The problem with good marketing
The payoff for successful marketing is supposed to be increased sales. One frustrating aspect of innovation services firms can be their inability to take advantage of all their marketing success....
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Google Analytics can’t measure what you really care about
Innovation services firms can use thought leadership marketing very effectively. At Atomic, one of our core value mantras is “teach and learn”. We practice this value and further our marketing efforts...
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Give a shit vs Care deeply
The value mantras of Atomic Object arose from a common understanding that lived in our collective heads and daily interactions. For example, it was during an interview debrief, when we were deciding...
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Creating financial leverage in a service firm
Innovation service companies, like Atomic Object, sell their time and talents to help clients grow revenue or expand a market through the creation of software. Without products of their own, innovation...
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Compensating sales people in software service firms
Salespeople are most often compensated either fully or partially with commission. The conventional wisdom is that sales people need incentives to sell and should be kept hungry through at-risk...
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Shutting down secondhand feedback
I have been aware for some time that my position and the demands of my job at Atomic Object isolate me, to some extent, from a complete and accurate understanding of how employees are feeling and what...
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Measuring the happiness of your company
People are the only valuable asset of an innovation services company. While reputation, client list, culture, standards and tribal knowledge are also valuable, those all derive from and are maintained...
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Pair lunch: an inexpensive, effective benefit to strengthen company bonds
There are easier places to work than Atomic Object. We don’t specialize in one industry or technology domain, so we’re constantly learning. We push hard to build the best app possible for a given...
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Transparency requires positive engagement
Transparency in a company does a lot of great things. Perhaps first among them is it builds trust. Transparency also creates the potential for broader employee participation in the analysis and...
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Could you build and run Atomic?
The philosophy behind Great Not Big isn’t simply one of avoiding growth, or a hard limit on how large Atomic Object might eventually be. Instead, it’s a question of focus. Our focus and priorities have...
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Company governance: sham or effective?
Nearly three years ago, Atomic started experimenting with a new form of governance. Today, our Board approves nearly everything brought in front of it. Does this mean we’ve created a rubber-stamping...
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Guidelines, rules, and consequences – the things I’ve learned
We have very few rules at Atomic Object. Our employee handbook is intentionally labeled “Atomic Guidelines”, and is full of examples, expectations, and explanations but very few concrete rules. The...
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What’s your company worth?
What is an innovation services firm worth? I had to answer this question when we started broadening the ownership of my company beyond its co-founders. The traditional answer to the question of what a...
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Is a company like family?
Can a company really be anything like a family? Is drawing the comparison naive, or a selfish attempt at employee manipulation by a cynical CEO? I use the word “family” for Atomic Object both casually...
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In Praise of the Worry Gene
I’ve lately come to appreciate what people at Atomic Object call the “worry gene”, especially in the people I work with. Pushing the genetic metaphor a bit, the worry gene encodes for proteins which,...
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A simple model of business value creation
When I started Atomic Object with my co-founder in 2001, I followed my instincts and engineering training, as I had no formal business education and very little business experience. I wish I’d known...
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Pairing with an assistant to slay the email beast
Keeping up with the 150 or so emails I get every day is a challenge, one that I fail at quite regularly. Happily, I’ve recently had a breakthrough on this thorny problem. Pairing with Jamie Lystra, our...
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Thinking Long-Term: Atomic Object’s 100 Year Birthday
My company is 13 years old this month. We’ve reached the average age of US corporations. We’ve succeeded in replacing me — our Grand Rapids headquarters has been more than ably run by Mike and Shawn...
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Succeeding at Succession – Raising up MPs & Becoming CEO
A company can’t reach the milestone of celebrating its 100-year anniversary unless it can out-live its founder. In fact, it can’t even get to the lesser goal of outliving the founder’s retirement...
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How to Avoid the Downsides of Transparency
I’ve always believed that innovation comes from people who care. When you care about your profession, your clients, your peers, and your company, you’re never entirely happy with the status quo. You...
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