Why WorkPoint’s Evolution Is Powered By People
From WorkPoint CEO, Claus Jul Christiansen & WorkPoint People & Culture Manager, Sina Feldborg Mortensen
WorkPoint began as a founder-led software vendor more than 20 years ago. Over time, the company expanded into software consultancy. Today, we've evolved into a pure SaaS provider, with a 100% partner-driven go to market model.
Here at WorkPoint, our indirect business model is built on two things: a great product and strong partnerships. That might be easy to say, but it’s hard to achieve. The truth is, we’re on a journey of transformation, and sometimes that can be a rough ride.
Here’s why people are so important to making change happen at WorkPoint.
– Claus Jul Christiansen, CEO & Sina Feldborg Mortensen, People & Culture Manager
Three key takeaways from this article
- People are the true enabler of change.
- Working with culture and mindset should be an integral part of a company's strategy.
- There is no quick fix - it requires persistence and attention to change an organisation's culture.
People are core to the WorkPoint strategy
90% of our costs, as a company, are people. And it’s the people that come to work every day that create the value for our partners and customers.
When they sold the company in 2022, founders Hanne and Peter Jørgensen sought investors who could scale and expand WorkPoint globally. They chose Norwegian software investor Viking Venture due to its track record, expertise, and ability to scale the company. Today, as a mid-size B2B company, WorkPoint has a very bold growth plan, with the ambition of a five-fold increase over the next few years.
We’ve got a great software solution for helping information-based organisations intelligently handle the ever-increasing amount of data, documents, and emails. But people make it real. That’s why talent and talent nurturing are very important for us. Good people are enablers. They’re ambassadors of change. They make it happen.
Without people, there is no organisation and no organisational change. That’s why it’s important for us to clearly define all aspects of our business strategy – what we are trying to do for our customers and partners, the value we create, and why our people should show up for work every day.
Embracing changes with a growth mindset
All these different elements are very tightly interconnected. So you can’t take one thing out and still have success. Everything is linked.
When Viking Venture took over, it became clear that to achieve our ambitions for growth, we needed to make strategic changes within the organisation. In the last year or so, we’ve come a long way in defining and landing our approach. But we’re not done yet.
Change is constant, which makes it an ongoing journey, not a final destination. As an organisation, we are going through many changes. We know change isn’t easy, and it requires a new way of thinking. That’s why we’re embracing changes with a growth mindset.
As part of this change process, and our everyday work, we all make mistakes. Nothing’s perfect in any way. What’s important is that we’re not afraid to make mistakes and learn from them. We have a formula for what we believe in, and we try to be true to it every day.
In terms of where we want to be as an organisation to realise our ambitions, we’re not there yet, but we’re close. As we transform into a pure SaaS company, we are on a journey in terms of further developing our mindsets, and how we articulate the customer value creation through our partners.
We have made major changes, but now we need to put them in motion and really start to realise the benefits. We need to get all the different moving parts within WorkPoint working together on the new focus – and that takes a little more time.
Putting more into people
It’s one thing to make changes. But mindset is a big part of it as well, negotiating and collaborating with other people – both internal and external – in new ways.
Adopting a growth mindset – being able to make mistakes and learn from them – is new and not always easy to do for some people. That’s why leadership is so important for bringing about change, not in respect of telling people what to do, but how to do it.
Organisational size also has an impact on how to embed changes inside and outside the company. In the past, with only a handful of people, change was much easier to enact. Now with the organisation growing beyond 50 employees across different locations – we have offices in Esbjerg and Copenhagen as well as numerous home offices across Denmark and internationally – managing change is more complicated.
3 keys for helping people adapt to change
People react differently to change. There will always be those who are resistant to it. Adopting a growth mindset right is an important step in helping them adapt. That’s why we’ve identified 3 keys for unlocking a growth mindset:
- Be curious about learning new things. Not knowing something doesn’t make someone a failure – it’s actually the launch pad for learning new things.
- Have the courage to fail. Being afraid to fail is dangerous, because it leads to inertia; people who are afraid to fail don’t try new things. No one wants to fail all the time, but when we sometimes do, that’s okay. Learning from our mistakes is important for our professional and personal growth.
- The ability to give and receive feedback. For our organisation to become stronger and grow, we need to develop resilience. Feedback helps us to understand what’s going well and what could be improved.
A clear path for professional and personal growth
You can’t tell someone to have a growth mindset, but you can encourage them to embrace it, and see the personal as well the professional benefits.
The benefit of embracing a growth mindset – being open to learning new things, and being resilient to failure – has personal benefits on top of professional ones. At times, all of us fall into having a fixed mindset about something. What’s important is that you’re aware of it.
Adopting a growth mindset helps individuals open the door to new possibilities. Multiply that across an organisation, and it becomes very powerful, improving the way people communicate, collaborate, and interact with each other in a professional context.
One aspect that we’re really excited about is creating feedback loops. It’s something we plan to roll out across the organisation. Why are we so excited? We’ve implemented it on the leadership team, and we’ve seen the value in getting different people’s perspectives on what we do. It can also help to break down the silos and facilitate cross-functional collaboration between geographically dispersed people and teams.
By supporting people, and nurturing them with feedback, we’re creating a more resilient company culture where people have the confidence to fail fast and improve. Fundamentally, it will change and improve the way we work with partners and support them. Over time, all these things combined will start to have an impact. They’ll create clarity and openness across the organisation, ultimately leading to better business results.
From a leadership perspective, we need to continuously nurture a growth mindset in every aspect of our business to enable WorkPoint to evolve, grow, and achieve our ambitions through people. Our leaders will always serve as role models for the rest of the organisation, and it's important that they not only embrace a growth mindset themselves and act as good examples, but also that they continue to maintain focus on it, in every aspect of our doings at work.