I started writing this post at the end of 2014. It had several broad goals that we hope to accomplish in 2015. Before I clicked “Publish” I reread the post. The information was too broad to be relevant to anyone on the outside, so I decided to refocus the post on the team philosophy here.

A few weeks ago our team gathered around what we affectionately call “The Pit” in our office. Every other week the engineering teams show off the new features they worked on and completed during the most recent sprint. As usual, the business team gets excited about the progress being made, yet always wants more. As I tell many people, we’ve got a lot of runway. There is a tremendous amount of innovation we are leading in the talent acquisition, management, and analytics space. Even with the dramatic success we enjoyed as a business in 2014, there is a hunger to go bigger in 2015, much bigger.

At the end of the demo, the executive team took front and center to discuss the goals of their department, and their personal goals. Some of the goals were logical next steps, while others were ambitious. The contents of which are confidential externally, but very overt to everyone that attended.

At the end of the session, we brought up the metrics for which our executive team is being judged. These are the end results that we will hit or exceed, if each of our specific goals are achieved. The same metrics that will cause me to receive (or not receive) a bonus, will be the same for a mobile engineer, office manager, and a designer. Our entire team will benefit when we bring on new clients, even though that means more effort to provide world-class products and technical support.

Our 2015 goal is to be successful as a group. Individual goals are important, but often times we need to sacrifice for the greater mission, and our bonus plan reflects that implicitly.