I’m totally excited about having blogger, entrepreneurial advocate, social media maven Francine Hardaway out to the Infusionsoft offices this week. I love the way Francine captured it in what she said in her latest blog post, Didn’t Know Infusionsoft was So Cool.
It’s funny, that’s the feeling most people get when they come to Infusionsoft. People, when they see our offices and meet our employees say, “Hey there’s this Silicon Valley-esque company right here in Phoenix.” I totally appreciate the praise and the recognition of what we are growing… right here in little ol’ Gilbert, Arizona. We know what we have, but we haven’t really projected it out to the rest of the world.
I realized that we should be projecting this stuff when I went to Zappos. I met with Zappos CEO Tony Hseih, and took their company tour. Wow, was I blown away?! Here’s this company putting it out there, sharing their culture with the world and showing exactly how they do things—and that we should be doing the same thing. Zappos’ culture is very similar to what we’ve been creating, the same environment and culture but on a larger scale. Infusionsoft co-founder Scott Martineau also went and was equally blown away. And it inspired us to continue on our culture path, and do even more, and then share it with others.
Why aren’t more companies real like this? Why do so many think that just because you’re in business you can’t have fun and be casual, yet effective? Why do I sit with a new employee on Thursday, who says to me “this company and how it operates is really cool… but is this okay? Are we being serious enough? Is this professional? … or are we just playing and having fun?” I say, “No. We’re having fun with business.”
A snapshot of our developers.
In order to do this, you have to let employees be themselves and let them have fun and relax the protocol a bit. And trust that creative employees are going to go make great things happen without being programmed like monkeys on every little thing. We are totally proud of our culture, and I have always said it’s our number one asset. And I don’t say it to be cheesy. It’s true. There are a whole bunch of things we do to enable it and make that culture happen. But the result of that stuff is a fun and energetic company. And I would love to see many more companies that follow this approach in Arizona.
It’s about entrepreneurship in the organization. Entrepreneurship comes in many forms. It’s not just about starting your own company. We want entrepreneurial people inside Infusionsoft. It’s one thing to say that, it’s another to actually enable people to be entrepreneurial inside a company. There is a lot of stuff you have to let go of to enable it; for instance, making employees punch a time clock, or having super-strict, confining policies. You have to let people apply their ideas and be creative.
It’s why people leave companies, because their ideas and thoughts don’t get appreciated.
Everyone has ideas and creative thought, but most companies squash it. I used to think people who were creative were just artistic. But that’s not the case at all. We get passionate about our ideas, and creating results. And it’s why people start companies—to make something of their ideas and take them out to the market to put results out there. If we can help foster people inside the company to take their ideas and create results, the same thing can happen.
Francine snapped a photo of our gameplan.
Enlightened leaders allow the creativity to happen inside the company and they don’t squash it with rules, and policies. They put people into very small teams to further stimulate creativity, ownership and communication. And when you say you can have entrepreneurs within a company that’s only true if you are willing to let go of structure or efficiency or creativity. You can’t have all that at the same time. You have to be willing to let go of some of the structure and efficiency if you want to see creativity thrive.
There is no reason why we shouldn’t have a whole bunch of Silicon Valley-like companies in Arizona. We have decided we are going to do tours at Infusionsoft and open up the company for people to see what we are doing here. We think there is a creative, energetic, entrepreneurial way to run a company that people are attracted to. And by the way, it’s not just young people that are attracted to this. It’s all kinds of talented people that are attracted to this because they want to put their ideas to work in a business.
Early on in my career, I had the opportunity to put my ideas to work at a small company. At the time, I called it “innovation” because I didn’t consider myself a “creative” person. I thought you had to be a traditional artist to be creative. And when they stopped letting me innovate, that was the point I decided to leave that company. Most managers stamp out creativity and innovation. We try to encourage it. Infusionsoft co-founder Scott Martineau is especially great at making sure this happens.
Obviously you need some guidelines in place. I’m not suggesting you throw structure or any framework away. But inviting and allowing people to do stuff, to act on ideas, and not look to management to always have the answer makes more sense than anything else. Management’s job is to create the big picture vision, provide guidelines and milestones along the way to that vision… and then do everything possible to enable people to make the vision a reality.
Oh, and one more thing… I always get the question, aren’t you creating competition by creating a entrepreneurial culture? There is a little bit of that. But it’s not nearly the threat that people think it is. The fire and the enthusiasm you get is worth it. People come in and learn and get better, and are ready to do that down the road. We came to grips with fact that we were totally ok teaching our employees about entrepreneurship and exposing ourselves to a little “flight risk.” And we continue to believe that. Because we have seen the benefits of people who are engaged and ignited in what they are doing. And they see how hard it is to run their own business, so they see what it’s all about. And when people do leave, we applaud them. Go create something entrepreneurial! It’s all part of a beautiful ecosystem of entrepreneurship.
Thanks for shining a light on this, Francine, because you are helping others see the importance of culture. We’ve got something at Infusionsoft that’s pretty awesome, and more people should come out and see it. I’d like to think that at some point Infusionsoft, sort of like Zappos, becomes a destination for people in the Valley when they hear about a cool technology company, whether that’s a resident, a visiting company, a customer, people say, “Have you heard of Infusionsoft? This is a place you’ve got to check out.”
[Photo credit, The Stealthmode Blog]
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