It has been eight months since we sold the company that I was part of for the last fifteen years. By the time it sold, we had reached over $150 million in revenue and had more than 250 employees. Our mission drove us to focus on helping people succeed no matter who it was: clients, employees, partners, vendors and the community at large. Our beliefs and values were cemented in our culture and built around a goal of helping people to become leaders; but it wasn’t always that way.
Back in 2008 we were sitting at a board meeting and discussing growth strategies. We were at $35 million in revenue, with a vibrant managed service business and things were good. But one question kept coming up — How are we going to be able to navigate rapid growth and achieve our next goal of $50M? So we turned to Jim Collins’ book Good to Great for some wisdom: A company must start with the “who” first and then the “what.”