We are almost there, 6 months after the start. In my mind Feb. 2008 was the official start of zevenseas and on August 2008 we are in business for 6 months under the name zevenseas.
If we count up all the SharePoint experience of Daniel, Robin, Mark and me I think we reach 15 years of solid SharePoint experience. Probably that is a lot compared to a few other companies.
I must say, till now it is a fantastic ride and our decision to do 100% SharePoint has paid off! Everyone is happy with his role and the things that we wanted to do differently have evolved into a kind of natural philosophy that is basically something Daniel and I had in our mind. Some of these are related to the 7 C's (Collaboration, Consulting, Coding, Creativity, Community, Content,Capable) but some are more how we think a consultancy business should be. I pick two things we value a lot:
- friday@sea;
- responsibility.
The first one is a commitment we agreed on and the second one is something we give.
friday@sea
Now after almost 6 months we can conclude that this Friday is really important. Besides the fact that we skipped some Fridays because of holidays etc. it is clear that this one day a week paid off. Sure, it is a non-billable day :-)
On this day we come together and we evaluate the week in detail (including demonstrations). The rest of the day is to: discuss problems, new solutions, sharing knowledge etc. It is not rocket science but a day to keep in touch on all important issues related to the company. Without this we simply cannot run our company because the social connection wouldn't been there.
Responsibility
Many companies talk about responsibility but are not really giving this responsibility to team members. We really try to give it, other team members are the coach but don't touch the ball. We don't interfere (only guidance) with how to do it, we rather evaluate the end result.
Overall after these 6 months we can be happy with the total end result. We have national and international companies as a customer and we are happy to Grow.
The next phase of zevenseas will be to focus on getting new quality consultants aboard. Check out this post and maybe you are interested in joining our team!