Blog of Roger Greene, CEO

As much or more than other firms, software companies rely on people to grow. Finding good people takes time, though. One shortcut is to acquire or merge with other companies. Most of the attention surrounding M&A is on the technology, but to us, people are at least as much of the value. All companies need fresh ideas and perspectives in order to thrive. We believe a mix of ideas is ideal – some from current staff and some from new employees.

There is nothing quite like adding a team of people who have taken a different approach to making a company grow. They have technical and market knowledge. They have customer relationships. Many of them have experienced a company’s birth and growth – what it is like to work in a start-up. That is the environment we want to sustain, even as we approach our 20^th year. As we combine new teams with our employees who have made us successful, everyone benefits from the new mix of perspective and experience.

So where do we look? Typically not in our own backyard. In the past three years, we have acquired four companies. They are in four different cities. This is more than coincidence; it has become strategy. Yes, we would like it if all employees were in one location. But that isn’t practical.

To find companies in our industry with a compatible culture and complementary technology/products, we have to go where they are. That is usually somewhere else. We could ask them to move. Many companies have tried. From the stories I hear, though, it doesn’t work because 90% of people like to stay where they are, and those that do move can end up regretting it. So we haven’t asked. By default, people stay where they are. (If someone does want to move to another office, we see if it makes sense.) We work hard at distributed management. We use premium quality teleconferencing. We travel between offices.

In short, we make it work.

Happy New Year!

It has always bugged me when someone thinks a person is smart because of where they live (Silicon Valley, Boston, North Carolina), where they went to school (MIT, Harvard, Stanford), or where they work (Apple, Microsoft, Google). It is even worse when people believe that of themselves. I first noticed this after high school. Some kids thought they had it made as soon as they got into a good school. Then after college, I saw the same thing in the jobs that people got after college and graduate school. It was almost as though their lives had been leading up to college or getting their first job, and after that, they felt they could relax. I was surprised at how motivated some people were to get good grades to get into a top school or get a job at a prestigious company, and how little motivation they showed once they got there. I guess there is something different about motivation in the workplace; there is a different measuring system that is much less clear-cut than an academic grade point average. Thriving in the workplace requires a different set of skills and motivations.

The quality of your school and the reputation of your company matter, because at the best schools and companies there are extraordinary opportunities to learn. Grades, diplomas and titles mean something. But what matter most are your curiosity, your ambition, knowing how to think, and always looking for ways to improve.

That is my favorite Ipswitch value, which includes but goes way beyond our ethnic and religious mix. We want to relentlessly seek out different perspectives, have vigorous, healthy debate, and aspire to accomplish more. Having talented employees and partners with many different backgrounds greatly enhances that.

Most companies define values that matter to them. Some post their values prominently and refer to them often. For many years I was against writing ours down, or going out of our way to mention them, because I think values are expressed in what we do, not what we put on the wall or our web site. I want our values to reflect who we are.

As time passed, though, I realized that articulating our values would help us in several ways. First, with recruiting – we want to attract the kind of people who will enjoy and enhance the environment we have already created. Second, with managing – we use our values to explain how we expect all employees to work with each other, customers, partners, vendors and our communities. Third, with customers. We want all customers, current and prospective, to understand the people who are Ipswitch.

So we spent quite a bit of time discussing our values and writing them down. Our values are posted here. From your cumulative interactions with us, I hope you recognize us in these values, for they only matter if we use them as a guide and hold ourselves accountable to them. Please let us know how we are doing.