Insight on Business

22 | I NSIGH T • J u n e 2 0 1 6 w w w . i n s i g h t o n b u s i n e s s . c o m "I said, 'Mother, how in the heck am I going to find that?'" Kanzelberger recalls. e Mother Prioress assured him that once he was there, it would be obvious. Kanzelberger went, wandering up a hill chest-deep in prairie grasses, getting ready to make a call on his cellphone. He was about to dial, walking absent-minded, and right where he was about to step was a two-day-old fawn. e monastery had its altar site. While this example isn't typical of how Performa approaches its client projects, it does show how the company values its relationships and works with clients in the way that's best for them. Performa, a De Pere-based architectural, engineering and planning firm, is also committed to doing what's best for its clients — even if that means talking them out of building. Founded in 1995 by Kanzelberger and his partner, Doug Page, Performa has grown to about 33 employees and currently serves more than 100 clients in multiple industries, most of them within the New North region. It counts among its clients Plexus, Ariens, Community First Credit Union, Nicolet Bank, St. Norbert College, Northcentral Wisconsin Technical College, Schneider, Belmark and others. Additionally, Performa has worked in 42 states and Mexico. At any point during the year, the company averages $200 million in planning, design or construction and about 1 million square feet in projects. e company anticipates growing about 10 percent in 2016. Function before form he idea of an architect turning down a building project has taken aback a few prospective Performa clients. When Nicolet Bank Chairman and CEO Bob Atwell enlisted Kanzelberger to design a new downtown Green Bay headquarters in the early 2000s, "we sat down and I told him, 'It's time for us to have a new headquarters, we'd like you to design the building.' He basically said no," Atwell says. Form Follows Function c o n t i n u e d Instead, Kanzelberger told him Performa needed to better understand Nicolet as an organization first. "My reaction to that at first was kind of like, 'You're an architect. You build buildings. I just called you up with what I thought was a good thing,'" Atwell says. "But in reality, it was a very, very healthy process." Kanzelberger ultimately spent about a year observing and learning about Nicolet's functional workflow as well as the company's culture "well enough to actually design a building that is a physical manifestation of the mission of the bank," Atwell says. Performa has also worked on Nicolet's De Pere, Howard, Medford and Bay Settlement branch renovations. Kanzelberger calls the process "hyper collaboration." "It's essentially getting to know an organization so well, so deeply, that you basically almost can feel their pain," he says. "You get a sense of what they're trying to do for their customers, a sense of their long-term plans. Instead of reacting to initiatives, more and more over the years, our clients asked us to help them paint a picture of the future." Brian Netzel, principal and director of design, says Performa walks a company through a series of detailed steps to examine its goals and objectives, project purpose, success criteria and other factors. Taking those steps ensures the end result is what the client needs, which might not necessarily be a new building. "It may be that you just need to rearrange the inside of your facility to make it much more efficient," Netzel says. "If you do that, you may not need to build an addition for 'x' number of years." When the company does need that addition, Performa will be ready. Birth of a mission er graduating from UW-Milwaukee with an architectural degree, Kanzelberger went to work for a large insurance company as its facility planner. But it wasn't the right place for him. "It is miserable work because you basically wait for a plane to crash, a boat to sink, a building to burn," Kanzelberger says. "at's your product. It's tough. I could not relate to it." "He's very good about keeping everybody open to possibilities, and yet he also knows it's important to us to keep kind of a St. Norbert look." — St. Norbert College President Tom Kunkel, who has relied on Performa to design several new buildings on the De Pere campus in recent years

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