The missile defense technologies developed by DESE Research Inc. hit the mark for their customers, which is one measure of the Huntsville company’s success.

But what also hits the mark is the company culture.

DESE Research CEO Michael Kirkpatrick said his father, the late Dr. Wallace “Wally” Kirkpatrick, started the business with culture in mind, desiring to create a great place to work for himself and for others.

The Huntsville Business Journal recently sat down with Kirkpatrick to talk about company culture and the challenges and joys of carrying on the family legacy.

Tell me about the history and founding of DESE Research.

DESE research was founded in 1982, 41 years ago by my father, Dr. Wally Kirkpatrick. He had spent a career in developing missile defense technologies, hit to kill technologies, which is the cornerstone of all U.S. missile defense systems today. After a successful career with the Department of the Army, he retired at an early age, and founded DESE research. DESE stands for Defense, Energy, Space and Environment. He chose that name because those were the four principal areas of federally funded research and those were market areas that we wanted to pursue.

When my father decided to start his own business, his principal goal was to have a great place to work, and he could control the culture if he owned the company. That’s one of the things that we still pride ourselves in, that we have a wonderful place to work and everything that we do is focused around employee satisfaction, delighting the customer, and providing security for our employees.

How has your business grown over the years?

We have had eight record years in a row, and we’re on pace for a record year this year. We focus on delighting our customers, and with customer satisfaction, comes more opportunity not only with expanded work with existing customers, but referrals to other customers through an excellent, technical, performance reputation.

When did you enter the business and what was that like?

I entered this business after I had worked for several major companies including Intergraph Corporation and United Technologies on the space shuttle program. I was well seasoned when I came to DESE, and I have been working here for 30 years. It’s been a wonderful opportunity to work in a family business and work side by side with my father for most of that 30 years. It was a great joy and honor to work together as a team.

What is it like being a part of a family business?

Working in a family business is a special opportunity and challenge. It gives you a richness of family life that most people don’t have a chance to experience because you have your family side and you have your professional relationship with your family member. Overall, it’s a wonderful opportunity to build on the legacy of the founder. It’s kind of like a multi stage rocket to orbit. You have a founder that does the heavy lifting of getting the business off the ground, and then you have a second stage that can add additional energy and effort to lift the business higher and higher.

What do you enjoy about being a business owner?

The joy of owning and managing a business is the creativity to pursue excellence and achievement. It is literally an unlimited set of options that you can pursue. You have to evaluate those and make decisions that are going to provide the best results, then continually monitor those decisions to see if they had the effective results, and then change strategy, as required.

How do you balance being a business owner with life outside of your business?

We work hard at this research, and we also like to play hard. So we are very serious about the business. We’re very serious about enjoying life. The interaction with other people inside the business, outside the business, and pursuing hobbies and interests together creates a great balance of life and a great sense of satisfaction in life.

What advice would you give to someone considering starting a business?

Being a business leader is challenging, and you have to be willing to shoulder the mantle of responsibility that comes with leadership in a business. You have to be serious minded, you have to be determined, and you have to work hard for success.

What is an obstacle you have faced and how did you overcome it?

The great challenge in business today is finding good people. Huntsville has a very low unemployment rate. There is a lot of competition for talent, so you have to use a lot of creativity in how to attract and retain good talent. We’re always thinking about ways that we can attract good talent, including giving generous referral bonuses to our employees who recruit their family and friends. We do lots of fun things with our coworkers to make sure that they’re enjoying their work life here at DESE, and that helps with retention. We work very hard at the soft skills of working with people to make them feel valued and appreciated, and let them know how much we honor their choice to work with us in the company. A career can be challenging and the work is not always easy, but when you show appreciation to people and you try to make it fun and have a happy welcoming culture, people feel good about going to work everyday.

What has been the secret to your success?

The secret to our success is delighting the customer, and in the engineering services business, creating so much value for that customer that you become indispensable. Through hard work to delight the customer comes security and the opportunity to do more work for them.

What does the future look like for DESE Research to continue as a family business?

DESE Research is one of Huntsville’s oldest family founded and family managed small businesses, and we hope that the third generation will be interested in carrying the business forward. They are out working and becoming seasoned at this time.