Like many of my “vintage”, I enjoyed Dr. Spencer Johnson’s 1998 classic, *Who Moved My Cheese?*; a motivational tale written as a parable that illustrates the different ways in which people, or businesses, respond to change.
As an upwardly mobile thirty-something tech executive in the 90’s, I spent the requisite 45 minutes of introspection and determined I was fully prepared for any mouvement de fromage.
Now as a fifty-something (extremely early fifty-something), mostly mobile tech executive, I find that forcing change (i.e. moving your own cheese) is much more productive than trying to deal with or adapt to changes outside of your control.
"The quicker you let go of old cheese, the sooner you find new cheese."
— Dr. Spencer Johnson
Our Journey
At MojoTech we get to do great work and are always aspiring to change the world (of software) for the better. At least in some small part. To do that, we feel it is up to us to understand, inspire and inform our clients on how to best use technology. Sometimes even advising not to use it at all. Rewind to eight years ago, when our Founder Nick hung the MojoTech shingle, the thought of recommending not writing code for a client would have been silly — especially when you have a mere two employees and both are software engineers.
But over the years, as the demand for our business has grown, our Cheese itself has moved…a lot.
Like many small businesses, we have been faced with many options on how to run and grow our type of business. These include:
- Going “deep” into one type of solution, package it, and repeat
- Focus on a market/industry segment and be the “go-to” provider
- Expand services/reach and grow out
These options have their own sets of pluses and minuses, but for us, they were all a bit too “inwardly” focused. Our job is really to be an extension of, and a multiplier for, our clients. Their issues are our issues, their competition is our competition, their opportunity is our opportunity.
Additionally, our internal motivation is governed by its own set of principles:
- We have a desire to move up the value chain in our client’s eyes
- We want to tackle bigger and more challenging projects
- We seek to add new, broader, more diverse talent
- We embrace new technologies and techniques
- We invest in skills growth for our people
Through the maze
Perhaps through equal parts good luck and good management, over the years we have “moved” our practice closer to our clients and their customers.
What started as a boutique engineering firm, has continued to iterate and respond to feedback — just like good software! We have added Product Managers, UX experts, Designers and Marketers through the years. We have also helped clients manage the growth of mobile, the move to the Cloud, with branding and fundraising, hiring, and DevOps. Every year brings a new challenge — wearables and IoT, Containers, and CX. And we hope this need to change never stops, and we hope we can always play a role in our clients’ success. And after all, that is the real Cheese.
So, who moved my dev shop? It seems we did...