Don Brown co-founded Interactive Intelligence Inc. with the
mentality of a street fighter who had to scrap for everything. The
message was nothing would come easy for his employees and that
they would need to outwork and outhustle the competition each
and every day in order to succeed.
“A company has to have a personality,” says Brown, the company’s chairman, president and CEO. “We typically compete against
much bigger companies. To some extent, I think that makes it easier. It can be you against the big guys. You’re always the underdog,
and you’re always having to explain why you are better. It’s a little
bit easier to create that sense of togetherness and camaraderie in
that environment.”
Interactive was created to help clients increase productivity by
aligning their communication systems through technology.
“We’ll call into their organization as if we are a prospective
customer looking to do business with them to understand
what the view is from the outside,” Brown says. “We’ll also go
into their contact centers where they are actually interacting
with their customers and we’ll sit down and listen to calls and
interview their contact center agents. … If we have a good feel
for the difficulties they are having in servicing their customers,
we can identify opportunities to help them solve those problems.”
That tenacity has enabled Brown’s company to grow quickly, leaping from $62.9 million in 2005 revenue to $109.9 million in 2007
revenue. Brown knew he needed to find a way to maintain that
energy and spirit in the long term if the 650-employee company
was to keep growing in the years ahead.
“A company is always started by people who feel strongly
about something,” Brown says. “In the early days, when that
company has a handful of people, that personality comes
through very loud and clear because it’s the founder. It’s those
people and their personalities who are reflected in the organization. What tends to happen is that gets lost along the way.”
A strong personality gives employees an identity and something to grasp onto with their job.
“It allows employees to become more emotionally invested in
the company,” Brown says. “If you can identify and articulate
the personality of the company, it makes it easier for potential
employees to match themselves. … You tend to attract people
who have the right sort of mindset. It does allow them to identify more strongly with the company and with the leadership
and the mission. That sort of emotional identification tends to
help people care more. When they care more, they work harder and they do a better job.”
Here’s how Brown got his employees to care, and keep caring, about their work.
