In the spirit of Valentine’s Day and why we “heart” our teams, I wanted to share a little tale from the Support Services Team…

Mary Ellen and I were interviewing candidates to add to our team, and Joe Prospect asked us what I thought was a fabulous question: “I keep hearing about the great culture at LiquidPlanner, but what does that mean to you?” Mary Ellen & I think alike a lot, so it was no surprise that our answers were pretty much the same.

In particular, we both love that everyone’s opinions are heard and matter here at LP. Sure, this means that discussions can sometimes get lively (and sometimes heated), as we all express ourselves. But nobody gets offended or takes anything personally. Some of my favorite moments are when I feel passionate about something and go all out to describe it, and then someone else does the same thing and I immediately have my light-bulb moment, and exclaim “Oh yeah, okay, I like his idea better, never-mind!”

A little sidebar here, but relevant I promise: As you can imagine, it’s important to apply discipline to these discussions to ensure that they result in useful, actionable ideas. LiquidPlanner, the tool, plays a key role in that. It is our reference point for the topics that are up for discussion in our twice-weekly triage meetings. It is the place that we capture the ideas and decisions that come out these discussions. It’s how we assign ongoing ownership of the action items.

With that framework in place, we are free to mix it up without spiraling into random chaos. This is part of the culture too. If we start to veer in that direction, someone on the team is guaranteed to yell out “rules of triage!” and thus our signal that we are veering off the intended focus of the discussion. This is hard to avoid sometimes with a smart and fiery team, but it’s that very energy that we love most about being part of the LiquidPlanner team.