Living Our Culture Sustains the Team That Delivers With Care

In my last blog, we discussed HORNE's unprecedented growth. We know outstanding client experience got us to the dance. Make no mistake, it’s not our approach or our IT and knowledge management systems. It’s that we’ve found, developed and retained more than our fair share of excellent people. And modeling our culture will keep us there and ensure we get invited to the next one.

To remain world-class and out-deliver the competition, you must find and develop future leaders. You’ll find them by how they display the three measures of potential: judgment, responsiveness and speed of learning.

Judgment. Does the team member learn from his experience and, even better, from the experience of others?  

Responsiveness. Does the team member demonstrate an interior locus of control — doesn’t cave at the first obstacle and gets it done well and on time?  

Speed of learning. How quickly does the team member grasp new concepts and training and apply them?   

So now you’ve found your future stars. How do you keep them?

Simply stated — appreciation and advocacy.  

Writing the team member a stellar alignment review and nominating for a performance bonus. And don’t discount informal appreciation, too. A Zoom chat or a handwritten note to a high-performing team member isn’t hard, and you’ll be surprised to find that many of them haven’t gotten a lot of that kind of recognition before. 

Don’t forget to bring in the team member’s immediate supervisor. Recognition from you is even more powerful when they know that their leader has heard you give it.   

Advocate for your stars, and do so in ways that tangibly show them that your firm is different. One way I’ve found is to link the team member with a leader outside of their project/engagement. It exposes them to a different side of the firm and to leaders who have successfully balanced God, Family, Care, Service through varied professional experiences.  

Growing wisely with service and care.

I doubt any of this sounds earth-shattering, and it shouldn’t. Fact is, I’m just arguing that we should do what our culture says we do. What I hope I’ve done is get you to reflect for a moment if you are doing it as well as you can. I know I don’t always, but I also know that it’s too important that I do my part in keeping HORNE the first place our clients consider and the last place our folks want to leave.