As the business has grown certain things have gotten increasingly complicated. From the outside, there’s a nice sheen as we share information about awards, acquisitions, growth achievements, and magazine articles. We’re proud of these things, but our desire is to establish a healthy business to the core, not just a polished exterior. With any business there are plenty of challenges and Greystone is no exception.
Some casual observers have noted to me that we seem to be making a lot of good decisions in recent years at Greystone. I’d like to believe this is true. I have a lot of pride in many of our decisions – most notably in who we have brought onto our team. That said, we don’t pin our success on a streak of good decisions. We know for all the inherently good decisions there have also been a certain measure of challenging ones – the kind that make us second- (or tenth)-guess ourselves next time.
While we watch so many businesses paralyze themselves, waiting for the right decision to be absolutely clear, I’m thankful for our team who views the business world (and the world at large) differently.
Making our decisions good
Even if we could pin our success on a “good decision streak,” that isn’t exactly a stable way forward. We’d either be foolish think we could get every decision right, or so slow in gathering decision making criteria that we’d never take a step forward. We refuse to be the company getting ahead because we are the best guessers.
My tribute to our team is not that we make perfect decisions. It’s that we aren’t afraid to make calculated decisions and then spend the time afterward to make them good. Sometimes that means a little effort and sometimes it means grinding out a “win” by addressing head-on the factors that weren’t immediately evident. In each situation though it means we focus on moving forward with all the information we can gather and we don’t let go until the results are real.
This is extremely important in the world of technology services, where our clients (including many of you who are reading this) hire us to help them do things that they couldn’t do as well, or as thoroughly, without us. There’s no room in the fast moving world of technology for “analysis paralysis” but there’s also no room in competitive business for guessing. Our focus on making our decisions good.
The trade-off here is that we’ll never be able to claim the perfect story that awards and PR pieces perpetuate. Let’s be honest, though. Those picture perfect stories are not where true impact is made. We’re proud to be the company that wantspeople to see behind the curtain. Someday we hope to compete for an award for the “deepest” company – whenever we figure out how to measure that. Until then we’re honored to be considered a Colorado business success story alongside some pretty amazing colleagues, knowing that the next chapter means a lot more effort in making our decisions good ones.
(Originally shared here as a published post on LinkedIn)
