Business and technology consulting firm Logic 20/20 joined WTIA last year and have become very active members since. I chatted with Kim Talley, Director of Business Practice, and manager Richard Sturm about their company’s support of FullConTech.

1) Why did Logic 20/20 want to invest in FullConTech?

There are many different ways that Logic20/20, as a company, can give back to the community. When we learned about the purpose of FullConTech and the theme of growth in the technology industry, we wanted to fully participate in the event. At Logic20/20, we are going through a lot of internal growth. We’ve gone from six people to 130 people in ten years. The theme of the conference is in line with our company goals and what we care about right now.

2) FullConTech 2016’s theme is talent. Why do your leaders and/or your company care about developing tech talent?

The success of our business is founded on our people. We want to attract people who are great at what they do and are also learners by nature with a strong sense of curiosity. We’re very focused on targeted experiences and relevant learning, which means we are engaging folks in what they’re interested in. We’ve found that this motivates our employees more and builds on their strengths; it helps them get to where they want to go next. As our people grow and develop in their skills, our company grows.

3) What are you doing to grow talent in your organization? To attract it? To retain it?

We are focused on growth, not just at the company level, but at the individual level. We are extremely proud of our career management program. Our individual career managers are partnered with employees; their role is to help them create a career plan and guide them along their chosen path. By going through this process, employees understand how to build their career out holistically, instead of moving through their careers without clear goals in mind. Our career managers are employees themselves, and participate in the process with their own internal mentors. We encourage and foster career growth to support both individual interest and our overall business plan. We see career development as including the offering of knowledge via training, matching our employees with the right opportunities to leverage new skills, intentionally giving employees to the opportunity to succeed (which maintains their motivations), and lastly, fostering an increase in self-awareness by helping individuals identify and then bridge the gap between what they know and what they don’t yet know and need to learn.

Logic20/20 has a great success story that really embodies our philosophies on career management and individual growth. Four years ago, we hired a young woman with a background in the hospitality industry. She had no consulting experience but she really impressed our team during the interview process with her enthusiasm and curiosity. She’s been fully engaged in Logic’s career management program from the start, utilizing training opportunities and subsequent consulting roles to learn and grow as an individual consultant and now as a team leader. She has grown exponentially and is currently a manager for one of our larger clients, an internal team manager, and a career manager for others in the Logic20/20 organization.

Logic20/20 is a values-driven organization and we rely on those values to attract new talent. Our values include 1) acting with integrity, 2) driving towards excellence, and 3) fostering a culture of “we.” Many individuals in our organization’s leadership came from “Big 4” consulting, and the culture of “we” was really missing in our experiences in those organizations. We want to attract those who want to be consultants and who share our collaborative spirit.

We’ve focused a lot on retaining talent and as we’ve grown, we’ve been able to build out more programs to help engage and support our people. We have affinity groups, organized sports, company-sponsored groups, and volunteer days organized by a committee dedicated to identifying opportunities to give back to our community. We were just voted one of the best companies to work for in Washington State by Puget Sound Business Journal. We’re still at the size where most people know each other. The c-level and senior leadership make a point of meeting every single team member. We’re proud that a large group of our team has been a part of Logic20/20 for a long time. It’s not easy retaining talent in this market. We know that, we work hard at it, and we’ve set an intention to not take our people for granted.