Culture is Our Superpower

As an Appalachia Technologies employee for more than half the company's existence, Mike Williams has been influential in establishing the blueprint for company culture.  Now, as the President of Appalachia, Mike is reflecting back on how our culture is a differentiator and how we got here.

Reflecting on 20 Years of Innovation and Growth

At 20 years young, there’s so much good that could be written. With hindsight being 20/20,  I want to take you back 10 years ago to which, in my opinion, was “the Appalachia transformation.” This was when we challenged ourselves to dream about creating a culture within Appalachia that we all wished we had found previously in our careers...but didn’t. I say “dream” because we had a rather lofty vision of what we wanted “us” to look and feel like. We knew it wouldn’t be easy, and we also knew it would never be finished.

The Essence of Culture

Culture is nuanced, elusive, and requires committed intention. It needs to breathe and evolve...especially when you’re in growth-mode. There’s also a huge non-negotiable - it has to be embraced by every leader in the organization. Without these things, it simply can’t exist.

To begin, we needed a framework, the bones if you will, that not only promotes individuality, creativity and respectful dissent, but it also had to have a core center that held everything together across the critical aspects of our business. We needed to encourage engagement and accountability on the things most important to our company, and it needed to be measurable.

Enter our core values. We decided the five (5) critical aspects of Appalachia are: 1) Our People, 2) The Client Experience, 3) Teamwork, 4) Relentless Communication and 5) Improving and Evolving. And look, there’s a lot of values that could’ve fit, but with these five, we felt we could directly associate them...they scale!

Core Values in Action

We’re all set - time to jam on this culture thing!!!! Well...not just yet. Core values are really just words. They’re open to interpretation, especially given each of us has a different role within Appalachia. We needed to detail “what it (a core value) looks like” using real-world examples for each role within Appalachia. So we did...we laid out our core actions for everyone to see. We now had our core values...and associated core actions!

Now we’re all set, time to jam on the culture thing!!!! Well...not just yet, we now need to make them relevant, purposeful and a part of our Appalachia DNA. We did this a few ways:

• A large part of our interview process and annual performance reviews are based on our core values.
• We pick a revolving core value or core action “of-the-month” and we openly discuss them at our bi-monthly company meetings.
• They’ve now become part of our daily conversations, incentives, and recognition programs. We quote our values all the time, which is really cool...they’re sticky!

A Peek into Our Core Values

With all that backdrop, here’s a peak into our core values, the framework of our culture. Please know that there’s soooooo much that could be written about each (maybe future blogs?). Consider below just barely scratching the surface.

Our People: The Heart of Appalachia

We begin with our people...we have to - they’re what makes Appalachia (and your company) special.

• We believe the employee experience is systemic to the client experience. Happy employees = happy clients.
• We go to extraordinary lengths to support our people both professionally and personally. The professional part is our obligation, the personal part is the secret sauce.

Relentless Communication: The Glue Holding Us Together

Next is relentless communication...the #1 problem in every company!

• We believe that the vast majority of time, the difference between a positive and negative human experience is communication. Quite simply, it’s the glue.
• Communication is also listening! And because we listen, we know the primary reason a client leaves a vendor/partner is poor communication. Many of our clients are with us because of this exact thing....and we won’t lose a client here!

The Client Experience: Our Ultimate Goal

For a professional service company like Appalachia, the client experience (CX) is EVERYTHING!

• Happy employees, that are communicators, that genuinely want to solve client challenges means we’re well on our way to owning the CX!
• We crave client relationships and partnerships. Our clients are much more to us than just “customers.”
• Mistakes happen, especially in our space. We own them quickly and completely (and learn from them).

Teamwork: The Collective Power

It takes a village...and there’s nothing more powerful than teamwork rooted in serving each other.

• Like any successful team, our power is in the sum of the parts. We readily and fully embrace that we’re better together.
• Since we all have a different, yet overlapping and dependent set of responsibilities, communication (the glue!) is essential.
• At Appalachia, there are no egos, and you’ll never hear “that’s beneath my pay grade.”

Continuous Improvement: Our Path to Success

Improving and evolving is how we learn, grow, and ultimately succeed. We strive to be better today than we were yesterday.

• Mistakes are learning opportunities...and we’re ALL a work-in-progress. Own it publicly, understand why it happened, and then do what’s needed to ensure it doesn’t happen again.
• We never say “well, that’s the way we’ve always done it.” We’re always evaluating and measuring (data, client feedback, vibe etc.). We embrace change as an opportunity, not as a chore.

The Engine of Our Success – Making Forward Progress

In the last 10 years we’ve learned that our culture isn’t just a nice-to-have - it’s the engine that keeps us moving forward. It’s why our employees stick around, why our clients keep coming back, and why we’re still having fun after all these years.

So here’s to the next 20 years of teamwork, growth, and working with the best humans possible!  When you’ve got a culture this good, the sky’s the limit, and in a lot of ways, we’re just getting started.

Mike Williams, President

Mike has worked in IT for 30+ years, serving in both technical and leadership roles (at his heart, he’s a customer experience and culture guy). He’s a very proud Dad to his two sons and enjoys baseball, live music, and a firepit. Don’t get him started talking about crypto and NFT’s - you’ll never get this time back (you’ve been warned!).