More Tenure, Fewer Problems

Over the last year, we’ve become more aggressive about tracking and visualizing things that are valuable to our business. And while it’s no replacement for simply paying attention to what’s happening in the office, on projects, and in client workspaces, the data are beginning to corroborate our feelings. Which is fun.

I’ve started collecting connected bits of data in a Numbers document – tenure by individual for everybody who’s ever worked at Undercurrent, monthly sales totals, headcount, project types/durations/fees – and building crude visualizations of data that seem interesting.

We’ve noticed that over the last few months, things are just going better: projects aren’t going as far over-budget, our project types are more in line with our aspirations, and people are busy. I’ve always had a hypothesis that as we accrete more UC Experience – measured in total number of months people have spent on the USS Undercurrent – we’ll become more efficient, more effective and more profitable as a business. My analysis discounts previous experience (with the belief that we do things a little differently here) and favors time spent working and developing the UC Way.

And while I won’t be sharing efficiency/profitability metrics here, the connection between tenure and my informal assessment of Undercurrent’s performance is clear: when people spend more time with each other, everything is easier.