Our values are the foundation of how we work, collaborate, and grow. For more than 40 years, they’ve guided our decisions and shaped our culture. This page is an introduction to these values, including examples of how they are woven throughout every aspect of our organization. We hope it sparks curiosity about what it’s like to be part of our team!
When we work with a genuine desire to understand and meet the needs around us, we achieve our goals of building trust, creating stronger communities, and leaving the profession better than we found it. We refer to this mindset as outward focus.
Internally, outward focus means working in a way that elevates one another, our clients, and the industry. We collaborate, not compete, across offices and draw on our wide range of educational and professional backgrounds to examine transportation challenges from all angles. Team members actively invest in one another to share best practices, provide feedback to encourage growth, and lend support where it’s needed.
With our clients, outward focus means looking beyond our own experiences and assumptions and seeking to understand the needs and perspectives of the communities we serve. It means asking what voices need to be added to the conversation to give us a complete picture of the challenges we’re seeking to address.
Outward focus is the value that drives four other defining characteristics of the Kittelson environment: trust based, one firm, follow our people, and servant leadership.
Trust Based
Our environment gives all team members the freedom to think and act like an owner, and we operate from a baseline of trust and respect in one another. This allows us to foster an inclusive environment that encourages new ideas and perspectives. Here, project teams have autonomy to decide how to meet their client’s needs, and individuals take initiative to drive growth in a self-directed environment. Because each person and situation is unique, we solve problems not with a rigid set of policies but through discussion driven by curiosity and empathy. We also take a transparent approach to sharing information within the firm, including giving all team members direct access to real-time data about our financial health.
Individuals take initiative to drive growth in a self-directed environment.
One Firm
Working collaboratively as “one office, many locations,” we celebrate successes and weather challenges as one firm, organized around a single firm-wide profit center. Team members connect both in-person and virtually to advance projects, gather around common interests, support one another personally and professionally, and strengthen the culture that binds us all together. We also approach hiring through a firm-wide lens so that we can focus on strong candidates who feel aligned with the vision of our firm, not just hiring to fill the needs of any one project or office.
We celebrate successes and weather challenges as one firm, organized around a single firm-wide profit center.
Follow Our People
Project teams are the heartbeat of our firm, and they make the majority of decisions at Kittelson each day. Rather than operating from specific revenue or business goals determined by corporate leadership, we follow the interests, passions, and pursuits of project teams to enter new geographic locations and areas of expertise. Organizational decisions seek to maximize flexibility; for example, instead of set holidays, staff receive flexible paid time off so they can choose the holidays that are most important to them.
We follow the interests, passions, and pursuits of project teams to enter new geographic locations and areas of expertise.
Servant Leadership
We strive to lead by example and by looking out for the needs of our team, investing in and celebrating the growth of the people around us. Simply put, we value input over hierarchy. Transparency in sharing organizational decisions contributes to a culture of openness and two-way communication that encourages servant leadership at all levels.
Transparency in sharing organizational decisions contributes to a culture of openness and two-way communication.
We love this topic and encourage you to reach out to any of our team members to continue the discussion about how our values look and feel in practice!