The idea behind Shive-Hattery’s Plus One program is disarmingly simple: when you’re heading into a client meeting, proposal interview, or project kickoff, don’t go alone. Bring someone with you. Someone earlier in their career. Someone who wouldn’t normally be in the room. Have them observe. Encourage them to ask questions. Invite them to lead a small part of the meeting.
That’s it.
But inside that simple idea lives something incredibly powerful.
Shive-Hattery is a 600-person architecture and engineering consulting firm based in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, with roots dating back to 1895.
Plus One is both a knowledge strategy and an employee engagement strategy. It helps the firm transfer wisdom from senior staff, build client continuity, and develop future leaders in real time. At the same time, it helps early-career professionals feel seen, valued, and included in the real work of the firm, years before they might otherwise have had the chance.
It’s one of those rare practices that builds both business resilience and human connection.
In fact, I’d argue that’s part of why it works so well. It sits at the intersection of what firms need and what people want. Firms need succession planning, leadership development, and client coverage. People want mentorship, growth, and visibility. Plus One delivers both, and it’s exactly the kind of habit that helps a firm become a learning organization.
And because it’s lightweight, repeatable, and aligned with the natural rhythms of project work, it scales easily.
From Informal Practice to a Formal Program
Shive-Hattery launched the formal Plus One program in 2013, but it was an informal practice long before that.
For years, seasoned team members would tap someone more junior to tag along to a client meeting, a kickoff call, a proposal interview.
Greg Kanz, the firm’s longtime Marketing Director, remembers being pulled into meetings early in his career, before he felt ready. One moment stands out.
“I had some branding ideas,” he recalled. “Guy Patten, marketing director at the time, invited me to co-present strategies to company leadership.”
“I thought I was there to add color commentary with Guy taking the lead,” he recalled. “He had me sit in the front of the room, lead the presentation, and answer questions with his support.”
Greg was stunned. “I was a baby bird kicked out of the nest—but I did fly after the initial surprise. And I’ve never forgotten it.”
In the early 2010s, as Shive-Hattery began preparing for a major generational transition, it felt like a perfect time to make this informal practice formal. The firm had a wave of retirements on the horizon and they wanted to make sure their deep client relationships were transitioned successfully to the next generation.
That’s when Greg started to connect the dots.
He remembered what it felt like to be pulled into meetings early in his career. He knew how much those moments shaped him. And he started wondering: What if we stopped treating this as an exception? What if we made it a habit?
He brought the idea to Jennifer Van Ausdall, the firm’s Communications Director, and together they decided to give it a name.
They called it Plus One.
“It started as a joke, honestly,” Greg said. We realized it’s like when you’re going to a wedding or event and ask, ‘Who’s your ‘plus one’ this weekend?’ And that was it. We had a name.”
They printed keychains with the Plus One logo. Put Plus One reminders on exit doors. Shared Plus One stories at staff meetings.
The question became part of the firm’s language: Where’s your Plus One?
And just like that, a long-time cultural practice became a formal leadership program.
What Plus One Actually Looks Like
So what does Plus One look like in the real world?
Sometimes it’s a senior architect inviting a designer to a client kickoff meeting. Sometimes it’s a project manager bringing a marketing coordinator to a proposal interview. Sometimes it’s a leader in healthcare design telling a young engineer, “Come with me to this meeting at the hospital. You’ve got experience they should hear about.”
The Plus One doesn’t have to have a speaking role. But sometimes they do. They might answer a question. Take notes. Share a perspective. Ask a follow-up.
The point isn’t to be polished. The point is to be present.
“It’s not about having all the answers,” Greg said. “It’s about learning through exposure—and creating space for people to grow.”
At Shive-Hattery, Plus One has become a lightweight but high-leverage way to develop emerging leaders in real time. It gives staff early glimpses into how the business works—how relationships are built, how trust is earned, how nuance plays out in a room.
It also sends a strong cultural signal: we see you, we trust you, and we want you here.
A Plus One story Jim Lee, Shive-Hattery’s then CEO told during he and Greg’s KA Connect 2019 talk, “Delivering on the ‘One Firm’ Promise”, stuck with me. A young electrical engineer—he called her Ethel—was invited to a routine marketing call with a major hospital client. She wasn’t the obvious pick. But she showed up, spoke up, and made an impression.
“I learned more about Ethel on that one call than I had in the previous year,” Jim said. “And more importantly, the client did too, and they formed an instant connection.”
This is the power of Plus One. It creates moments that wouldn’t otherwise happen. Moments that accelerate growth, build confidence, and deepen relationships, internally and externally.
And because it’s tied to the natural cadence of client work, it scales without needing formal infrastructure. It just becomes how things are done.
“You don’t need a budget line or a new software system,” Greg said. “You just need a mindset—and a little bit of intentionality.”
Creating Zipper Relationships
Client relationships are always stronger when more than one person from your firm is involved. It not only deepens client development, but also improves knowledge continuity and supports long-term succession planning.
At Shive-Hattery, Plus One became a way to reduce risk—one meeting at a time.
By routinely inviting newer team members into client interactions, the firm began building multiple points of connection on both sides of the table.
This is generally referred to as a zipper relationship in the AEC industry—a metaphor for overlapping relationships that span generations and roles.
Instead of a single thread connecting client to firm, you build overlapping relationships across levels, roles, and time. The more interlocking teeth in the zipper, the stronger the connection.
“It’s about making sure no one person is the only person a client knows or trusts,” Greg explained.
That’s relationship resilience. And it’s also good business. Clients feel more supported. Team members feel more connected. And the firm becomes far less vulnerable to turnover or transition.
Plus One doesn’t solve the whole problem. But it’s one of the simplest, most durable ways to start.
Desirable Difficulty and Learning Before You’re Ready
There’s a principle in learning science called desirable difficulty. The idea is simple: people learn best when they’re stretched—when they’re pushed just past what they already know, into unfamiliar territory where they have to adapt, think, and grow.
It’s the same logic behind weight training or language immersion. You get stronger by doing something hard, just not so hard it puts you or the client relationship at risk.
That’s exactly where Plus One lives.
That moment—equal parts challenging and transformative—is the beating heart of the Plus One experience.
You’re not being thrown in the deep end alone. But you are being asked to swim.
It’s a low-risk, high-value setting for growth. You’re not leading the meeting. But you are in the meeting. And when someone hands you the mic, even for a minute, it changes how you see yourself.
“We were very intentional about putting people into situations before they felt fully ready,” Greg said. “Not recklessly—but regularly.”
That’s how confidence is built. That’s how future leaders are formed. Not in the abstract, but in the flow of work.
And because Plus One is embedded in the rhythm of actual client life, it doesn’t feel like a simulation. It feels like trust.
Turning Goals Into Growth
One of the reasons Plus One has taken root so deeply at Shive-Hattery is that it aligns beautifully with how the firm approaches development.
Rather than relying solely on top-down career paths, Shive-Hattery encourages employees to define their own growth goals—whether that’s building confidence in client conversations, exploring a new market sector, or gaining experience outside their discipline.
Plus One turns those aspirations into action.
“If someone says in a review, ‘I want to get better at business development,’ Plus One gives us a way to make that real,” Greg said. “We’re not just talking about development. We’re doing it.”
That action might be an invite to join a proposal interview. Or to shadow a project kickoff. Or to attend a meeting with a longtime healthcare client. Whatever the scenario, the structure is the same: come along, contribute where you can, and learn in the room, not in theory.
This alignment with employee-led goals is part of what makes Plus One feel so organic.
It also makes the program more resilient. Because it isn’t owned by a single department or gatekept by a formal system, it can happen anywhere. In any office. On any team. Wherever a leader sees an opportunity, or a learner raises their hand.
“That’s where the best development happens,” Greg told me. “Not just when it’s assigned, but when people identify what they want to work on. We help create space for it.”
In that sense, Plus One isn’t just a strategy for knowledge transfer. It’s a signal of trust. An invitation to grow. And a tangible way to connect career development with the everyday life of the firm. It’s the kind of continuous, people-centric program that defines a true learning organization.
Please Take This Idea and Make It Yours
One of my favorite parts of being in the KA community is watching good ideas travel.
After Shive-Hattery shared the Plus One program at KA Connect 2019, firms across the network began adapting the concept in ways that fit their own cultures and contexts. One of my favorite examples comes from Turner Fleischer, a mid-sized architecture firm based in Toronto.
At Turner Fleischer, the idea evolved into something they called Jeremy+1.
It started in construction administration. Jeremy Pope, a Principal and Practice Advisor, began inviting junior team members—often those who had never set foot on a job site—to join him for site walks. The idea was simple: come along, observe how buildings actually come together, ask questions, and start to connect the dots between drawings and reality.
After each visit, participants were encouraged to reflect on what they’d seen and share those stories on the company intranet. These reflections didn’t just reinforce the learning, they also created visibility across the firm, sparking conversations and curiosity among peers.
But Turner Fleischer didn’t stop there.
They’ve recently created a second Plus One program: Site Visits with Kojo. What began as informal walkthroughs led by Kojo La-Anyane—Practice Advisor and Director—has evolved into a formal learning program. Each quarter, a cohort of four eligible studio members is selected to join a series of guided site visits tied to active projects. The program is linked to each participant’s developmental goals, helping them understand how design decisions translate on site and how to strengthen their work as a result. At the end of the program, each participant shares their learning through a presentation to their own team—reinforcing individual growth and supporting collective knowledge across the studio.
What I love about Turner Fleischer’s adaptations is that they didn’t just copy the idea. They made it their own. They looked at the core principle—bring someone with you—and applied it to a part of their business where learning through exposure was both needed and natural.
And that’s exactly how ideas like this should move: shared, reshaped, and strengthened through use.
So if you’re reading this and wondering how to start, here’s one idea:
Next time you’re heading to a meeting, pause at the door. Think of someone on your team who’s hungry to grow. And ask yourself, “Where’s my Plus One?”
Go Deeper
🎥 Watch the original talk. I’d suggest watching, Delivering on the “One Firm” Promise, Shive-Hattery’s KA Connect 2019 talk featuring Jim Lee and Greg Kanz. You’ll hear more about the origins of Plus One, but also explore several other strategies they’ve used to build a learning organization—one that thrives across offices, generations, and career stages.
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Drawing on 25 years in the industry, Christopher Parsons shares stories, insights, and practical strategies from firm leaders and knowledge champions who are scaling learning, growing expertise, and designing more resilient organizations.
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