Words From Paul; June Edition

I had planned on making this initial article about something technical like the end of support for Windows 10 or the recent security incidents we’ve seen in the area news, but I decided to go a different direction. 

I want to talk about culture. Every organization has a culture, whether intentional or accidental. We have one, and so do you. Ours happens to be somewhere in between. Ours is somewhere in between.  If you’re a client of ours, you hopefully know that we provide really good IT support services.  Most of the time.  We drop the ball from time to time and it may be unrealistic to expect perfection from everyone all of the time.  That part of our culture is accidental, we didn’t decide one day to provide great IT support, it just happens when you have a talented team that cares about doing a good job.  But here is an intentional element to it also, we learned early on that we will occasionally drop the ball or things won’t go right.  Our goal or our culture is to own that, apologize, and not try to blame another vendor or sweep it under the rug. 

We’ve also made a couple of really great hires in the past two years.  Perhaps you’ve had the opportunity to interact with Kendra, our Operations Manager.  She was hired intentionally (there it is again) to herd all of the nerds and help us grow our processes and standards.  Because of that, our team is documentation and process driven today and has standard methods for doing things, regardless of who is doing it. That results in a culture of predictable outcomes for our clients.  Maybe you’ve also talked to Kimber, our Director of Marketing and Community Engagement.  She’s helping us be intentional about who our clients are by identifying the type of client we’re really successful with and those that we struggle with.  Our goal will then be to get more of the first, and none of the latter through our marketing and sales efforts.  She’s also helping us form a more cohesive team and live out our mission to “Change the World, ONE Network at a Time.”  You’ll see a bit of that with our Non-Profit Spotlight in this newsletter and following ones. 

I believe that every organization has a culture, whether it’s one that was built intentionally piece by piece or that just happened accidentally and may not be exactly what you want to show the world.  Where did your organization’s culture come from?  I can tell you ours isn’t 100% of where we want it to be, there are still some remnants of the old accidental culture still lying around, but we are making progress.  And I hope you are too.