From A Tiny Town to Global Growth
A ripple in the matrix occurred in 1928 in Cherokee, Oklahoma, when Curtis Harold Guernsey Sr. founded a consulting engineering firm out of his garage, with a goal of providing civil engineering support to rural Oklahoma cities and towns.
Nearly a century later, Guernsey’s firm is a diverse company of designers, engineers and consultants with reach across the continental U.S. The projects Guernsey executes will no doubt get your attention: from designing the NBA practice facilities for the Thunder and Raptors to working with electric co-ops on setting rates for the nation’s electrical infrastructure to multi-million-dollar federal contracts guiding military installations to cost-saving solutions.
Today, Guernsey is led by Jared Stigge, whose freshly-pressed untucked shirt and clear-framed glasses might have you thinking you are sitting across from a Silicon Valley tech exec. Further dialogue makes it clear he has a unique combination of quiet passion, intellect and leadership to transform the face of a company whose fortitude and commitment to following through has sustained its employee-owners and brought it to where it stands today.
Our conversation with Jared Stigge has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Tell me about your path to becoming CEO of Guernsey.
My path was nothing short of an adventure. Educated in economics and law, early on I knew I didn’t want a career in either, so I kept my options open and responded to a tiny ad in the Sunday classifieds (this was back in 1999, when that was still a thing) from a company I had never heard of that was looking for a financial analyst. I joined Guernsey, and before reaching my tenth anniversary [with the company], I had lived in Washington, Hawaii and Alaska, and had surpassed a million miles of air travel—and more than a few days below -40°.
I supposed the combination of my educational background and diverse project experience put me on track to become a senior leader within the company, but honestly, I believe the necessary final step was commitment, total commitment, to putting my personal interests secondary to the overall welfare of the company. There are other ways to lead, but to me the most authentic way is by example.
Guernsey began as a civil engineering firm working out of a garage, but now does so many different things. Why has it become so diverse?
Guernsey is diverse primarily because of our culture of entrepreneurism. We are a 100 percent employee-owned company, and we encourage our employee-owners to embrace their ownership and explore opportunities as any business owner would. Ideas are vetted, and those with merit essentially become internal incubator projects. Not all survive, but the diversity we see at Guernsey in 2022 reflects those creative sparks that caught fire and grew into sustainable business lines.
What work are you most proud of at Guernsey?
I feel the most pride in the unique culture we have built, and continue to foster, at Guernsey. One of the most challenging things, I’ve found, is the time, thought and emotional intelligence it takes to create great teams which can be turned loose with autonomy and an equal measure of trust the job will get done right.
The magical thing about building great teams is that those teams simultaneously build momentum, and once you reach a critical mass, things begin to feel just a little bit different … like the wind is at your back, or you’re walking downhill. It’s easier because everyone is oriented and pulling in the same direction.
What type of work does Guernsey do with the Department of Defense?
Guernsey’s roots with the Department of Defense (DoD) began in earnest in 1984 when we responded to the historic fire at Building 3001 at Tinker Air Force Base. Normally buildings aren’t measured in acres, but with a wall of flames growing to almost an eighth of a mile long, over fifteen acres of buildings were destroyed,and Guernsey leapt into action. We worked 24 hours a day to deliver the design services that allowed operations to resume in just two weeks.
This served as a springboard into our current diverse services for DoD, which continue to include traditional architectural/engineering disciplines, but also increasingly focus on energy security and resiliency, as well as energy optimization and cybersecurity.
What are your thoughts on the importance of culture in a company? Why is Guernsey different from other companies?
At a company like Guernsey, culture is everything. One challenge is that at a company, culture must evolve at a faster pace, different than what we all typically think of as “culture.” To be sure, there are elements of our culture—a passion for excellence, accountability, uplifting through service—that are timeless. But there are also critical elements that need to adapt in real time, and if anyone doubted that, the current pandemic has made it all too clear that culture needs elements of agility in addition to stability.
I believe one thing unique at Guernsey is that the burden of cultivating our culture doesn’t rest only on my shoulders, or the shoulders of other senior leadership, but our entire staff that owns the company and are empowered to advocate for change within whatever sphere of influence they have. Our culture is resilient because we seek out and embrace feedback, even if sometimes we can’t act on it in the moment.
What should we expect to see from Guernsey in the future?
More of the same, but even more of the unexpected. In the past, we’ve said that Guernsey is one of Oklahoma City’s best kept secrets, but we have intentionally pivoted in the opposite direction: We are focusing on humbly but proactively sharing with the world all the good happening right here in OKC, as a 90+ year-old company that started from a garage in Cherokee, Oklahoma, and now works around the globe.
We have created an ideal professional experience, right here in our own backyard, where you can be an entrepreneur, an owner and a valuable contributor to the community, all while staying true to who you are. I’m a fan of firms like ours because I believe everyone should be empowered with whatever autonomy they’ve earned to go forth and simply be their authentic selves.
Tell me about the places you’ve traveled with Guernsey.
Well now, there’s places I’ve lived, and places I’ve traveled. I was single much of my career, so when given the opportunity I volunteered to move to Poulsbo, Washington (on the west side of Puget Sound). I spent more than three years in Hawaii, and over five years in Alaska. For a while, I was living in Hawaii but working in Alaska, which made for fun mid-flight wardrobe changes.
As far as places I’ve traveled for work but not lived: much of the U.S. mainland (with a heavy emphasis on Washington, D.C.), Canada, Pakistan, Zambia and South Africa are the most notable. I still work on several projects (including Alaska, which I began in 2002) and count travel as one of the great perks of my career. Traveling is as educational as any textbook and immensely more fun.
What is your favorite life hack—a tip or trick that helps make life easier for you?
This may be a basic answer, but it’s my Apple Watch. I kick reminders, appointments, timers, everything I can to my watch; I use it to board flights, access my hotel room, make purchases … and try to stay on top of my health and fitness.
I try to move as many things as possible out of my mind and into automated systems to streamline and simplify, and my watch is probably my most-used resource for that. It also reminds me to get up and walk around the office when I’ve been staring at my computer screen for too long.
With the experience you have now, what advice would you give to your younger self?
This may sound like a non-answer, but I don’t have any advice for my younger self. That person was successful, and made quite a few mistakes, but every success and every failure—and every middling uneven mess, for that matter—has led me to where I am today, and I love where I am.
I’m married to the love of my life and my best friend, and I work with some of the best people I know, and so I guess my advice to my younger self would be to do everything over again exactly the same … because it led somewhere better than I’d ever imagined.
What is one of your favorite ‘luxieres’ in life?
Travel, travel and more travel. In the modern world, experiences, and the time it requires to engage in them deeply, is one of the few remaining luxieries in my book. Travel is a relaxation, an education, time to bond with family and friends and time to recharge. Oklahoma is my forever home, but the world is always out there, beckoning. The pandemic has forced us to adapt how and where we travel but has done nothing to blunt our appetite for exploration—and If I can find the added luxiere of a perfectly crafted Americano along the way, you won’t find me too disappointed, either.
Kati Hanna is a partner with The Mettise Group, a consulting firm focused on growth-stage companies and leaders. The Mettise Group completes a holistic evaluation of organizations and leaders to quickly and efficiently deliver an operating system that focuses on opportunities, best practices and solutions.