Obviously, something that has so much promise will not be easy to accomplish. It means management at the top must live and communicate those attributes, find ways to talk about them over and over again in conversations with employees, and find ways to recognize those employees whose actions serve as examples.

It is up to top management to make it happen. The most adamant “values cheerleading” must be found at the top. Our firm, R.A. Smith & Associates, Inc., has built its success for over a quarter of a century making the following differentiating attributes standard operating procedure:
• Be responsive to clients
• Emphasize the importance of people
• Be visionary
• Apply critical thinking

Be Responsive to Clients
Clients should never doubt that they are your most important concern. In our firm, we have never had, and I expect we never will have, an automated phone system that tells a client how many different buttons they need to push to reach the person they need to talk to. A system like this is commonplace today and may seem to some like an incidental and necessary detour away from client responsiveness. But for too many, this is how clients start their communications with their firm. A voice on the phone can be of the utmost importance to a client relationship.

I am not saying this is the end-all, be-all of client responsiveness, but it is a sign reflecting a firm’s values. In our firm, we have an upbeat, intelligent, warm and courteous telephone receptionist who, along with her various responsibilities, let’s you know you are important from the first moment you connect with our office. It’s a simple lesson: every contact you have with a client reflects your responsiveness and concern about your clients. It is important to look at every aspect of your operation continually to see if your values are working. Take on the role of your client sometime and call yourself. See for yourself how welcome, friendly and responsive it feels.

Responsiveness relates directly to how quickly your firm can react to a client’s needs, including how quickly you are able to take on a project, respond to their needs and complete the work without sacrificing quality. If you are focusing on the value of client responsiveness and looking to find money-saving and timesaving opportunities for your clients, then as a natural outgrowth of that effort you will discover new, responsive opportunities for almost every project. Again, that will serve to differentiate your firm in your client’s mind, and, in turn you will build a reputation as a firm that really cares about its clients.

Client responsiveness can also be enhanced by the expertise you bring to each project. Every client meeting and communication is an opportunity to demonstrate expertise. Being able to demonstrate that you factually know more and can do more than others from the initial project meeting with the client until the last meeting is very important. For example, our firm was retained to undertake a peer review of another firm’s work and to create an alternative grading plan to bring the client’s development site into balance. We moved quickly in response to the client’s request and identified the opportunity to move 800,000 yards of dirt on-site to create the necessary land balance, rather than move it off-site as had been recommended by another firm. This alternative plan saved the client about $7 million. No doubt the savings really caught the client’s attention, but equally important was the speed with which we responded.

Your firm also can communicate its client responsiveness through its turnaround time on project changes. Our National Survey & Engineering Division, for example, had a site work-engineering project for a regional shopping mall being constructed on approximately 177 acres. The preliminary design phase included 18 iterations of grading plans all associated with different site plans as the needs of the client and anchor tenants changed. There were about 140 civil site changes required on this mall throughout various stages of the project. Our firm focused on making those changes faster than expected without losing any of the required precision. We saw the changing client’s needs as a real opportunity to demonstrate our responsiveness. This created an important pay off for us in terms of client relationships.

Another opportunity to demonstrate responsiveness and win a client’s appreciation, as well as respect for your firm’s expertise is in the due diligence process. By identifying problems and seeing opportunities well before a project begins, the firm’s work may be able to save the client money, time, and serious headaches down the road. Due diligence is an excellent time to shine and demonstrate creativity and knowledge as well as responsiveness. And, when you find an opportunity that the client did not see, but knows is important, you demonstrate a client commitment that will strongly enhance your reputation.

Taking whatever steps you can to exceed your client’s expectations is another excellent way to demonstrate the value of client responsiveness. An engineering firm, for example, can excel and bring added value benefits to the client by providing plans with greater detail than peer firms. Don’t be satisfied with meeting the local and competitive standards. Go beyond those. Set new standards. Let your firm be the standard bearer. Details enable the client to be more certain of project success. A land plan, for example, may be drawn to 2/10 ft. contours for greater certainty. Competitive firms may provide contours drawn only to 2 ft. The greater attention to detail lessens the chance for future problems and heightens your client’s belief in your firm.

Emphasize the Importance of People
As important as it is to convince clients that you are their best source for engineering services of all types, it is equally important to convince employees and prospective employees that you are the “employer of choice” in your market area. It is worth noting also that when your employees are convinced that the firm consistently has their best interests at heart - not just now and then – in turn, employees will consistently be more responsive to clients.

Recruiting and/or replacing professional staff not only is expensive, it also creates internal continuity problems and often will impact client responsiveness. Personnel changes can add time, and therefore costs, to a project due to lessened productivity. Putting into practice the many actions needed to demonstrate consistently that employees at every level are important to the firm will serve to stimulate employee performance and build career longevity.

Managers up and down the organization need to understand that part of their job is to instill in their employees this feeling of being important. To assure that employees feel important, I suggest that management focus on the following five components.

1. Open communications is essential.
It is easy to talk about open communications but much more difficult to put it into practice. There must be a commitment that ensures open communications and responsiveness to employee-initiated one-on-one communications. Employees need to feel secure that supervisors and upper management are open to listen to whatever need the employee may want to communicate. Furthermore, it is important that each employee knows that his or her communications will be received as an earnest effort on their part to further their career and the welfare of the firm and not be viewed as complaining or dissatisfaction. Good listening is a key attribute.

2. Show responsiveness to employee needs.
Employees should feel that whatever question, concern, or need they want to communicate, will be received with objective attention and consideration. This does not mean that every question, concern, or need can be answered or met totally to the satisfaction of the employee. But, at the very least, employees can be certain their point of view will neither be discounted nor will it cast an unfavorable light on the employee.

3. Be proactive in broadening employee’s experience and responsibility.
Productive employees need the chance to grow. Sometimes that need for growth may be a need for work diversity or increased responsibility that occurs at a time when it cannot be fully addressed. It is important then to look for negotiating opportunities where an opportunity can be identified that is somewhere between what the employee may be seeking and what the firm is able to provide at that time.

4. Don’t take employees for granted.
It is important to each employee to feel valued as an individual. A small amount of acknowledgement goes a long way. Nobody wants to be taken for granted. Employees want to feel they are part of the team regardless of their level of responsibility. Recognition helps employees feel important and integral to the process of success. It also signals to other employees what type of performance management values most.

5. Managers should serve as mentors.
Top management needs to instill in firm managers a responsibility for mentoring. Senior managers need to counsel with employees as leaders and mentors and share their experience. Senior managers should make a habit of talking with their employees on a regular basis. Talk with employees; inquire about their work; ask them about challenges and solutions, their job satisfaction, and their training and development.

Managers need to know and understand that their compensation will be impacted by their ability and success in working with new firm members and the responsibility they must take in bringing them along. I believe that managers should be evaluated and promoted on the basis of how well they communicate with new firm employees and how well and consistently they mentor others.

Be Visionary
If your firm will identify ways to produce, recognize and award those employees who demonstrate their ability to be visionary, the result will be more employees working harder to be visionary. There is nothing as valuable as recognized role models to get the point across and to demonstrate to others just “how it is done.”

The interesting point about being visionary as a stated firm value is that a trait like vision is not a 40 hours a week trait. Visionaries are thinking about clients, solutions and challenges all the time, seven days a week. It’s not that they ignore family or other obligations but when they are driving to and from work, standing in line at the bank or other activities such as these, they use those normally unproductive moments to think about client matters, look for ways to be visionary and help clients in ways that are well beyond the expected.

Stress innovation as an approach to being visionary. Stress creativity. Motivate each and every person to be a visionary, to see opportunities, and new ways to do things better. Again, do this at every level of responsibility.

One way to demonstrate your firm’s ability to be visionary is to exploit the potential of every applicable technology breakthrough. Exploit these technology opportunities before they become commonplace. Technology can serve as a way to maximize employee performance and give employees additional opportunities to further their career development. Your firm’s actions will demonstrate to employees the firm’s “future focus” and leading edge philosophy.

Stress Critical Thinking
Critical thinking, as a firm asset, can permeate an entire organization if identified specifically as a competitive strategy. Selecting employees who demonstrate this ability and giving credit to those who use this asset, broadcasts to every member of the firm at every level of responsibility that all client considerations and deliberations must be given careful and critical thought in terms of how to best serve the client (which, of course, also means best serving the firm).

Applauding an employee’s use of critical thinking indicates to all  nothing should be taken for granted. “No stone will be left unturned.” Everything will be thought through to identify the best solutions. For the benefit of the client, the firm will identify new creative solutions in every step of the engineering process and service, new ways to save clients time and money, and approaches to identify problems before they occur, so they do not occur, etc.

Critical thinking requires good client listening, total knowledge, unbiased thinking, effective questioning and creative problem solving. It can be accomplished on an individual basis or on a collaborative and cooperative basis. To a large degree, engineering people are born critical thinkers. But, if the firm recognizes those who most successfully put the skill into positive action, then you can raise the standard of critical thinking in your firm to a point of exceptional performance for the client.

One very beneficial result to the firm that will come from critical thinking is the invitation by clients for firm personnel to become part of their client’s strategic planning team. Clients have a much greater respect for firms that take advantage of opportunities to become an integral part of the client’s strategic planning team.

A firm’s insights that are on target, and result from a vision of future challenges and opportunities, will be welcomed by the client and seen as a demonstration of the firm’s client commitment.

Critical thinking also can be demonstrated to clients when the firm helps to resolve issues related to current or anticipated regulatory and/or legislative matters impacting a client’s development plans, environmental requirements, etc. Regulations and legislation can slow the development process and make development considerably more expensive. The client needs to be advised well ahead of potential restrictions, costs, and other impacts that may result from pending or new legislation or regulatory requirements.

Build Uncommon Quality on a Foundation of Common Values
Most firms want employees to be creative and bring new, different, and innovative perspectives so that new solutions to old challenges can be found. These employees need to be treated as individuals, to further their careers and their personal achievements and to continuously champion the support needed for each to reach their full potential.

Top management must be resolute that each employee have a thorough knowledge of the firm’s attributes and that each exhibit a willingness to communicate them to their associates and clients through their actions as well as their attitude. This must be instilled in all employees throughout the organization at every level of responsibility. There should be a common determination to apply the firm’s attributes in every situation. In this way, engineering firms can differentiate themselves in the market and produce uncommon results.

Decide now that your firm will identify its most important values— values that will serve clients and serve the firm. Values that top management can embrace and serve as constant cheerleaders. Identify these values and firm attributes and then identity how the firm can best instill these values and attributes into each employee so they become a natural part of their everyday working behavior at every level of responsibility. Making that happen consistently and recognizing those employees that make it happen best will prove to be one of your firm’s most important decisions.  SLDT