If you ask the average consumer what makes for a great company, it’s likely that a significant number would say “great products.” Maybe “great customer service,” or “a great brand.” But we believe what really makes great companies are great people.
You can have the best product idea, product design, service philosophy, or brand promise, but without great people, nothing gets built, implemented, serviced, or promoted. It sounds oversimplified, but it really is that simple. Companies are only as great as the people they employ and retain. Anyone who tells you otherwise has never been part of a great company.
So, if that is true, why do companies insist on bottlenecking their teams with sub-par, sub-optimal, ineffective, or even non-existent tools? Why do so many companies kick the proverbial can down the road when it comes to implementing supporting infrastructure that can accelerate their teams and enable their very best people to do amazing work? Why do they complain about the price of tools without considering the true cost to their teams when they’re forced to do without?
Honestly, we have no idea.
Most of us take for granted that some disciplines require the very best tools to get the job done efficiently and effectively. But we typically reserve that for things that are considered “elite,” “mission critical,” or “extraordinarily high risk.” We often ignore the fact that ineffective tools have a negative impact on everything we do, from making dinner to building rockets.
Over the past few decades, software tools have leveled the playing field to a certain degree. But as businesses get more complex and our technology advances at an unprecedented pace, many organizations are deferring their decisions to implement the best tools, in favor of the easier option of “industry standard” or else “the way we’ve been doing it forever.”
Not only can these decisions cripple a company’s ability to accelerate its growth and improve its position in the market, but they can demoralize its teams and impact its ability to attract and retain the best talent.
We believe the best people require the best tools to get their jobs done, no matter what that job is. We also believe that “best” doesn’t necessarily mean “most expensive.” What it does mean is taking the time to define the goals of your company, deeply understand the needs and challenges of your people, and then determine the most effective accelerant for igniting their capabilities.
As a provider of tools designed to enable great teams, we believe it is our responsibility to ensure continuous improvement of our tools. Our “best” today will not be the best three months from now. And because we know that to be true, it is our responsibility to solve for that without any force or intervention from our users. We believe we must constantly challenge our own team to be better tomorrow than we are today so we can continue to develop and deliver tools that are good enough to be used by the great teams that require them.
Does everyone think like we do? No. They don’t.
But at the end of the day, we are not competing with those people. We are competing with ourselves, with the end goal of being the best in our industry simply because we are never satisfied with how good we are today.
Great people deserve great tools. We build great tools for those people. Are your people great? What are you going to do about that?
Recent Comments