It was an unseasonably cool June evening, and in the Westin Hotel in downtown Seattle, the crowd was growing restless. Performers from Cirque du Soleil wandered the room as old friends met and new ones were made. Soon John Curley was warming up the crowd. Then Jack Zduriencik, general manager of the Seattle Mariners, was talking about baseball and business.
The event was Seattle Business Magazine’s “100 Best Companies to Work For 2010,” baseball was the theme of the evening, and Cobalt was one of the honorees present.
Zduriencik described a difficult season for the Mariners and a difficult year for business. No need to tell Cobalt about that. The economic downturn was felt keenly for anyone in the automotive space, and Cobalt was no exception.
Zduriencik also spoke fondly of someone he admires who, even at 78 years old, follows a simple mantra: “Never give up. Never give up. Never give up.”
It’s good advice. Even through the rough times, Cobalt stuck to what it does best. That includes treating employees well, thinking around corners, and stopping once in a while to play just as hard as we work.
All nominated companies went through a three-step judging process: a formal nomination phase, an independent analysis by a research firm that compiles and analyzes data from an employee survey, and finally, a selection of the winners by a panel of distinguished judges. Honorees in 2010 were split into four distinct categories: nonprofit, small, medium and large size companies.
At the end of the night, Cobalt was chosen as the second place winner in the Large Companies category. Other finalists named in the same category included PAML and Columbia Bank.
Nicole Walker from Cobalt Services, Keith Zackrone and Deepak Goindwani from Technology, along with the rest of the Cobalt team at the Westin dinner table were thrilled to hear that Cobalt was a finalist.
“It’s wonderful to be recognized by employees and objective business leaders as one of the best workplaces in the state,” said Cobalt’s VP of Human Resources Julia Pizzi, who accepted Cobalt’s award. “Knowing that Cobalt employees are confident in and happy about the work culture that has been created at the company reinforces the company’s ongoing commitment to our workplace values – transparency, dedication to employee career mastery and workplace health. Those are values that make a difference in good times or bad.”
To add to Pizzi’s comments, CEO John Holt said in a message to the company, “To say we couldn’t have done this without you is a bit obvious, but it’s true.” “This gives us lots of feedback about the things we’re doing right and the things we need to improve.”
It just goes to show that the mantra is true, and it works for good business just as well as it does for baseball. No matter what life throws at you, don’t give up.
Never give up.
The Cobalt Group
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