In the August edition of vConnect, I shared that the Vertican team has been coming together to better understand and recover from stress. I referenced Peak Performance, a book that details how stress plus recovery can equal growth. The Vertican staff has been collectively putting this concept into action by dedicating this year’s last two quarters to a company-wide theme (which usually changes each quarter). Themes help everyone engage in a shared experience and learn from one another. For this quarter, I wanted to invest more time so that the team could collectively look at, leverage, and grow from stress both personally and professionally.

Volunteers came together and conducted an employee survey to understand more about stress triggers, coping strategies, and suggestions to make life easier at work and home. We shared and discussed the results of the survey during our recent All Hands meeting.

I wasn’t surprised with the sources of stress “reported” – work deadlines, family/general relationships, and health concerns are the typically mentioned stressors. But when you dig deeper, you’ll find that most stress is born not from circumstances, but the frustration and misguided, often self-imposed, expectations around them.

How we view and experience frustration is subjective, yet it generally comes down to feeling like you lack control or have an unclear sense of the road ahead. So clearly, we can avoid frustration when we walk a well-defined path towards our goals.

I’m always working to provide the Vertican team with the tools and support they need to feel self-assured and confident in doing their jobs. Vertican exists to improve peoples’ lives beginning with our team, and extends out to our clients, our clients’ clients, and the consumers they service. And while no one can single-handedly eliminate stress or frustration, nor should we want to, we can do our best to manage both.

After all, any attempt to eliminate stress would not be realistic or even practical because, remember, stress plus recovery equals growth. We must navigate our way through cycles of stress then experience recovery to ultimately grow. Truly meaningful personal and professional growth are not easy, and both take patience and time. If it was quick, easy, and stress-free everyone would do it – and life would be super boring.

The Rocks Pebbles Sand story is a cool analogy about effectively managing responsibilities over time, which ultimately avoids frustration. In this practice, rocks represent important, non-negotiable and often long-term projects, pebbles are less important tasks but still essential, and sand is the “stuff” that can bury you with distractions if you don’t know how to set boundaries and apply priorities. At Vertican, we are focused on strategizing our time to address our most important business objectives without being suffocated by minutia. As individuals, this is easier said than done.

So, a second way we leverage stress and make life easier is by creating a culture of accomplishment. We do this by benchmarking what we know to be true in the simplest of terms. More on that in a moment.

I’ve said in the past, what gets measured gets managed. So, we dare to metricize more than just the business, we’re metricizing our satisfaction on the individual level. Because in the end, we are the business. So, at Vertican, we are having conversations about how to zero in on the things that really matter. We’re doing this by defining what makes a day good for each person and reflecting on this daily, weekly, and so on. By sharing and measuring these things, we’re supporting and helping each other put stress into perspective.

We maintain growth beginning always with intentionality; so, it’s super important to confront the many nuances that tempt us to lose sight of the big picture – you know, things like frustration … and sand.

As a company, Vertican is also making some business adjustments. At our New Jersey headquarters, we’ve implemented the option to work completely remote. As a technology company with employees throughout the US and other countries, we’ve had a well-established remote policy in place meaning we’ve been set up for success long before the Covid years. For our New Jersey team, the option to work virtually allows people a little more equanimity at the beginning and end of the workday should they choose not to travel to the office. However, there’s always a positive workspace, fresh coffee, and friendly faces for those who still choose to come in.

Additionally, we implemented more departmental and cross-departmental meeting rhythms into our already existing team alignment practice. We continue to look at the actionable feedback from eNPS and NPS surveys and improve our policies, communications, services, and relationships. This means we’ve paid attention to and taken a deeper look into what makes employees and clients happier. Specifically, we listened to our Collection-Master clients’ concerns and feedback about upgrading to Q-LawE on their terms, and therefore we will not be sunsetting the product for the foreseeable future. There’s much more on that in this issue of vConnect.

Finally, with the holiday rush upon us, Vertican will be briefly slowing down to allow the team a little extra time with family and friends, and simply recharge. So, between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Day, the Vertican team will take a break from meetings, developing, releasing product updates, and making any software changes. Of course, vExchange will continue with scheduled daily processing, and Client Success will still be on hand should a Severity 1 issue come up.

I’m not a platitudes kind of guy, but I don’t mind telling you we are embarking on a new, exciting year! And by exciting, I mean there’s much to accomplish. Vertican in 2023 emanates a redefined and right-sized organizational structure, including enhanced quality assurance processes and an expanded Account Management team for our valued clients. It also includes more Vertican Help Center resources and educational opportunities for our users, as well as transparent and steadfast partnerships – because a culture of accomplishment extends to our clients.

But progress does not begin on January 1 and cease on December 31; it’s a continuous road that’s not always comfortable to navigate. If anyone can tell you about roads of labyrinth-like proportions, I can. Few are straight, most are rocky, and none more worth the journey than the ones you pave yourself and travel on with the support of trusted friends.

With that being said and on behalf of the Vertican team, I’d like to take this opportunity to wish you and your families a peaceful and healthy holiday season. May your 2023 road be good to you and allow you to meander a little and grow a lot.