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February 15, 2017
This month, the Social Edge Consulting team is marking our fifth year in business. A leader I worked for earlier in my career would often conclude his remarks with, “work hard every day, but don’t forget to stop and smell the roses.” It is good advice for a team at a small business where every day is a whirlwind, with team members wearing multiple hats in order to effectively support our clients, partners, and each other. This five-year milestone is a great opportunity to reflect on our journey as a company as well as look toward the future.
The core of our business remains true to our early days back in February 2012.
For many of us, prior to Social Edge, we witnessed the power of collaboration and online communities as clients of Jive Software. We recognized that our collective knowledge was a timely gift we could leverage along with many years of corporate experience. With Social Edge, we looked to become sherpas for those that would make the social business journey after us. Other team members who were in the early years of their career were drawn to a small company that advocated a smarter, more modern way to work. This new way to work tapped into their “digital native” genes. These two groups weaved together project teams with a variety of functional skills to become a powerful force, combining fresh ideas with “experienced” professionals to serve our clients.
Through our partnership with Jive, we branched out in 2014 to not only serve large
established customers but also the small and medium size business (SMB) market. This opened the door to not just implementing employee intranets but also externally facing customer and partner communities. The team is proud to have assisted over 300 clients in their social business journey across five continents. Some other key breakdowns of our clients include:
Within the virtual walls of the company we have expanded to just over 30 employees and 10 consultants. We live in 10 US states and territories, 2 Canadian provinces and 4 countries in Europe. We always enjoy getting together at Jive’s annual conference, JiveWorld 2017. Although most of the team works remotely, our use of Jive’s collaborative platform, along with daily video and instant messaging, keeps us connected to each other and our clients all year long.
Just over a year ago we formally established a self-organized approach versus a more traditional command and control management model. I spoke more about that
here. Now a year into the process, I can report that much of the self-organized philosophy was natural for us. We are now working to get to the next level of taking responsibility for each other and the company. At times it has challenged some of our long-standing sensibilities regarding organizational management, but with the support of one another and the shared commitment to succeed we continue to evolve our thinking and make solid progress.
Personally, I have learned so much over the last five years.
I have adjusted to the wisdom that a small business needs to do excellent work in a niche, while keeping our eyes open for new opportunities to grow and thrive. We are committed to advocating for social business in the workplace for employee collaboration as well as customer communities. As our clients continue to become more strategic with their communities, we have developed progressive post-launch services, integrations and add-on products to support the growth and vitality of their communities.
At this five-year mark, I want to express my deep appreciation of my Social Edge team members. It is clear that each of you could have worked at any company in the world, but you have chosen to spend a portion of your career with us at Social Edge. I am very thankful for that. Additionally, on behalf of the Social Edge team, I want to recognize our deep appreciation for the trust that our clients and partners have given us. You welcomed a small company into your business to provide you with expertise. Although there have been times where we have fallen short of our own high expectations, we hope you would agree that those are vastly outnumbered by many successful projects.
I hope to see many of you at JiveWorld in May of 2017. The Social Edge team is all signed-up and ready for Vegas! So I can say that we have stopped to smell the roses and they are wonderful. I’m glad we took a moment to celebrate. There is exciting work ahead of us and we are jumping in with both feet.
