March 2007: The 100 best companies to work for in Oregon
NO. 6 LARGE COMPANY: EVANTA
A pumped Bob Dethlefs, president of Evanta, leads the
cheering in his Friday morning “praise
progress meetings.
Photo by Leah Nash
|
"You’re going to get everything"
There’s a framed paper napkin hanging on a wall in
Evanta’s headquarters on the 10th floor of
Portland’s KOIN Tower.
It comes from a Thai food lunch 3½ years ago, where
company founders Bob Dethlefs and Don Sader decided to create
the business. The napkin — the type of rectangular white
napkin found at any unassuming restaurant — was their
notepad for a list of must-haves for employees: profit sharing,
flexible hours and telecommuting. The list went on and on until
square handwriting covered almost the entire wrinkled surface
of the napkin.
As he shows off the framed memento, 42-year-old Dethlefs, the
company’s president, could almost be described as giddy
talking about how the business has been able to provide
everything on the list, plus all-expenses-paid trips, company
cruises and big bonuses. “You’re going to get
everything you want if you work here,” he says.
Evanta creates and runs invitation-only leadership conferences
for chief information officers (CIOs) from the world’s
largest companies. Dethlefs describes those executives as
wallflowers who’ve been thrust into the limelight by
advances in technology. Additionally, federal legislation that
followed the infamous accounting scandals six years ago has
drawn CIOs into the legal web of who is legally accountable for
a company’s financial data, a responsibility that has led
to more executives looking to share and learn from each
other.
Evanta started with two conferences in 2003. In 2007, there
will be 22 across the United States, plus one each in England
and Australia. Each is chaired by a handful of CIOs from $1
billion-plus companies, such as Chevron, Pfizer and Coca-Cola,
who dictate the content and speakers. Only CIOs from $250
million companies and above, or those who directly report to
CIOs at a $1 billion companies, are invited to attend.
Nancy Hess calls them the rock stars of the executive world.
She’s a program director who oversees, among other
summits, Evanta’s Houston event, and she doesn’t
hold back when she talks about her job: “I have a fair
amount of business experience, but I’ve never worked in
an environment like this. Never.”
It’s an open, sometimes intense environment. Hess
describes it as a “secret sauce” that combines
leadership and like-minded people who feed off each other both
when times are challenging and rewarding. Everyone’s
cubicles — yes, even Dethlefs has a cubicle — are
clustered near each other.
Laurie Perdue, vice president of content development, says
knowing that everyone can hear her phone conversations pushes
her to deliver. “You have to have as much energy as they
do,” she says. “That drives a lot of
people.”
When it comes to that drive, she says she’d rather lose
the perks of the job — even the eight-day cruise to
Central America that all employees and their spouses just took
— rather than lose the companywide expectation that
people be personally committed to their job.
In Dethlefs’ sparsely decorated cubicle there is a
photocopied motivational chart entitled “Guide to
Success!” After pulling it off the wall, he points to one
side where it says “employee satisfaction” in big
black letters.
Last year, Evanta did $10 million in sales, and DMG World
Media bought the company for an undisclosed amount. While
he’s obviously proud of those facts, Dethlefs insists
that the satisfaction of the people who work with him will
always be a key indicator of success for him.
Hess is an example of the satisfaction Dethlefs is hoping for.
With her long background in sales and sales training, she
marvels at how she’s able to work at a place where so
many people, from the person answering the phone to the program
directors, have such an impact on what the company
produces.
“That is a result of leaders who create an environment
where everyone is valued equally,” she says. “I
can’t imagine doing it without that leadership
foundation.”
— Abraham Hyatt
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