Kahler Slater was named
one of the top 10 small-business best places to work in the June 2005 HR
Magazine and ranked 12th on that list
in 2004. Run by the Great Place to Work Institute, the group that compiles
the 100 Best Companies list every year for Fortune magazine,
the Best Places to Work list is an annual compilation of innovative and
inspirational management strategies for firms of all types, categorized
by size. (A small firm is defined as companies employing between 50 and
250 employees.) Here is the how and why behind that singular honor for
an architecture firm from an interview with the firm’s HR principal, John G. Horky, AIA.
Your Web site says “We are a close knit group who work hard and
play hard.” How did you develop that culture?
When I joined Kahler Slater in 1991, we were about 35 people. We subsequently
went through some pretty significant growth in the early ’90s,
growing to 60 or so. Though we were growing, we didn’t really have
a collective sense of vision of where we were going. We could have continued
to be a very well regarded regional firm that has an excellent service
reputation with clients. But we really wanted to understand the possibilities
beyond that.
We
spent about a year and a half engaged in introspective analysis as well
as benchmarking and getting a lot of information from clients, consultants,
and contractors telling us what they thought we are good at and what
differentiates us. We pulled all that together and, in 1996, unveiled
a new vision for the firm. One of the underpinnings for that reorganization
was to ask our people what they are passionate about, because we believe
that if anyone is doing something that they are really passionate about,
they are going to be happier, which translates into better service and
more satisfied clients. The thinking is that a client who finds that
working with us is a special experience will be more inclined to continue
working with us and refer us to their valued friends and peers. So, philosophically,
we organized the firm around market-focus team and assigned individuals
to them according to their own interests. The result is that people enjoy
their work and that comes through in service to the client.
The strongest indication that this approach has been working is that
the generally held benchmarking statistic for repeat client work is about
70 percent of revenues. With us, it exceeds 90 percent.
Using yourself as an example, how does an architect morph into an HR
principal?
I have been in architectural practice for more than 20 years and started
with this firm as an architect in the years just before its rapid growth.
We currently have 135 people and have grown 30 percent since the beginning
of this year. When we had gotten to be about 100 people, the owners determined
to invest in somebody dedicated to human resources leadership. There
were two basic choices: find a pedigreed HR person who may or may not
be familiar with the profession, and certainly would not have been familiar
with the Kahler Slater culture. Or, look internally at somebody already
familiar with the profession and the firm who could learn about HR. They
approached me, going the latter route, which has worked out very, very
well for the last seven years.
The significant advantage, I believe, is that I know, for example,
what it means to be an architecture intern and sit for the registration
exam. I can therefore be empathetic and provide our interns with the
needed resources. Similarly, when we’re recruiting, I know the
language and can establish rapport with the highest levels of talented
people. Being an architect and a principal in the firm establishes credibility.
I got my HR training from the “HR Club.” Our consulting
accountant at the time had, in turn, brought on board an HR consultant
who was establishing herself in this marketplace. She offered a program
she initially called the HR Club. For nine months, a group of about 15
of us from different small to midsize companies—one or two individuals
from each—went over a specific topic. The first month was the Fair
Labor Standards Act, then family medical leave, and best practices in
doing performance reviews, and so on, taking that month’s topic
and going over the legal issues and best practices. I coupled that with
many of the offerings from local law firms, many of which offer training
through legal breakfasts, and I participated in the local Society for
Human Resource Management chapter. Networking and asking lots of questions
of good legal counsel is also invaluable.
I did start with a propensity for business management. After my undergraduate
degree in architecture at the University of Notre Dame, I pursued a master’s
in business administration. The MBA classes that were most interesting
to me were in organizational development because they reinforced on a
formal level what I understood on an intuitive and personal level. When
you’re working with people, there are choices. And, although it
would probably be easier to manage a firm in a hierarchical, top-down
scheme, where you’re the person at the top and everything you say
goes. We go with the much more complex proposition of truly working collaboratively.
It pays off in the long run.
How do the firm principals instill collaboration into your firm culture?
We live it from the top down. Instead of a single CEO, we have our 3EOs.
This is a fourth-generation firm, begun in 1908. And the most recent
generation of top-line leadership was established in 2001. The two namesakes
are David Kahler, FAIA, and Mack Slater, AIA. After putting the firm
on a track to continue to grow, Mack retired his shares in 1996, and
David in 2001. The three vice presidents at that time stepped forward
together: James Rasche, AIA; Jill Morin; and George Meyer, AIA. They
decided that no one of the three really needed to be CEO and, likewise,
none wanted to give up time with clients. So they came up with a triad
model of sharing their firm-management responsibilities. And they work
in open offices, along with everyone else.
Organizationally, we’re the antithesis of being departmentalized
around specific phases or tasks. We are structured around client market
types. We have, for example, a health-care team that has about 50 people
and pursues a multitude of projects within that market. And that team
comprises the full complement of interior designers, architectural designers,
project managers, interns, team leaders, and the administrative professionals
who support them. People do move around from project to project, but
they’re all working collaboratively together.
Everyone in the firm is evaluated on the basis of the goals they have
set. And the firm is committed to providing the means for achieving those
goals. For instance, we average more than $1,600 per person in continuing
education each year, with use of the funds determined on a team-by-team
basis.
Goal-setting takes place during performance reviews, which we disassociate
altogether from the compensation review. We have one formal goal-setting
exercise per year for everybody in the firm, which takes place over a
two-month period and involves goal setting as well as looking back to
what had been accomplished. Six months later, we request everyone to
get together with their reviewer again; not to document anything per
se, but simply to check on progress and identify anything that might
be getting in the way. And, of course, this is all within the context
of the encouragement of day-to-day collaborative interaction. It is the
duty of team leaders to share our thoughts on performance improvement
in the moment and not wait six months.
By working in teams, we avoid the studio mentality where each department
becomes an internal profit center because that tends to create internal
competition rather than collaboration. We operate under the philosophy
that what is good for the firm is good for all of us.
Do you have a process for team development?
Each team puts together a business plan every year. And, during that
process, we encourage individuals or small groups of individuals to come
forward with new business ideas. We call the process “entrepreneurship.” And
we aggregate those team plans into a firm budget, which includes line-item
commitments to professional development funding. If a team member sees
a professional-development opportunity, he or she brings it up with the
team leader, who gives approvals consistent with the set goals.
How
does the firm develop collective knowledge?
We feel a key to our success is that we work hard to keep everyone in
the company informed and engaged in the firm. Each team has weekly meetings.
We have monthly all-staff meetings. And we have an annual all-staff retreat
where we get away from the offices for the day. Each one of these structured
activities has a different purpose.
The team meetings are for catching each other up with what we are doing—what
we have just accomplished and what deadlines are coming up—to make
certain that individuals within the team are all on the same page and
point up any learning opportunities. For instance, if somebody working
on one project within the health-care team has come up with an interesting
solution that they want to share with the rest of the team, the weekly
meeting provides that opportunity.
At the monthly staff meetings, we do a lot of cross-team celebration
of success and sharing of stories and images of projects under development.
We have a ship’s bell in the Milwaukee office that we ring anytime
a team wants the office to know there is an achievement to celebrate.
The monthly meetings are an opportunity to go into more depth about what
the team did. (There is some lighthearted rivalry with the Madison office.
After winning a particularly large commission, they purloined the ship’s
bell and took it back to Madison to ring it there. The Milwaukee office
snatched it back again later.) At the monthly meeting we also introduce
any new people and, when somebody has come back to the firm, we have
the “sacred boomerang ceremony.”
The annual all-staff retreat is an opportunity to focus our collective
attention on a particular topic of pertinence for that year. Our 3EOs
also offer a “state of the firm” address where they have
been known to dress in costume to fit whatever the particular retreat
theme is for that year. Last year, they were dressed as historic ship
captains in full regalia.
Another information-sharing activity involves our most senior project
architects—we call them our sages. They get together on a semi-regular
basis and ruminate about how our processes are working, any areas for
improvement, and whether there are issues developing out there that everyone
should know about.
Our turnover is very low, about 4 percent. So another business might
look at us and say we spend a lot of money on recruiting and retention.
My counter is that we aren’t spending money on replacing people.
Making Kahler Slater a great place to work is a proactive investment,
which is very different from the reactive mindset of getting a warm body
in a chair to get a project done. On many different levels, we try to
create a collaborative work environment. And, organizationally, one benefit
is depth of talent.
How did you get the idea to submit Kahler Slater for the Best Places
to Work list?
The equivalent to the AIA is the Society for Human Resource Management.
They unveiled the Best Places to Work program at their 2003 national
convention. I saw that as a blurb on the Web site and said, “Well,
I know what we’re about; what we had been striving to do to become,
by our own definition a best place to work.” And, as a natural
opportunity, I nominated our firm that same day online.
A few words from KS employees
To get a sense of what Kahler Slater
staff like about the firm, AIArchitect also
talked to a principal, design associate, and intern. Here are their vignettes.
Jennifer Schlimgen, AIA, principal, health-care-facility team:
I’m now on a four-month sabbatical, basically to catch up on personal
commitments and recharge my batteries. It isn’t spelled out as
a part of the benefits package, but it is very nice to work in a firm
that sees the benefit of allowing this kind of schedule flexibility.
It’s true that part of the process at Kahler Slater is to decide
what your design passion is, and there is no doubt that my passion is
for health care, working to create facilities that support patients and
their families as well as the health-care providers.
Matt Rinka, AIA, design associate, health-care-facility
team: I’ve
worked very closely with Jennifer for the last two years, for instance
on St. Mary’s Hospital in Madison—about a $200 million expansion,
which is typical of our health-care projects. Jennifer holds a very close
relationship with the clients. The beauty is that several people, like
myself and the project architect, share the relationship with the client,
so if a key person takes a sabbatical, it doesn’t kill the relationship
with the client. It really reinforces the collaborative nature of the
firm and our process of design, which, I would say, is the most differentiating
thing about this firm.
Kyle Miller, architecture intern, higher
education team:
I think that
coming out of undergraduate school, you’re looking for something
that will really provide you with a diverse set of experiences. That
is what I’ve found in my year here. I am preparing to go to graduate
school at UCLA next month, and my experience here has been invaluable.
And it’s gratifying that friends from architecture school recognize
Kahler Slater as the firm that worked with Santiago Calatrava on the
Milwaukee Art Center.
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