Designed to Thrive: The Culture Behind our Commitment to You

At Stone Group Architects, we believe great buildings start with a great culture — and this year, we’ve been living that belief out loud through a company-wide initiative called One Word.

The idea traces back to author Jon Gordon, whose book One Word That Will Change Your Life challenges individuals and organizations to set aside long lists of resolutions and instead choose a single word to guide their year. After company-wide training on the concept, every member of the SGA team, from our designers to administrative staff, chose one word to define their focus for 2026.

Then something unexpected happened. When we combined every individual word, a single company-wide word emerged from the collective: THRIVE.

THRIVE now sits alongside SGA’s long-standing Core Values and Fundamentals as a shared touchstone, a reminder that our mission, “Positively Impacting People and Place,” starts internally before it ever reaches a job site or a clubhouse. Throughout the year, we’ve been publishing an internal reflection series connecting each team member’s word back to that mission, building a running record of how our people define excellence, service, and teamwork in their own terms.

Why does this matter to our clients? Because culture isn’t a poster on a wall; it’s what shows up in every design meeting, every site visit, and every decision about how a space should feel and function. A team that has done the work of aligning values and purpose brings that same clarity and intention to your project. When we sit down to plan a project, a clubhouse renovation, a campus building, a municipal facility, we’re not just asking what the building should look like, we’re asking who it’s for, how we want them to feel, and why the project matters. That habit of purposeful inquiry didn’t start with One Word, but One Word sharpened it.

This kind of intentional culture-building reflects a broader philosophy we bring to every engagement: design everything, not just the building. Programming, services, operations, and facilities all deserve the same purposeful thinking, and that starts with a team that has done that thinking about itself first.

This kind of intentional culture-building shapes every project we take on, whether it’s a VA facility, a university campus, a municipal building, or a private clubhouse. As Stone Group Architects continues to grow across these communities, we remain grounded in the same principles: care, trust, and a commitment to building organizations and spaces that truly matter.

Lawrence J. “Skip” Avery, CCM, CCE, CMAA Fellow, is a Principal & Director of Club Development at Stone Group Architects, bringing more than forty years of leadership, strategic consulting, and operational experience to every engagement. [email protected]  |  608-335-0342  |  stonegrouparchitects.com