing. For example, there was no reliable channel of communication from customers back to developers. No one was focused on understanding our customers’ industries. No one was responsible for planning (other than Kenny and me).
Lack of focus: Staff cried out for clear boundaries: “owners” of every initiative; bosses who understood their disciplines; elimination of the obstacles to teamwork; more empowerment; and viable career paths.
No Bureaucracy!
All these problems added up to a clear message: Organizational issues were getting in the way of team performance and the company’s growth. The time had come to address our organizational structure, but Kenny and I didn’t want to create a rigid bureaucracy. Our entrepreneurial culture was (and is) essential to our success.
This seemed to us to be a conundrum: How do we mature as a company and define accountabilities and authorities (clear boundaries) while maintaining our culture, engendering cross-boundary teamwork, and empowering our talented staff?
We also knew we needed a scalable organization—a structure that would not just grow as the company grew, but one that would drive that growth. We had no interest in restructuring every few years as the company grew.
We had one more concern: Our culture is collegial. We wanted to engage our leadership team in any structural change process. But how could we avoid endless debates over opinions or a political free-for-all?
Picking the Right Approach
I knew it would be a bad idea for Kenny and me to simply sketch a new organization chart, or to gather our leadership team to make something up. There had to be other companies that had dealt with these growth challenges. There had to be some sort of science of organizational design.
I began reading up on organizational theories. Most of what I found was unsatisfying. Finally, I came across a book that resonated with me: N. Dean Meyer’s Principle-Based Organizational Structure. Meyer described an organization where every group was defined as a business-within-a-business—just the sort of entrepreneurial culture we intended to cultivate. His framework of lines of business within organizations provided a map for identifying what goes where, what’s missing, and how the different functions work together.
He laid out clear design principles, modeling an engineering approach to structure that I knew my team would appreciate. These principles, Meyer said, provided a basis for a fact-based, participative process.
Beyond just the organization chart, Meyer also defined a method of forming cross-boundary teams with clear individual accountabilities and a clear chain of command within each team. I was never a fan of rigid “business process engineering.” We needed to be flexible and dynamic in combining our various skills on teams. So, his teamwork method really made sense for us.
And like the icing on a cake, he described a step-by-step design and implementation process that was well thought out and tested. It looked like a lot of work; but every step made sense and was necessary. It was almost a cookbook.
I contacted Meyer and spent a day with him, studying his approach and brainstorming how it could apply to Arkadium. The more I understood Meyer’s approach, the more convinced I became that this was just what Kenny and I were looking for.
The Change Process
Under Meyer’s guidance, we engaged our entire leadership team throughout the change process.
The first step was his “Rainbow Workshop” wherein the leadership team studied Meyer’s definitions of the lines of business that exist within organizations and how those definitions applied to us. Then we color-coded our existing organization chart to indicate which lines of business were under each leader.
The chart ended up being a little too colorful and revealing. The causes of our concerns quickly became evident. Teams were pursuing multiple, and often conflicting, lines of business. Accountabilities for many lines of business were scattered all over. And a number of lines of business were missing.
Then, Meyer led the team through a collaborative process of designing a new organization chart. In addition to the firm principles and clear language, our leaders really liked the notion that every group is an empowered entrepreneurship, chartered to serve customers elsewhere in the company or externally (or both). And the open, participative approach was really motivational, and fit well within our culture.
Of course, putting names into the resulting boxes was up to Kenny and me. But even there, Meyer encouraged team participation. Everybody had a chance to discuss their careers with us and tell us their preferences. Having some say in their destiny added to the team’s commitment and enthusiasm.
Meyer’s process doesn’t stop with a new organization chart. As he points out, if our processes of teamwork are not working really well, we’d just revert back into independent silos of generalists rather than teams of just the right specialists. And if accountabilities for results within teams aren’t clear, teamwork will just create more confusion and tension.
So, the next phase of the process focused on what Meyer calls “walk-throughs.” We looked at example after example of our projects and services. And for each, we used Meyer’s principles to decide which group was the “prime contractor” accountable for the entire result, and which other groups would serve as “sub-contractors” delivering components or supporting services to the prime.
This businesslike approach to teamwork further reinforced our entrepreneurial culture. And as a method of team formation, it allows us to be very clear about individual accountabilities and the chain of command within every team.
Meyer encouraged us to openly communicate with all our staff at each phase of the process. This, too, fit well with our collaborative, respectful culture. And it really helped with change management.
When the leadership team had practiced enough walk-throughs to really understand how the new organization chart would work, we were ready to “go live.” Meyer guided us through the myriad details necessary to prepare for the big day, including assigning all our staff and vendors to groups (again done collaboratively with the leadership team).
From the first workshop to go-live took us around 10 months. I know this sounds like a long time to be working on a restructuring. But all the planning paid off. Every leader understood his/her new job as running a small business within a business, and they all had a common understanding of how actual work would get done in the new structure.
After go-live, Meyer’s approach included a meticulous migration process which ensured that we moved all accountabilities to the right groups in the new organization, with no “dump and run” or missed commitments.
Results to Date
Since we deployed our new structure, we’re already seeing dramatic benefits: projects are taking less time to complete, employees are reporting a much greater understanding of both their responsibilities and professional growth path, and groups are much more regularly utilizing each other’s strengths
Bottom Line
This restructuring was a big investment for us—mostly consisting of the amount of leadership time we put into the process. But it was truly transformational. Before, everybody had an entrepreneurial mindset, as is appropriate in a venture like ours. Now, everybody really is an entrepreneur running their own small business within our business.
Now, teamwork across structural and geographic boundaries is working great. And Kenny and I rarely have to step in to resolve issues. Also, the design is completely scalable as we continue to grow and diversify. I don’t expect we’ll need another restructuring for a very long time.
For all these reasons, Kenny and I are confident we now have an organization that will drive growth for decades to come.
By the way, I think that Kenny and I have grown as leaders as a result of this process. We’ve always been very conscious of our culture. But now we understand organizational dynamics, and we see our role as creating a great company where everybody (not just us) drives our strategies, our operational excellence, and our growth.
Jessica Rovello is CEO and Co-Founder of Arkadium.
Postscript 09.29.2020
When I hear that a company is “re-orging,” I tend to roll my eyes. So, it was with deep skepticism that we entered into our own company re-organization two years ago. Reflecting back post-COVID, I‘m even more grateful that we took the time and attention to thoughtfully contemplate our organizational structure when we did. Having clear roles, accountability, and alignment company-wide was not only a lifesaver for us as we navigated working from home, but it has proven to be a catalyst for our business. Our teams are working smarter and more efficiently than they ever have before, and we have our restructuring to thank for a lot of that success.
Why My Software Company No Longer Accepts Resumés
My path to becoming owner and CEO of 8th Light, an Evergreen® software development business, did not follow what might be viewed as a traditional trajectory. I didn’t go straight to college to get a degree in computer science or math or engineering. I didn’t actually graduate from a mainstream high school but instead earned my GED and first attended a vocational school.
I always loved to learn, but the standard academic track was never the right place for me. When I was counseled to attend vocational school, because my grades wouldn’t get me into a four-year college, my interest in computers led me to learn programming. I got a lot of joy out of solving the really hard problems it presented. My intellectual curiosity was piqued, and I fell in love with the craft, ultimately earning enough credits to apply to a four-year degree program. That experience revealed to me a path to professional success that was fueled by passion and practical application.
In that same period, my dad introduced me to a local computer programming company in suburban Chicago, and I got a part-time job that evolved to become a five-year apprenticeship. That opportunity provided me access to really smart people, thought leaders and experts in the field, and an individual mentor. I was ultimately offered a full-time position as a consultant with that company at a fairly young age.
That was the genesis of the belief, which I still hold today, that fulfilling technical careers can start in non-traditional ways. I saw firsthand that the company’s investment in me as an apprentice paid off for them when I was able to do top tier work early in my career. When I left that consulting position to launch 8th Light, my co-founder—who had been my mentor—and I decided to develop an apprenticeship program for the company that would allow us to train people to our quality standards and programming philosophy.
In the early years, most of our apprentices had computer science degrees. As the company and the program grew, we increasingly brought in people with less conventional backgrounds—people who were making a mid-life career change, parents returning to the workforce, those who may not have had conventional academic training but had the aptitude and a passion to learn the craft, or those who had excelled in other fields and exhibited potential to thrive.
Today, we have almost entirely phased out computer science degrees from our hires. We don't even accept resumés any longer, so we don't actually know if somebody has a computer science degree or not when they apply. Our hiring process requires an aptitude test and several behavioral interviews. We want to know that a person understands the commitment it takes to master a craft, is committed to learning—and, later, to mentoring—and has the personal characteristics that will make them a good consultant. That process aligns with our three core values, which are humanity, education, and ownership.
Once they have been hired, apprentices spend on average the first six months training with a variety of mentors with a range of experience and seniority throughout the company. After that, over the next year, they begin working on client projects but continue to train and learn from mentors. Throughout, they benefit from the connections and community of their cohort group, which averages around 20-25 apprentices each cycle.
For our company—which now numbers 164 employees, including 19 apprentices, in six locations in the US and London—the apprenticeship program drives a culture of curiosity and education. Learning continues throughout a team member’s career, through unstructured learning opportunities, as well as dedicated learning periods and the opportunity to apply for more extensive education and development programs. This is critical in our field because the path to mastery is one of life-long learning.
It’s rewarding to have experienced the benefits of the apprenticeship path as an apprentice myself, and now to see the positive impact from the angle of an employer. The program has created a skilled, loyal team that is inclusive and rich in diversity of thought and experience.
That said, the model is not without its challenges. There is considerable cost to the organization when senior team members take time to mentor apprentices. In the six months that an apprentice is focused on training, they are not engaged in any billable work, so the up-front investment is significant. In addition, the diversity of the team’s background and experiences can create conflict, and we were forced to address issues of inclusivity earlier in our growth than many companies. But for us, both the cost of the program and the work to support inclusivity have allowed us to develop a team with a very high level of expertise and to foster a culture that is marked by deep connections, both of which serve our company and our clients.
I know that our apprenticeship program will continue to evolve and adapt—it’s an ongoing experiment. As we learn and continue to grow from the talent and energy the program creates for our company, I hope to be able to share what we’ve learned with other businesses that can similarly benefit from the apprenticeship model. As the cost of higher education continues to rise, there is a significant opportunity for companies to provide training and grow talent in non-traditional ways. I’ve certainly seen the value of this approach, and I’m excited to see where it will continue to lead us.
Paul Pagel is CEO of 8th Light.
Design for Sustainability Requires a Broader Scope
[A note from Tugboat Institute: Please note the author’s postscript at the end of this article, in which he comments on the connection of this topic to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.]
We are POWER Engineers, an Evergreen® company, committed to continuous employee-ownership. We are also a global engineering and consulting firm serving the energy, facilities, federal, and environmental markets.
POWER is involved in projects that span both renewables and fossil fuels, as well as the upstream and downstream parts of the energy supply chain that these projects create. That experience has provided us a broad and deep understanding of sustainability, offering what I think is a unique perspective on the many angles of this issue.
In our industry, we see a lot of misinformation propagated about sustainability from all sides. Against this backdrop, our approach as engineers and environmental scientists is to design and integrate sustainability into each project. Because the reality is that every project—even those ostensibly creating “clean energy”—has an impact on the environment.
For instance, while wind turbines symbolize sustainable energy for many, if you review the entire life cycle of that project—taking into account the upstream materials extraction, construction, manufacturing, operation, maintenance, and decommissioning and dismantling—the impact looks different as all of these activities have a certain carbon footprint.
The scope of our work allows us to see this entire arc, and, as a result, we have opportunities to integrate sustainability at every stage of every project. Of course, as consulting engineers, this is what we are hired to do. We innovate and create solutions for our clients within constraints that might be technical, land use-related, economic, regulatory, or some combination of all of the above. Innovation is part of our DNA.
That core drive, fueled by our commitment to sustainability, led us to partner with the Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure (ISI) and the Harvard University Graduate School of Design to develop a tool for our industry to evaluate sustainability of infrastructure projects. Using ISI’s EnvisionTM rating system, we created “SustainEval,” a web-based calculator that allows a designer, planner, or owner to evaluate how a transmission line facility rates for environmental, social, and economic impacts and compares that rating to other similar projects.
As engineers and environmental scientists, we understand our work can have a profound impact on the world in terms of sustainability. But we are also very aware of our obligation to walk the talk within our own company. That awareness led to us to evolve sustainability efforts within operations at POWER Engineers.
In recent years, we've installed a solar power system on our headquarters that includes instrumentation that evaluates our reduction in electricity and thereby our reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. We've also purchased electric vehicles for employee use in commuting between our offices, and we engage in recycling and other waste reduction efforts. While these steps may seem minor when compared with our large-scale, global projects, we feel these efforts are critical for signaling the sustainable behavior we support.
As an Evergreen business, the concept of sustainability also has a deeper meaning beyond the context of the environmental impact of our work. We’re an employee-owned company. We feel lucky to have inherited this endowment from the prior generation, and we feel that we have a duty and an obligation to do that for the next generation too.
So, sustainability means we’re doing our very best to help meet the world’s present needs without compromising the ability of future generations to do the same. But it also means we’re continuing to pay our success forward so that the next generation of owners has equal or even more opportunities than we have today.
Bret Moffett is CEO of POWER Engineers.
Photo Credit: Makis Siderakis, Mountain Air
Postscript 08.25.2020
The energy industry has shifted, but not drastically contracted, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. From a sustainability standpoint, we’re likely to see more interest in distributed energy resources—small, often renewable, sources of power that are located near the communities that need energy, rather than large centralized power plants. These resources can be placed in residential areas, where energy use has risen while energy use in commercial areas declined. We remain flexible and innovative, ready to serve our clients’ needs even as those needs shift.
POWER was also well-positioned to adapt to remote work. As a employee-owned company, we were able to act quickly and eliminated all nonessential business travel in mid-March and moved entirely to work from home a week later. This move has cut down our emissions from travel and commuting in the short term. In the long-term, our exploration of remote collaboration tools could allow us to continue active client support while reducing our travel-related emissions permanently.