Our final core value (and the last post in this series) is about passion.
The picture at right is of last year’s open house at our new Lakes Region office. It was a total blast – we broke the local Chamber of Commerce record for most attendees at an open house, packed out the house, served great food and wine, and had a great time with our clients and friends in the community. The picture is of me standing on a table, giving the “wow thank you for coming” speech.
We have a lot of fun doing what we do. We have a lot of energy in this team. What drives us can best be summed up by passion. Sometimes that passion is evident – such as standing on a table in a packed house. But often it is much more subtle, but no less there, as we monitor clients networks proactively, prevent security breaches, plan for the future, leverage technology, and work together for the best interest of our clients.
For us, for this team, our core motivation is not the carrots we get, nor the sticks that we fear. It’s about the passion that is within us. Take a “typical” Mainstay engineer (we don’t think there is much typical about our team members, but then again, we’re pretty proud of them!) and you will find an individual who genuinely cares about our clients, is deeply concerned about quality of work, is fascinated with technology, gets energy from innovation, and has an unqualified commitment to do things right. This all adds up to passion.
Passion is an internal motivator, a following of one’s values, a regard of one’s intrinsic, unique desires. It’s an energy that comes from within – it is not forced on from without.
It’s passion that keeps us up late learning the newest technology. Passion that impels us to evolve to provide service offerings our clients don’t even know they need yet. It’s passion that holds our standards high.
You’ll notice the value isn’t just “passion,” it’s “passion in all we do.” It’s not that we don’t have tasks or days we don’t like, it’s that ultimately, if passion fades, we believe that is a bad sign. When an individual can create and do great work that they enjoy, that they were “created” for, and they do it well, and they receive the natural benefit of that work, passion is inevitable. We believe passion can be sustained within a business, and that it can be the difference between a daily joy, and a daily job.
I’ve had the chance to meet with many incredible organization leaders, through my years at Mainstay. I’ve gotten to see firsthand that passion looks like many different things, but that it is always a powerful and inspiring force.
I’ve been passionate about delivering the highest quality IT services to organizations in northern New England who don’t normally have access to enterprise IT departments. I was passionate about it when I founded Mainstay 9 years ago, and I’m even more passionate today, and I get the privilege of sharing that passion with an incredible team of professionals. I can’t wait to experience the passion that the next decades will bring!