Culture Matters: Building the Wise Firm

Whatever happens to you is for the good of the world. That would be enough right there. But if you look closely, you’ll generally notice something else too: whatever happens to a single person is for the good of others. (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 6.45)

Three months into my career at HORNE, it is the culture that stands out. Different from previous experiences, I believe HORNE’s culture is the direct result of an intentional pursuit by our leadership to engage and empower each team member for the benefit of the firm.

Every day at HORNE is an opportunity to advance the firm along its journey to build the Wise Firm. We have 13 building blocks that define the Wise Firm and arguably nine of them are not technical or task focused. Those building blocks We & Service (the foundation of the Wise Firm), Collaboration, External Focus, Sense of Belonging, Relationships, Hard Decisions, Honor Values, Empowered People, and Positive Energy — speak to our team members and the leadership they deserve.

When I think of service, my earliest memories go back to childhood. As a child, my parents encouraged me and my brother to sort through our toys to identify things we no longer played with so we could donate to other children in the community. Now as an adult, I’m often reminded of service through Gary Chapman’s The Five Love Languages. My husband’s love language happens to be “Acts of Service.” I’m reminded weekly about acts of service as I perform the undesirable job of cleaning the bathrooms or making the dreaded trip to the grocery store.

I’ll never forget the team-wide meeting in 2011 when Executive Partner Joey Havens committed to all of us that he would make culture our number one priority. We’ve made great progress and great mistakes, too, learning many things along the way. And while new strategies have emerged and new team members joined our journey, our vision has not changed. We are definitely still on our journey, and while we are making lots of forward progress, it’s important to take time to gauge the progress anytime you’re working on something of such importance.

There are so many ‘first times’ in life that we will never forget. I certainly have experienced my fair share at HORNE and they have positively guided me to beBetter. I can remember my first complicated project and how it made me doubt myself; the first time I received good feedback from the team for hard work and good performance; the first challenge that I had to face as a foreigner and English being my second language; and the first time I was exposed to the client.

I love that the term we call our culture, the Wise Firm, is based on the Biblical parable and a song I grew up singing in Sunday school. “The wise man built his house upon the rock, the wise man built his house upon the rock…and the rains came tumbling down.” This little song got me thinking about how we build our team members? Do we really build them up with a rock like foundation? Do we encourage them to reach their full potential?

Every day, I have the same question lingering in the back of my brain. How am I adding value and making a difference at HORNE—both internally and externally? This is a question I wrestle with regardless of self-evaluations and alignment conversations. Those just prompt us to quickly put pen to paper and formalize the question. But that constant lingering is why I’ve challenged myself to write this very blog. And, when I did, came to some very basic conclusions that I want to share with you.

Living out our commitment to our communities is a critical part of reaching our firm’s 2020 Vision: “We deliver unrivaled focused expertise. We collaborate to proactively guide and serve our people, clients and communities to realize their full potential.” Even our Wise Firm culture is founded on We and Service. It’s safe to say that we are a firm that believes in giving back and serving others and that it’s not just talk. One of my favorite ways we do this is through our Summer of Service program.

When I graduated college, I was pretty excited to start my career as a full time team member at HORNE. I had previously interned with HORNE so I was able to gain a little insight into what life is like here but I was also nervous as I knew my responsibilities would increase. Not only would my responsibilities in my job increase but little did I know, my responsibility to our culture would also increase.