Thoroughness.
Maybe our Germanic roots are showing, but we don’t feel comfortable if we don’t do our homework. We dislike skimming around on the surface of things. We prefer icebergs to ice-floes.
This is why the iceberg is our logo.
We spend a great deal of time out of sight, below the surface, doing our homework, making the main part of the iceberg solid. We don’t jump to conclusions. We don’t trust our intuition. We don’t go with gut feel. We respect the 5/15/80 rule.* When we start on a project we remind ourselves that we know only 5% of what we need to know. What we know we don’t know amounts to another 15%. But, like any self-respecting team of engineers, we don’t even know that we don’t know 80% of what we need to know.
Those to who have worked with us will tell you that gründlichkeit is fundamental.
* Steel, J. 2007. Perfect Pitch – The art of selling new ideas and winning new business. John Wiley and Sons: 75