Perfecting the Basics

List of winners in the Midsize Companies category

After the dot-com crash, the Enron outrage and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, a good CPA was hard to come by. Those who were in the industry had either left for IT opportunities or made a bid for investment banking.

Clark Nuber, with a half-a-century of experience, had to find new ways to make itself attractive to graduates from the nations top business schools. In responding to that challenge over the last nine years, something more fundamental happened. The accounting firm, a respectable but unremarkable midsize Bellevue business, gradually came to be regarded by its peers as one of the most innovative companies in the industry.

Instead of talking about high growth and off-the-chart profit margins, recruiters told university professors that Clark Nuber was about slow, stable growth. They told students they wanted employees who were capable and responsible, and that the company would welcome them into a culture that focuses on helping others and encouraging ideas.

The approach worked. Bright, new prospects were hired (another 10 will be added in 2009) and introduced to their own personal mentors. What does that mean? Each new hire is assigned an upper-level employee who works with the new person for a year. These teams may talk about anything from clients to questions about process and career goals.

The new employee also gets an interim buddy, someone who can help with technical and training issues. And then, finally, for their first job, new employees are partnered with yet another senior staffer.

The learning curve here is much faster, says CEO David Katri, who has led the firm since 2000. By cultivating good will among employees, the firm strengthens communication, improves efficiency and breeds innovation, he says.

Clark Nuber helps employees manage their careers by encouraging ideas such as the in-house development of an application which provides clients with a central repository of data that more than 400 clients access regularly.

The company also encourages workers to develop new humanitarian programs. If a proposal is new and sustainable and will help the community in some important way, Clark Nuber will put up the starter cash to make the idea fly. One employee recently launched a poker tournament, partnering with a banker buddy of his. They donated all proceeds to St. Andrews Housing Group in Issaquah.

There is a back-to-basics quality to Clark Nubers innovation. Its why the firm keeps all 160 employees under one roof, so that everyone is instantly accessible. Spreading out in offices across the country would serve only rapid growth, not improve client care or inter-office communication. Its a simple idea, as is the companys hands-on management, something validated by the author of a popular new book. Katri and human resources director Tracy White had come across Bruce Tulgars Its Okay to be the Boss, in which Tulgar says employees desperately need more hands-on guidanceand when they get it, good things happen.

Ive seen people change their ways, even at the partner level, Katri says of staff subscribing to the philosophy. If there is perceived value, people will adopt it.

There are perks and then there are perks. And McKinstrys got em.

Rooftop driving range, onsite gym, personal trainer, pet insurance? The south Seattle mechanical engineering company has them all and more, so its no wonder that its employees gave such an overwhelmingly strong thumbs-up to their work environment and corporate culture.

CEO Dean Allen is running a progressive firm, to say the least, helping owners of large commercial buildings, which are notorious for inefficient energy use, get greener. That means helping businesses hang on to their dollars while simultaneously getting kudos for being environmentally responsible.

But there are also great rewards for those who help McKinstry achieve its goals.

Were organized around the philosophy that the company is here to serve the people who work here and not the other way around, Allen says. That is at the core of why.

If youre going to serve the employees, you might as well give them some golf clubs and tees for good measure. Allen had the driving range built because, he says, many of McKinstrys staff members love playing golf. Instead of having to go off to some remote course to shoot the breeze or blow off a little steam, they could just go up to the companys rooftop to whack a few balls.

But basketball is Allens game, and the company already had an in-house gym and court. The golfers had been jealous that there was a basketball court and no golf course. So, he says, he built the next best thing.

Third place: thePlatform

Have Brain, Will Travel
At thePlatform, close attention to hiring the right person pays off in a productive workplace.

They hire only smart people. Thats what its all about at thePlatform, a subsidiary of cable and broadband company Comcast. Smarts arent necessarily measured by pedigree, though holding nine patents in digital media and possessing a bachelors degree in symbolic systems and a masters in computer science from Stanford University, as is the case with thePlatform co-founder Alan Ramaley, doesnt hurt.

But really, there are no tricks at thePlatform, neither marketing ploys nor a particularly amazing benefits package that attracts and keeps employees. Its all about brainpower begetting brainpower.

The culture we brought here is a belief of pushing decision-making as far down as you can and hiring the best, says CEO Ian Blaine. This leads to hiring the right person for every position in the company, he adds.

Those people, who probably know their particular job better than anyone else in the company, then hire the person needed to make the business even stronger; the firm also tends to promote from within, Blaine adds. ThePlatform, which makes the software necessary to provide high-quality broadband content to Comcasts customers, has 140 employees, and only once did the company bring in a vice president from outside.

That [dedication to the business] means people have come in as individual contributors, have proven themselves and risen up in the company, Blaine says. That has built a strong foundation and very low turnover.

ThePlatform is currently working on tools for the next generation of television. So putting smart people in a room with smart people spawns great ideas.

An Ingraham High School and University of Washington graduate, Blaine says about the fast-changing technology, its either going to be a continued evolution or a revolution. To help sort that picture out, he needs those 139 brainiacs around him.

I mean if youve got the skills, education helps, he says. But its not the driving requirement.