We took a moment to catch-up with Matt Gilbertson, President and Principal Architect of MGA Architecture (@MGAarchitecture) to talk about his business philosophy, managing employees and maintaining a creative office culture.
How has the Pacific Edge Magazine Business Achievement Award impacted your business?
Without question, our “Best New Business” award has generated great recognition. I like to share this in interviews and client introduction meetings. It has helped validate – from an outside third-party – our own claims of success during the recent years. We sent out a mailer card to all of our clients highlighting our recent MGA achievements with the Pacific Edge Magazine Award as the centerpiece.
Since receiving this award, what are some new initiatives your business is currently undertaking?
Since winning the 2012 Pacific Edge Magazine “Best New Business” Award, we have continued to pursue the same wide diversity of work that is our business plan. Our client base has continued to grow exponentially. We have enjoyed some new “firsts” with respects to projects for new major clients. This has led to a sharp increase in just the past 9 months in the size of our staff (over 100% increase) and the first major renovation and expansion of our office space (150% increase).
What do you attribute your success to?
Naturally, our success starts with our clients’ success. So, meeting and exceeding our clients’ expectations is the key metric. This produces the demand and desire for our ongoing involvement. We work very hard and stay focused on what defines our clients’ success. We then apply our project management, technical skills and signature creativity to the table in the right doses at the right time. We are especially proud of our record of ongoing and repeat-client business and the abundance of unsolicited new clients. It tells us we are doing the right things in this regard. But we can never become complacent and think we have it nailed because every client and every project is unique. We have to stay alert and listen, listen, listen.
On the “inside,” aside from astute money management and operations, we pay special attention to the “soft” side. We are committed to our employees’ success because we know that it takes happy, motivated, skilled people to make great architecture. My most important role on the “inside” is to assure that everyone is happy, challenged, supported, and truly in the “right seat on the MGA bus.” We work hard to hire correctly to fit our office culture. Then, we work equally hard to get to know each person’s passions, motivations, strengths, and weaknesses so that we can personalize each career path to make success at the personal level match success at the company level. In this creative business, that’s how we ultimately achieve the results that make our work stand out from the competition.
What is one piece of advice you would give young professionals?
Don’t ever accept being “disconnected.” Pick the company you work for very carefully and do your homework to make sure it is a good fit. If it isn’t, move on. Naturally, this is not easy. It takes practice and self-reflection to first know yourself and your passions, and then to honestly and sincerely share that with the firm and be willing to walk away if you don’t fit or connect. But in the end, your trajectory in the industry will depend on how well you understand yourself, how well this matches your firm’s view of you, and its willingness to support your career goals. And “personality” plays an important role, too. If you don’t understand or enjoy working with the company’s ownership group and the firm’s philosophy (or worse, can’t feel it!) – then, you are by definition – disconnected, and are not in sync with the place. Inevitably, your career growth will suffer.
What is your favorite part of your job? What drives you “to do what you do”?
Projects! I’ve often said: “I’ve never met a project I didn’t like.” I truly believe this. Every project can be special. Every project deserves respect. And by respecting the project, by default you respect the client, their resources, their user groups, the staff and all those working on it and the greater community that it becomes a part of. They all benefit. Respect the project.
In the Architect/Owner role, I really like mentoring the emerging staff members through exciting opportunities to grow as professionals and ultimately to shine through their hard work and dedication to their craft.
To learn more about the Pacific Edge Magazine Best New Business Award and the Business Achievement Awards Gala, please visit www.pacificedgeawards.com.
To learn more about MGA Architecture, please visit: http://www.mgahawaii.com/
