What Makes a Business “The Best Place to Work”?

Last week, I was informed that the North Dakota Young Professionals selected Sundog as the Best Place to Work in our state. Two of our team members are in Bismarck today accepting the award on behalf of Sundog. The NDYP is an initiative by former Governor John Hoeven in collaboration with the Rural Development Council and conjunction with the Center for Technology & Business. The NDYP is dedicated to advancing opportunities for young professionals throughout North Dakota.

A pretty cool designation and we’re proud of it!

If you were to ask any of our team member what makes Sundog a great place to work, you would undoubtedly hear “it’s the people.” I couldn’t agree more. The team members are like family and they make coming to work each and every day a real pleasure. Our culture developed by hiring great people and it’s the culture that allows us to retain those great minds.

Company cultures are tough to define, tricky to create, hard to adjust and sometimes impossible to change. It’s been my experience – from both working for a large software company and starting a business - that if you begin with a set of core values as your bedrock and hire people that truly live by those values, the rest becomes much less complicated.

It’s important that cultures continually evolve and improve, but this requires careful management. Roger Connors and Tom Smith recently published a book called Change the Culture, Change the Game. They open the book by stating their core belief about culture: “Manage your culture or it will manage you.” Building your culture around a set of core values allows you to manage from a stable foundation or, as I like to call it, “home plate.” When you do this, moving forward, making adjustments and giving each team member a voice becomes easy, because you - and everyone else - know where home plate is.

As for this award – it’s easily a home run. One that our team will always remember and be thankful for.