We gathered our founding team members to get their thoughts on the past and present of QUALITANCE, to find out what 7 things are crucial in defining the future of our company and to share what has already worked for us.
1. Focus on what matters, don’t scatter your resources.
One thing we have learned (the hard way) is the need to stay focused. I am not talking about the kind of focus that starts with meditation and matcha tea (that’s all great, too, but not in this post). Decide what your priorities are, take clear decisions and stick to them. It’s about refraining from chasing all possible opportunities, just because “who knows, something might come out of it”, and selecting the top high-impact activities to focus on.
– Radu Constantinescu, Managing Partner
2. Don’t just talk about company culture.
Act on it. I think it’s essential to get to know your candidate and offer him support in any way through short meetings, tech syncs, Skype communication or a “how we work” day before hiring. We don’t just hire talent, we want people that will build together with us. We’re not just looking for someone to match a shortlist of tech skills, we’re looking for candidates that align to our values and standards: passionate, committed, fast paced. This sounds, of course, very clichéd – but we get the reality check when sometimes we can’t hire people who match the technical profile because they don’t fit in with the culture of the group. As a recruiter, it hurts a bit, but maintaining our identity is essential.
– Manuela Serban, Lead Recruitment Specialist …read more about Manuela’s hiring strategies here.
3. Surpass expectations instead of just targeting to meet them
Surpassing expectations might sound
vague or unattainable, but you can use clear methods and techniques to keep it in focus and actually accomplish it. This is what we use: every week the management team has a “learning-slash-improvement” session. We identify quick actions each of us can do to improve QUALITANCE a bit – the “10%” approach – and then we move fast to implement them. The same approach is used in projects: at the end of every project, team members gather in a “lessons learned session” to discuss what they have learned (not “what went wrong”) and what they will do different next time.
– Ina Tudorache, Operations & Business Controls …read more about Ina’s career journey here.
4. Doing is the best way of thinking
One of the best and most mind-blowing things I’ve had the chance to discover while working for QUALITANCE was Rapid Prototyping. Besides the fascinating methodology, for me it was a personal revelation and a chance to get the proper mindset for turning many “Wow, wouldn’t it be cool if…” into many “Hey, I just built this cool thing.” Instead of debating whether an idea would work or not, the best way to find out is to try it out. “Doing is the best way of thinking”, as Tom Chi says.
– Bogdan Raduta, Chief Technology Officer …read more about Bogdan’s vision for the future of technology here.
5. Understand your client before building their product
Some personality traits of the people we work with are non-negotiable. For instance, empathy, a trait from our value pillars that many people particularly called us out for – “you’re a TECH company, how can you associate with something so fluffy and soft?”. But I don’t believe you can build anything of value without adding empathy to it. Things built without empathy are things other people can’t benefit from and can’t enjoy using. What’s the point in that? We are in the business of building things that are valuable for other people, and that other people enjoy using.
– Ioan Iacob, Managing Partner …read more about Ioan’s take on how rapid prototyping changed our company.
6. Never stop learning
We are a learning group. We embed learning into everyday activities through project reviews, “lessons learned” meetings and 10% improvements. Where most other companies would implement a “blame culture” (“who is guilty for this?”), we just try to learn from our past mistakes. Where other companies would rejoice and gloat over success, we try to learn how can we do it even better next time. We debrief and always evaluate how things can be done better or differently.
– Cristian Pocovnicu, Delivery Manager
7. Have courage to confront the status quo
We started QUALITANCE because we believed things could be done better in the technology services space. Many companies were just “dealing with” and “coping with” their software & technology suppliers – because they had no better alternative, and “kind of works” was better than nothing. We are now creating a model to productize software development and make it simpler, more reliable and more accessible. Software development is currently very much a mess and all statistics speak about it: 68% of all software projects fail. That is just terrible. We’re gonna change that.
– Ioan Iacob, Managing Partner
Inspired by this article? Share it with your friends and colleagues on Linkedin, Facebook and Twitter!
No Comments