Yin and Yang – Long Term Planning and Continuous Delivery Balance

Warren Buffet and Jamie Dimon wrote an Op-Ed this week about too much focus on “Short Termism”, and how it harms businesses and the economy. They argue for doing away with public quarterly reports and emphasize “Clear communication of a company’s strategic goals—along with metrics that can be evaluated over time—will always be critical to shareholders.”

As an employee owned company, RunSignUp is built for the long term. We provide clear guidance of our strategic directions via this blog and at our annual Symposium and to our Customer Advisory Board. Our employees, in addition to sharing in the ownership of our company, also receive profit sharing bonuses annually so they make sure we have customers who are happy to support us with their business and a structure that is viable with solid cash flow. We do not have outside investors who might have 3-5 year time horizons to double their money and sell the business. We are in this for the very long term. This is our Yin.

But we also have a Yang. We do monthly financial reporting. We do monthly server and security updates to our systems. We do full KYC checks on the 20+ new customers we get on a daily basis. We have a Zero-Queue support philosophy so customers hear back from us very quickly instead of days. Our development process is based on the concept of Continuous Delivery, with over 1,500 releases each year.

These concepts flow very naturally for us, and are one of the key reasons for our success. Both short term and long term.