Celebrating 15 years of good FORTUNE
It’s been an exciting week at Plante Moran! Not only was the firm named to FORTUNE’s “100 Best Companies to Work For” list for the 15th consecutive year, but the magazine also included an article profiling Plante Moran as part of its “100 Best” coverage. I’ve never really thought of our firm as “quirky” before, but when you look at the ideas called out in the article, I suppose we are a bit quirky. Turns out, that’s a good thing.
Fifteen years—it really boggles the mind. So much has changed in that time. Back in 1998, Bill Matthews was managing partner, with Bill Hermann coming on board a couple of years later. Although we had most of our Michigan offices, we did not have offices in Columbus, Cincinnati, Chicagoland, Shanghai, Monterrey, or Mumbai. Since that time, we’ve introduced a number of important initiatives that have helped propel our firm culture forward, from Plante Moran Cares (which better focuses our community service efforts) to our Diversity Council to fun things like PMTV (an internal You Tube-esque communication vehicle where staff can share videos) to introducing the day after Thanksgiving as an annual firm holiday.
In their seminal book, Built to Last, Jim Collins and Jerry Porras postulate that successful organizations “preserve the core” yet “stimulate progress.” Despite all the progress we’ve made, our core remains unchanged. We’re still a relatively jerk-free firm that cares about our clients, staff, and communities. We’re fortunate that our co-founder, Frank Moran, focused as much on creating a great workplace culture as he did on creating a compelling client service experience, and we continue to follow his example, just as I trust that, many years from now, future staff will follow ours.
What about you? What do you like most about your company? Is there anything about it that might be considered “quirky”?
