Acuit Company Culture
Developing software in the highly competitive consulting industry is becoming hard.  It requires a combination of experienced and creative people to make things work. The software industry has matured and users will no longer tolerate poorly written and buggy software.  Developers are required to produce well crafted, full featured products in very short development cycles. There is very little margin for error or inefficiency, and very little room for administrative overhead. This is the setting under which Acuit people work.

This dilemma poses both blessings and a curse. The curse is obvious - hard work. The blessings are in disguise.  Because of an increasingly complicated market we are forced to hire only the most creative and productive people.  People that make things happen.  People who know how to deliver. These are people we love to be around. They are usually energetic and can see the upside potential in hard work.  Ok, so, sometimes they can be a bit strange but they possess the kind of fresh spirit that keeps an organization running at full pace.

Entrepreneurs
Probably the most rewarded quality at Acuit is the entrepreneurial spirit. We have made the choice to reward risk takers and entrepreneurs regardless of the possibility that they may eventually leave us to start their own company. This means that we will continually fuel this kind of behavior until an employee is ready to "leave the nest". We will intentionally equip and encourage a person for that potential event. Does that make us foolish? Perhaps, but we are genuinely concerned for the well-being of our people. If they end up leaving, then it was "meant to be", but if they can find pleasure at Acuit doing new and bold things then maybe that's worth it for everyone involved. We're not sure yet, but that's the policy as it stands!

Other things we reward
There are other qualities and actions we reward. In our business it is absolutely necessary that people are able to work independently. We reward independent problem solving. When a person can continually solve complicated problems without a lot of outside help they are clearly valuable to Acuit and will always be rewarded in any way we can find. True innovation is another scarce thing in the software business. There is a lot of "stealing", but not so much true innovation. When we detect an act of true innovation we pay. We pay because we know it's value, then we brainstorm to exploit new value from it. Sometimes we come up with some pretty neat inventions.

Things we expect from everyone
Every company has expectations of it's employees. That's obvious. But our expectations can sometimes drive a person to frustration. That's because our standards are measurably higher. People are stretched at Acuit. We require hard focused work and attention to detail. If you mess up because of an act of laziness or missing a point of detail you will hear about it from somebody. That's for certain. And that's what sometimes stretches people. Most people are not accustomed to being held to this kind of a standard and sometimes feel as though it is unjustified. But in the end they thank us a million times because they have grown because of the experience and are now ready for new and greater levels of frustration! 

Quality is another stumbling block for some people. In the 1970's American automobile companies discovered that they needed an entirely new level of quality to succeed against Japanese manufacturers. It was a level of quality their employees had no frame of reference to understand. But they did it. This is the kind of quality we are enforcing at Acuit. If you're not accustomed to it, it can really drive you crazy.  But it's necessary to compete so we can't allow exceptions. Our development processes and people must be tuned to meet this challenge or we will not succeed. It's actually a very simple choice.

The software business reinvents itself every 3 to 4 years. That means that technologies that were hot five years ago are now fond memories. We cannot afford not to learn new things. So this is another of those basic expectations of our employees. And it's something we can't always force people to do. They really have to do it on their own. That's really hard because people have jobs to do and to be most productive they will naturally use the technologies they feel comfortable with - even if there are more modern ways of doing things. To keep on the cutting edge we often discuss new technologies amongst ourselves when we discover them. This helps employees know that we expect them to investigate new technologies for themselves.

Our expectations are high at Acuit, but grace is also a strong component. We're not gunning for victims. We just need to keep the competency level high and our quality higher than the competition. We understand the balance.

So is it all work and no play?
We sure hope not!  Again this is a matter of balance. Sometimes when you focus strongly on making business successful you lose the balance between work and fun. We try to keep things in focus. We've participated in mountain climbs, off-site strategy meetings in the country, picnics and other fun things. Clearly all of these things cost the company money but they help us keep life in balance, and that's what it's all about.

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