We released Hercules!

This is an internal code name for a product that may not be available to our clients for another few months, but the release of Hercules is symbolic of the very DNA of Sokrati. It symbolizes the relentless hours and countless weekends put in to deliver, the indescribable camaraderie from everyone within the company and finally the one thing that brought all of us together. In the due course we discovered a new blood-line and we are an even more energized company! 

I would like to go over the events of the last few months to highlight upon the subtle changes that were done which made us accomplish an Herculean task! 

A Common Goal

It all started with a common goal. Instead of listing down 2-4 goals to achieve in a quarter we listed down the one goal in that quarter that will bolster us up. This one goal should be so impacting that the whole company will benefit from the accomplishment. This one goal should provide the power for self-alignment. And finally bring us all together into striving to fulfill it.  

Sokrati is all about experimentation. Unlike other companies that may follow a traditional route, we at Sokrati have always tried to inculcate anything new that will push us to "Pedal to the mettle". The one common goal was something new that Ashish read in "The Five Dysfuntions of a Team". This book was suggested by Bhavin and I am guessing he saw something wrong in the way things are run in Sokrati :)

This common goal was arrived upon after adequate deliberation and was calibrated as the one thing that will provide us a solid grounding to the future. 

Transparency 

Having a goal is just not enough. Does everyone in the company know about the goal? Is the goal well-received? It is one thing to come up with the goal and it is a whole other thing to be able to bring transparency to it. It is that one goal for the quarter and everyone within the company needs to know why we need it and how we are tracking it. 

Every wall of Sokrati now was plastered with the common goal and had weekly updates on how the goal was shaping up. 

Coming Together

Within a few weeks of the launch of the goal and after adequate amount of confusion was dispelled, one could clearly see alignment to the common goal. No one wanted to be left out or be distant to the goal. The entire engineering moved to one floor so that they could help each other, business team started engaging more frequently with engineering so as to give appropriate and timely feedback to the product, recruiting team was pushing harder to close any hiring requirements. In short every team had magically come together to become one giant team all pumping towards launching Hercules!  

Celebration

Yes and we did it! A product that would have taken 75 man months to finish was accomplished within 3 months of working together. A feat such as this has no easy words to describe. The founders pitched-in to take the entire company out for dinner. The evening started with a little presentation about the quarterly goal and was handed over to the teams to go over the details. It was so heart-warming to see every team go over how Hercules has changed all our lives. It was not a mere release of a product, it was infact the blood-line of the entire company. 

Another tremendous team effort! The Quarterly Common Goal has now become a tradition.