Transformations-Time to Get Uncomfortable

A couple of years ago, my wife Grace and I were at a party of some sort, without the girls, and spent much of the time just talking alone. We had been married about a dozen years and were contemplating what it meant to raise our kids in a completely safe, secure, lily white and possibly sterile suburban environment. Out of that conversation came the conviction that we were too comfortable and that our kids may become 2 dimensional. It was time to get uncomfortable - to challenge ourselves while enhancing our family values. This was the genesis of our 2006 sabbatical where we took the kids out of school, closed up our home, and cruised on our boat for the winter. The Bahamas was like a natural playground and a perfect canvas to paint a different life - even if just for the winter. Our discomfort for being out of our ordinary routines and environment will continue to pay dividends for the rest of our lives.

Quality Solutions is celebrating its 20th birthday and like any pivotal moment, it makes good sense to stop the hamster wheel for a moment and reflect on who we are, what we do and how we conduct ourselves. That is also the premise of this blog - climbing up the mast, getting away from the clutter and noise of the deck, and gaining new perspective.

20 years ago, when Fran Toolan founded Quality Solutions, the underlying principal was to deliver real, high value solutions as a consulting company and getting away from the in-vogue large consulting company, large budget, large team, low value projects that prevailed (and still survive). It was founded on the principal of innovation and fresh perspective. When our first application was written and delivered - the Purchase Order Management System for Simon & Schuster - I was fresh out of college at St. Mikes in Vermont. As it were, I had also worked for IBM in Burlington in the late 80's as an on-campus rep selling IBM PC's with windows Version 1. After a short stint at Andersen Consulting in Hartford programming main frame systems for insurance companies, I visited this startup company based in North Reading, MA that my sister Susan had joined. I was introduced to a small group of dedicated people excited about technology and innovative solutions. At the time, it was cutting edge to be writing windows based business applications against a relational SQL database. I had to be a part of Quality Solutions.

Our favorite anecdote from the early days was that we had to order a mouse separately - it didn't come with the computer. During the early days of training, we sometimes had to coach people to roll the mouse on the desk, not wave it in the air.

So where do we go from here? Fortunatley, we are a small company with a strong publisher community, highly stable application base and deeply experienced team. We have recognized that it is natural, but not desirable, for a well established company to become comfortable and not reach out, but we won't let that happen. We are dedicated to examining everything we do and to bring innovation back to the forefront. Nothing will remain unquestioned - except our absolute dedication to our clients,book publishing and our team.

Starting with some fundamentals - simply how we operate and communicate - I have the enviable position to be experimenting with new technology - from Google Apps to iPhone (wahoo!). I'll put up some posts on these things as I dig deeper, but the important thing is that this is just the beginning.

Last summer we launched - in earnest - our Sotware-As-A-Service hosted applications model and the response has been overwhelming. Signing onto a commercial datacenter and going to a monthly subscription pricing model has been very popular and we getting great traction. This shows that innovation into an existing stable based of solutions and clients can rapidly yield benefits for everyone.

On the development side, we have built a robust ecommerce solution for publishers and developed all new functionality in .Net for our Title Management Web app.

Our April User Conference is one of those things that has been a long time coming - and begs the question - why not earlier. Initially we were hoping to get 50 users, now we are scrambling to work out logisitics for 125-150.

The interesting parallel here is that publishers and book publishing in general is at the same crossroads as Quality Solutions - well established, but in need of a fresh perspective and innovative energy. I think all book publishers should be examining their current state of mind and decide if it is time for change.

I for one am excited to be a part of a 20 year old company with 'startup' energy.

I would love to hear from others about this philosophical topic and learn if you have found yourself at a similar crossroads.

The question to ask yourself is this: are you too comfortable?