For the past 10+ years our core values have been a guiding light to leadership and people on the most important aspects of being a Fulcrum Group team member. Back then we completed an exercise where every team member told stories about the most impressive things other team members have done. We took those 30 or stories and distilled it down to the six most common aspects that made us successful in reflect who we are, now and in the future. NOTE: Also create a core values page and link this article back to it. 

Hiring practices 

For the first years of operations, we focused a lot of our hiring around technical ability and technology experience. This made for some hit and miss staffing decisions. Since then we now utilize things such as extended DISC testing for behaviors to be more certain that individuals natural tendencies match specific roles. We’ve also created more specific organizational roles and developed detailed job descriptions we call Strategic Plans, that include summary expectations, estimated times for core duties, key role metrics and a training roadmap. An onboarding training plan was developed by key teams to help in new team members getting up to speed. Some included aspects are the CEO spending an hour and a half explaining the core values, lunch and conversation with other department heads and even a fun nickname assigned to a team member after completing their first 90 days (reflective of their personality). 

Ongoing training 

The only thing worse than training a team member in them leaving, is not training a team member in them staying. We changed our internal training to not always be technical in nature. We’ve definitely done more custom cross trainings around cybersecurity, to complement our security awareness and HIPAA training tool and CJIS training requirements. But, we placed an emphasis on also training more around soft skills such as empathy, oral and written communications and the use of technology in technical support. 

Management practices 

Clients see the simple three option survey that we now include on all tickets but what they may not know is that results are published front and center for the entire organization into Microsoft Teams channels. Great is recognized in its own channel for celebration, and Good and Bad are considered be the opposite of great and reviewed by service management as opportunity areas for continuous service improvement efforts. We’ve implemented monthly one-on-one sessions to help reinforce expectations, identify opportunities to improve and grow. We also subscribe to an employee survey service for anonymous feedback and ranking from year to year. In normal operations, we seek to balance workloads so no one resource is overworked and doubled the amount of paid time off for team members their very first year. 

Activities and culture 

While it is important for service organization to work smart and sometimes hard, it is also important to celebrate success and have fun once in a while. We embrace fun activities such as internal cookoffs, of course our chili and queso cookoffs are too much fun. But, maybe our Christmas parties are more fun as they have featured skits, Fulcrum Jeopardy, dance offs, karaoke, casino nights and of course an awesome meal. There are other activities throughout the year, such as bowling night (with your Fulcrum bowling shirt), video game days, the pew pew shooting party and of course periodic happy hours. 

Service language 

Did you know we have our own internal service language? That’s right, sometimes the more simple the definition seems the more likely it needs to be clearly explained. Our Fulcrum Glossary is helpful in clarifying specific services, roles, outcomes, metrics definitions and other important explanations. 

Management framework 

The same year that Fulcrum Group was born, Vern Harnish published Mastering the Rockefeller Habits, which he updated in 2014 with Scaling Up: How a Few Companies Make It…and Why the Rest Don’t. After self-implementing the framework, we began utilizing tactics such as morning huddles to help ensure organizational alignment. Over the years, we implemented other things such as quarterly themes to drive new behaviors, rock planning for innovation, targeting fewer metrics that are more impactful, establishing a big hairy audacious goal and making sure we have the right person, in the right seat and doing things the right way. In 2022, we hired a business coach to assist with quarterly planning, annual planning and leadership accountability.