What it Means to Be a SpringMan

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Character

Corporate identity is key to a successful business.  Defining who we are internally and who we are to the outside world is the Character of who we are as an organization.  Character is defined as the combination of qualities or features that distinguishes one person, group or thing from another.  A popular quote about character says “Success builds character, failure reveals it”.  Winston Churchill is quoted as saying “Success is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm”.

Internal Identity

Our Core Values define our internal direction and identity for each employee and serve as a clear roadmap for becoming a successful part of the LoadSpring team.  A pure understanding that We Do IT Different, We Do Marketing Different, We Do Sales Different, We Do Business Different, We Are Different.  LoadSpring has documented these values with minimal modification since our founding over 10 years ago.  All internal direction, training and decision-making processes should start with a foundation of Core Values.  It is imperative that the leadership of LoadSpring use, rely on and incorporate into daily activities all of the values we hold true as an organization.

Corporate Identity

Whereas our Internal Identity defines our character as an organization, our Corporate Identity defines us to the world, particularly our competitors, our prospects and most importantly our customers.  Regardless of our internally defined values, it’s this external view on LoadSpring that will have the biggest impact upon our success as a business.  As front-line evangelists, it is imperative that we understand the perception of who we are versus who we think we actually are.  Too often, employees and business leaders are lulled into the thought that perception couldn’t possibly be accurate because of our internal policies, our people and our culture.  Unfortunately, perception is exactly who we are regardless of anything else.  Therefore our actions, planning, tactical and strategic decisions should all be focused towards aligning perception with our designed corporate identity.

We strive to achieve a high standard of excellence with regard to the success of our customers.  We are passionate for our customers and following will define who we are to our customers, our partners and the world.  At LoadSpring Solutions our Mission Statement is:

  • We Share the LoadSpring Experience
  • We Empower our Employees, our Customers and our Partners to be Successful
  • We sell hosting solutions that are simple, fast, reliable and unique in the marketplace
  • We deliver our solutions to the customer in less time than expected
  • We build exceptional customer relationships
  • We provide a working culture that is exciting, passionate and fulfilling
  • We enrich as many lives as we possibly can along the way

 Recipes for Success and Culture

Over the last 10 Years, LoadSpring has developed many Recipes for Success.  The mere fact that we continue to grow and thrive as a business means that we have done many things right.  What is critical to our continued success, and the success of any organization for that mater, is that we all understand our Recipes and ensure our actions match our recipes.  When our actions match our recipes for success, our business will be vibrant, exciting, rewarding and grow beyond the limits we set for ourselves.  Think of it this way:  Let’s say we start an Italian Restaurant business around some of our own family secret recipes, and one of those recipes is Chicken Alfredo.  Once we open our doors, we get rave reviews on our Chicken Alfredo and business is booming.  At first, it’s just me and a handful of folks running this business and because of the limited number of employees, we are able to communicate effectively and because there’s only one chef every night, the Chicken Alfredo is consistently amazing.  At some point we realize we have something great and we open another Italian restaurant across town and we hire a whole new staff, including a new chef to run that store.  The second restaurant is also wildly successful and everyone in town is raving about our Chicken Alfredo, so we open two more stores, with two more sets of employees and two more chefs.  We are on fire across the county and our restaurants are full every night.  Then one day we start seeing problems as two of our restaurants.  Where they initially had great success, now their numbers were down, customers were not returning and sales were slipping.  We do all of the normal things like dropping our prices, giving our coupons, increase our marketing efforts in the areas where the restaurants aren’t doing well and we put a lot of pressure on our employees to smile a lot and work harder to please our customers.  None of this helps, and morale at all of our stores starts to drop.  Then I start sampling the Chicken Alfredo at one of the restaurants and I’m horrified to find out that it’s not “our” recipe.  When I speak to the Chef, I learn that he has always added ½ teaspoon of nutmeg to his Alfredo sauce so that’s what he’s been doing.  And when I visit one of the other restaurants, I find the same thing, the Chef has decided to add both nutmeg and cinnamon to “her” Alfredo sauce because that’s what she’s always done and she thinks it’s much better.  What has happened here?  We haven’t followed our Recipe’s for success.  What launched our restaurant in the beginning, our Chicken Alfredo, has now turned into several different recipes, non of them consistent, and introducing multiple variables to our success that we now can’t control.

 Clearly there was a reason why this restaurant was initially successful, and clearly that success was replicated for a while, but eventually, due to expansion and growth and having more and more employees taking part in executing the tasks of running the various restaurants, the company lost it’s way and components started failing.  What we have to learn from this is that our actions must match our Recipe’s for Success.  And in order for this to happen, we must document and train those recipes over and over and over again.  We have to ensure that we first of all go into the pantry and locate a recipe for success, then we have to follow it.

At LoadSpring we recognize these challenges and although we have done a pretty good job documenting most of our Recipes for Success, we still ran for many years with Oral Tradition.  Oral tradition is like those “secret recipes” that only the founders know and as long as the founders are directly involved in the day to day, everything is great.  But as a company grows, the founders, and hence the Oral Traditions, start breaking down and new traditions start, maybe ones you don’t like or that can send your company in the wrong direction, or in multiple directions which is even worse.  So we have to all be rowing in the same direction, we have to document our recipes for success and challenge Oral Traditions as not a good way to grow a successful business.  Watch out for this, it happens in every organization, and challenge yourself, and our leadership to constantly document, share, understand and train our Recipes for Success.  If we do this well, there is nothing that can stop us!

How Would you build a $25 MM Company?

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In 2011, this is the question we are going to ask ourselves as a team in order to develop our goals and set our focus for 2012 and beyond.  And the answer to this question is not so much the number, $25MM.  We have to ask this because it defines a level of company we want to shoot for.  How many employee’s does a $25MM organization have?  What types of Sales systems do they use?  If they are a technology company, how do they support that level of technology?  Building a company of any size is not an easy task and growing an existing organization to increasing levels of complexity and revenue growth can be equally as challenging.  The process of growth, however, can be broken down into a series of questions about our focus that we will explore together during our planning processes and ensure we keep asking the right questions and developing the right strategies.

Culture:  After more than 10 years of running a successful business, we have learned what works and what doesn’t work.  We have created a Pantry of Recipes for Success in the form of policies, procedures, pricing and technology.  Maintaining a successful culture means our actions and decisions match our recipes that have been under development for years, even as we continue to hire more and more new employees.  Understanding how to do this well will help us achieve our goals, no matter what they evolve to be.

 Discipline:  We have built a technical solution that businesses need and are willing to pay money for.  We have identified and developed business processes which enable us to replicate the delivery of these solutions quite easily to new customers every week.  However, during this replication process, during a period of explosive growth, are we as disciplined as we should be?  Are we following the same procedures today as we followed 10 years ago?  Should we be following those same procedures or are new ones needed?  LoadSpring is different, and we do IT different.  Remembering this is another key to our success.

Opportunistic:  We have identified a significant business opportunity through our hosting solutions.  We know businesses need a better decision and execution process for their application access needs.  We also know that as economic climates change, business needs change as well.  What is constant, however, is the need for LoadSpring to capitalize on opportunity effectively.  Are we capitalizing on opportunity effectively today?  If not, what could we be doing to identify new opportunities, whether it be sales opportunities, partnership opportunities, or strategic opportunities.

Risk/Reward:  Building a business is really developing a risk/reward framework for decision making.  I am convinced that successful companies are one’s who take calculated risks, have a little bit of good timing and luck, and execute well.  LoadSpring has done this very well over the last 10 years, developing a set of standard risks we are willing to take and identifying those we are unwilling to take.  The question we have to answer is do we know our risks and if so, do we completely understand the rewards?

People:  People are human capital at LoadSpring Solutions and they are our single most important asset.  In addition, personnel costs are the single biggest line item, therefore, getting it right when it comes to hiring becomes mission critical.   Having the right people doing the right job is paramount to our success.  Nevertheless, we have to face that challenge and ensure we are always asking ourselves if we have the right people?  Do we have enough people?  Are we right-sized or over-sized?

As an employee of LoadSpring we must focus on the key questions that will help us meet the challenges of the next year and the future years beyond that.  We will continue to challenge ourselves and be challenged by our customers.  Nevertheless, our focus is growth and together, only together, can we build that $25MM company.