The Will to Grow ™

Dr. Peter Gil

Last year, someone who greatly influenced my life and probably didn’t know it, passed away.  His name is Dr. Peter Gil, and we are approaching the one year anniversary of his passing.  Dr. Gil was born in 1922 in Havana, Cuba.  He came to the United States when he was young, was a combat veteran in the European Theater, and went on to earn degrees from both Harvard and Harvard Business School.  He was truly a self-starter, an entrepreneur, a strategic thinker, and an innovator in the field of education.  He was responsible for numerous advances in education, such as growing and improving MIT Sloan School of Management as Associate Dean, vastly expanding the MIT Sloan Fellowship Program opening the door for students to become executives, and developing a business program and gaining accreditation for Clark University’s School of Management.

Dr. Gil meant the world to me (though we weren’t that close – I know this sounds strange) and has been one of the greatest influences on my career path.  In my senior year at Clark University, certain faculty contacted Dr. Gil who was at MIT Sloan about my candidacy.  I remember we met, and our conversation touched me deeply.  I didn’t come from a wealthy or privileged background and didn’t have deep connections at any business school.  Dr. Gil made me feel like I could do anything, provided reinforcement and encouragement, and was a “flesh and blood” role model.  I applied to Sloan and was accepted, but later deferred to gain work experience (which paid off in the long run when I eventually attended business school).  Dr. Gil was a wonderful sounding board, but he was more than that – he touched my heart and mind.  I know I thanked him for his counsel, but he may not have known how much he actually helped a young kid from Malden, MA.  I can only hope that one day I can somehow have that same affect on someone else.

Dr. Peter Gil is truly missed.

Momentum

Momentum is clearly underrated.  In sports, you can almost see and certainly can feel momentum swings and how they can drive teams to victory.  Take basketball for example.  Momentum swings can happen because of a key 3 pointer made or a blocked shot at an ideal part of the game that sparked the team to succeed.  Though pivotal moments can lead teams to victory, I don’t believe they all happen because of circumstance.  For that basketball player to hit the key 3 pointer, steal the ball, block the shot, it took years and years of practice, hard work, strategy, intelligence and will.

I have seen a real momentum swing at Axispoint over the last several months, and I know it’s not all economy driven.  The collective team at Axispoint has come together, persevered through one of the most difficult economies in US history, and is all the better for it.  Last year, I was at the VAR 500 conference in NY City and heard an astounding statistic: over 50,000 IT services firms (our market) went out of business because of our recent recession.  Axispoint, like others, felt some pain and hit a minor bump in our growth curve.  But the team decided to do something different in the face of adversity – invest.  We created a Named Account strategy, expanded geographically, developed new practice areas to solve our customers most pressing issues, invested in new systems, etc.  In essence, we placed strategic bets while the economy was declining to better the firm in the long run.  I’ll tell you this – we certainly made mistakes.  Some of our strategic decisions didn’t pay off, but we executed and realized what was working and what wasn’t.  We’ve had to be nimble and adjust our strategy to best position ourselves for success. 

Interestingly enough, what has come from these strategic bets is true momentum.  The improving economic tide clearly lifts all ships, and Axispoint has benefited.  Yet just like the basketball player who hits the key shot or makes the game changing block, this momentum swing is more than just good fortune (in our case, the good fortune of the economy).  It has taken years of hard work, strategy, intelligence and will – and of course, learning from our mistakes.  I want to thank the Axispoint team for banding together, “making magic” and creating momentum.

 

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year Everyone – I hope you had a wonderful holiday season! 

The recession is over, business and the market are coming back and poised for growth, and there seems to be a certain buzz in the air that we haven’t experienced at the beginning of the last two years.  Even though the economy is far from perfect (e.g., we still need to create more jobs), it is always nice to begin the year with energy, excitement and a fire in the belly that only hope and optimism can spark.

I wish you a healthy, happy, and prosperous 2011!

Axispoint's Strategy

I view 2010 as a rebound year.  At Axispoint, we experienced unprecedented growth through and including 2008.  Last year, we had our first dip, but we made a strategic decision to invest during the recession in such high growth areas as Axiscare, our Managed Services offering, Collaboration, and Enterprise 2.0.  Even though we experienced a decline, we thought outside the box and made a concerted effort to invest in future growth.  I heard an incredible statistic recently when I attended Everything Channel’s VAR 500 conference; over 50,000 IT service providers (Axispoint’s space) went out of business during this recession.  This is staggering and upsetting to hear for so many reasons (most importantly, I feel awful for all the people who lost their jobs).  However, it is significant to Axispoint in two critical ways.  First, it demonstrated our culture of perseverance and scrappiness.  Though there wasn’t a lot of “new business” in IT Services in 2009, we worked closely with our existing client base who understands and appreciates the value we provide which helped us retain our base of business.  Second, through sales differentiation (we like to call it “boxing above our weight”) we were able to win some important projects that didn’t necessarily represent significant revenue in 2009 but were important platform clients for the future.

I believe by thinking outside the box and though paying attention to the economy and market but not limiting our thinking to it, we invested and continue to invest to build a much stronger Axispoint.  Another way to state it, while most firms were solely focused on cost cutting during the recession, we made key frugal investments which position Axispoint well in the IT services market.  2010 may be a rebound year, however because of this strategy, 2011 will be a year of significant growth.

Culture Thickening

I just came out of a session at the Inc. 5000 Conference with Sam Calagione, the CEO and founder of Dogfish Head Beer.  Sam gave a speech on “Culture as Competitive Edge.”  In the last month or so, I have been fortunate enough to hear discussions on and meet with like minded executives focused on probably the most critical corporate success factor: culture.  These individuals include Stan Slap (author of several books and CEO of Slap Consulting), Lanham Napier (CEO of Rackspace) and Tony Hsieh (CEO of Zappos).  All feel the same way I do, that culture not only can be a differentiator in your sector but can truly separate great companies from good and all other firms.

 

I know – there remain many executives that look at corporate culture initiatives as hokey, and these “soft skills” often take a back seat to other corporate efforts and objectives.  The truth is business is really about people.  There are often multiple constituencies involved with each enterprise, but I believe you have to begin with your own people – the people that work at your firm day-in and day-out.  They make you who you are.  The single most important reason we have grown at Axispoint and are in a position to win awards, such as the Inc. 5000, is because of the talented team at Axispoint who have bonded together to drive real results for our clients.  I’m not purporting that Axispoint has figured it all out and is the “culture” king of US firms.  We certainly aren’t there yet as we are looking at ways to improve as I write this blog.  However, we realize how important our team and culture is to our success, and we are committed to continue to “thicken” the culture.

 

Culture thickening is when you focus internally on creating the environment, the feeling, the energy, and the passion so your team can achieve extraordinary results.  I really believe in it!  I truly admire what Sam is doing at Dogfish Head to thicken his culture from Bocce court matches on Fridays to creating a sense of pride and passion around the beer they brew.  It’s interesting that Sam doesn’t need to label these efforts as he’s just being Sam and doing what he does day-in and day-out.  If you focus within first and create a strong culture, this will then lead to great relationships with customers, investors, and the like.  And by the way, profits will come.  People buy from people, and more specifically from the people they like and trust.  But you first need to like and trust yourselves, the team, and create the kind of place where people can flourish – it all begins with thickening your culture.

From Broadcast To Unicast

I’m blogging from the Inc. 5000 Conference in Washington, DC.   This is the 4^th year in a row Axispoint has been a recipient of this prestigious honor, which is a compendium of the nation's fastest-growing private companies.

I just heard Tim Westergren, the CEO of Pandora, speak about “The Power of Listening.”  If you haven’t heard of Pandora, it is a leading provider of personalized music and radio.  One of the themes Tim discussed, which also happens to be a key driver for Pandora, is the concept, “From Broadcast to Unicast.”  In essence, Pandora takes broadcast music and radio and delivers it as custom to the listener.  Rather than delving into Pandora’s business model, let’s focus on the meaning behind the concept, “From Broadcast to Unicast.”

From Broadcast to Unicast is really about going from the masses to the individual.  If you think about it, this is where our world is heading.  Numerous business models and markets are appearing that provide the consumer or end user more specifically what they want.  Examples include: numerous websites that offer the ability to personalize content (“My Site” concept); sites such as Amazon.com that get to “know” your interests and actually make recommendations to you; hotels that try to customize your stay to how you envision your experience (e.g., type of pillow, balcony or not, type of newspaper, etc.); customizable television (where you combine TV, web and other media to view exactly what you want and when you want); and the list goes on and on.  Social media and Internet technologies significantly add to the morphing from the general to the specific, as individuals become better known personally to the public and their vendors.

Axispoint is in the IT Services space where it is paramount to understand the business needs of our customers and drive technology solutions to meet those needs.  However, the world is becoming even more specific than this: companies are going to have to understand not just the needs of the companies they do business with but the needs of communities (definition: like minded groups of people) and more specifically individuals both within these companies and their ultimate customers.  In other words, the world is moving from the general to the specific, from the masses to the community and the individual, “From Broadcast to Unicast”, and the most successful companies are going to figure out how to best meet and deliver on these focused needs.

YPO IT Network Roundtable - Microsoft

Hello everyone!  I’m on a plane heading to Seattle for the annual Young Presidents Organization (YPO) IT Network Roundtable.  The event brings together approximately 75 CEOs of diverse technology companies from across the globe with leading technology executives expert in their respective fields, such as cloud computing, business video, mobile applications, etc.  Last year’s event was held at Google, and this year we are meeting at Microsoft with several heads of their respective divisions and initiatives.  We will also meet with top executives from other Seattle-based companies such as Costco and Amazon.

I am very eager to hear the collective perspective on the overall market, the technology sector, and specifically key technology trends.  I will blog about any key (non-confidential) learnings.  I always look to learn “golden nuggets” or important information that may help grow Axispoint.

Double Dip Recession Or Growth Economy?

Today’s economy is certainly a strange one with conflicting economic reports and indicators released daily and financial markets continually in flux.  One thing is for certain, as executives, we need to do our best to understand what’s occurring and what the future may hold and include this in our strategic thinking, yet we cannot be confined or defined by the market.

All too often I hear people getting caught up in the day-to-day drama of the market.  The interesting thing is the stock market is a place where investors are betting on future expectations, not the here and now.  In my opinion and I have blogged about this before, the real issue is that the recession was so deep that it will be (and we are experiencing) a very long recovery period, not a high flying growth spurt.  Two very important issues linger – high unemployment and tighter credit markets.  Companies need to begin hiring again so more consumers have disposable income to spend and financial institutions need to further ease access to credit so companies have growth capital to invest.  Until this happens, and I am bullish it will but over time, the economy will remain in its up/down and ebb/flow pattern. 

Given this, the future still remains bright.  I am a firm believer that we have to take economic factors into consideration and determine where to focus our businesses, yet we need to think outside the box and not be defined by what the market says and does.  There are a number of different ways to experience growth and we each need to determine our best way to get to the next level given the current situation.  In other words, I believe real and better than the average growth is out there for those who think beyond economic and market conditions.

Seeing the Forest is Very Hard

 

The truth is that growth is very difficult.  Anyone that tells you growing a business from A to Z is easy and a step-by-step process is selling you a bill of goods.  When you are embarking on building a business, you first need to set a vision and design a strategy.  However, the devil is in the details and the best laid plans can fall apart for a myriad of reasons.  The one I want to briefly discuss here is the “tree versus the forest”.  This metaphor is near and dear to my heart because I sometimes find myself behind the proverbial tree all too often and I need to remind myself of the bigger picture.

When you have set your vision and strategy and are in “growth mode”, you are working very hard and smart to accomplish your set objectives.  Then suddenly, things happen that don’t go exactly to plan, can easily become significant distractions and take you well off track.  This, by the way, is also true of life.  You cannot avoid this – growth is imperfect and full of significant challenges.  What you need to do as a business leader is not only make the decision in the moment but also think how the singular decision at-hand affects your overall vision and objectives.  This is very difficult to do, and I sometimes find myself so buried in the weeds that I make key business decisions later than I should.  To truly grow your company or division, you need to be nimble, unafraid of and ready to embrace real change, and make decisions with the forest in mind as well as the trees. 

 

 

 

Firenze – A Place Like No Other and A Cause Like No Other

I recently returned from a Young President’s Organization (YPO) event in Florence, Italy.  As many of you know, I am Italian-American with three of my four grandparents migrating from the “old country.”  Though I do feel a special bond with Italy because of my heritage, all - and I mean all - can appreciate the splendor of Firenze.

Florence is one of the most beautiful cities in the world - steeped in art, culture and history.  Obviously, it was the hub of one of the most vibrant times in history, the Renaissance, when the world experienced the brilliance of the likes of Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Sandro Botticelli, Raphael, and so on.  But also, it is a city of exceptional, friendly and proud people.  Over the five days I was there, I had the privilege of meeting several business and cultural leaders in Florence and Tuscany and was most impressed with their knowledge, mindset and heart.

There is one organization I would like to point out in particular, called the “Friends of Florence”, which is doing critical work and adding significant value to all of us.  The Friends of Florence is led by Contessa Simoneta Brandolini d’Adda, a true leader and very special woman, who has built this organization from the ground up.  The difference between Florence and any US city is its history dates back thousands of years.  This presents a most difficult challenge.  There are literally thousands of pieces of art and historic and religious artifacts that have helped shape our world.  Many of these works reside in Florence and if they go unattended, they will eventually wither away or be destroyed.  So why doesn’t Italy just provide funds and restore these living fabrics of our culture?  There are two distinct problems: one has to do with red tape as the Italian political process is nightmarish to achieve any funding decision; the second issue is that public funds in Italy are not in abundance for these efforts. 

Here is where Countess Simoneta has stepped in.  She has been wildly successful to-date raising private funds that go directly to the job of restoring some of the world’s most important pieces, including Michelangelo’s David and his Prisoners, Ghiberti’s Gates of Paradise, 22 paintings from renowned artists in the Galleria Dell’Accademia, etc.  I would encourage everyone to visit the Friends of Florence website at www.friendsofflorence.org to get a better sense of what they are accomplishing and determine if you would like to be involved.  By the way, this is not a political group; all of the funds go to restoration, not the Italian government.  And to be very clear, no one asked me to write this blog.  I am truly overwhelmed with the work the Friends of Florence organization has done and continues to do (there is much more to accomplish).  Whether you are Italian or not, we can all appreciate the culture, art and history one of the greatest cities on Earth, Firenze, has bestowed on us and it’s our responsibility to ensure this history is preserved.