Beyond the Build

Leadership

Our Extended Work Family Joins to Toast Another Year Together

Every December our team and their families come together for a long weekend. Last weekend was our 25th year to celebrate this tradition.

We started on Friday afternoon with a presentation on quality EIFS details, followed by the chairman of the USGBC visiting with us about their standards.

Saturday morning our branding consultant, Holland & Holland (not the gun company) made a presentation on what they are doing for Stewart Perry, spreading our electronic footprint across the Internet. It was an interesting presentation by a quality firm as well as a really good opportunity to get buy in from our whole team.

We hosted a cookout at our campus on Saturday for lunch, and then we all went to the other side of our lake and planted an additional 500 daffodils bulbs so that in the spring, the hillside will be awash in a blue, white and yellow.

Our weekend came to a conclusion on Saturday evening with dinner at my home. The highlight of the night each year is all of us singing Christmas carols together by the piano. My personal favorite is “Frosty the Snowman” which is all the more special the way we do it, complete with a rousing chorus of “thumpty-thump-thump.” What fun acting like a child again with plenty of laughs and good cheer.

A tough year is coming to a close but I’m glad to have experienced 2009. While we stressed a lot, we learned a lot, and in the end, we made it through.

I am grateful for the good people we have here. They work through all kinds of challenges and weather and for this, I am grateful. Good people make great companies.

Merrill Stewart Jr.

Merrill Stewart is Founder and CEO of The Stewart/Perry Company, a commercial building contractor based in Birmingham.