Building a Great Team

One of the biggest complements I have ever received about Certus was from a respected industry Partner of a Tier 1 Management Consultancy I met recently who said “The nicest thing about Certus is that it works like an exclusive members club, to work there you have to be invited to join. Many want to join but very few are accepted”. I remember walking out of the office and into the sunlight of a hot summers day smiling. 

Now this should not be interpreted by any means as arrogance but our mantra at the company is simple we focus upon looking after our employees and ask in return they look after us as a company. We achieve this by being open and honest with them about the state of the company, where we are heading short and long term, the challenges we face, and what we need them to focus on to make us successful. In doing so, we look out for one another and the result is we know that our people will look after our customers. Without our customers we don’t have a business, but it is our people that do this and not the cloud technology we implement. Hence our people are actively involved in the hiring process, their opinion matters and their voice needs to be heard especially as we expand, and most importantly we need to listen! 

We hire people that we feel we like to work with on a day-to-day basis and we have a positive connection with. As a team we make the choices (right or wrong) and we continue to surround ourselves by the people that we feel we can depend upon. (I can hear my Head of HR now rolling her head at this moment as I write this!). But regardless of all the legalese around employment law all businesses ultimately are people businesses and our relationships are the foundation to our success. We can teach anyone with a degree of aptitude the technical skills of the job. What we can’t teach is likeability, positive attitude and how an individual can integrate and work as part of a great team. The ability to do this is what we look for. 

As a consequence we have built a great team at Certus – and before anyone says anything - no we don’t always get it right either! But we try and that’s all we can ask of one another that we continue to give it our best day in and day out in building a great company. We want all our people to be happy and enjoy working for the company. It needs to be fun! 

Teams at Certus win business deals – not individuals, and teams at Certus implement Oracle Cloud solutions successfully, and most importantly teams at Certus focus on ensuring our customers are happy and have a positive experience and become advocates. A bit cliché to finish this blog entry off with a Steve Jobs quote but hey what the hell did he know? “Great things in business are never done by one person they're done by a team of people”. The most successful organisations have this, so go on ask yourself the question “are you one of them?”