Softcat's Martin Hellawell shook hands with all his employees, while QuantIQ's Stuart Fenton listens to music most of the day. We caught up with this duo, as well as eight other channel entrepreneurs, to find out what idiosyncrasies they feel are - or were - crucial to the success of their businesses
‘If you can't look back every three months and see something different about your company, you're going backwards'
Entrepreneur: Peter Sweetbaum
Credentials: CEO of managed services provider IT Lab: 2014 - present
Quirks: Horizon scanning
"We have a formal board that looks at horizon scanning. Every three months we look at what's coming down the path in terms of evolution of technology so that we're well positioned to take advantage of it.
"Another thing I say to the company every three months at our quarterly meeting is, if we can't look back every three months and see something demonstrably different about the company, we're probably going backwards, particularly in our space. So we list the top 10 things about us that looks different over that three-month period and what we have done to progressively move the business forward. If we can't list 10 things, that's probably an issue.
"Also, I recognise that every single person in the organisation has a role to do. It's not about hierarchy; we're all in the same trench. And that's really important.
"We understand entirely that employees are coming here to help develop their career, so we need to look for ways to ensure they have the opportunity to do that. People don't stay in organisations for 10 years; they move on. We hire smart, ambitious people and smart, ambitious people inevitably want to progress. We understand and support that reality by recognising that we can give people the opportunity to genuinely get something out of the experience of being in IT Lab."
