Set a high bar
When you walk into Ambit’s office in a 100-year-old warehouse, you’re greeted by high ceilings and hardwood floors. Windows line the walls allowing light to cascade into the office and hit the red brick walls.
But while the office may be attractive, you can’t help but be drawn to the phrase on the wall — never sacrifice integrity for growth.
“It’s there and it’s for everybody to see the moment they walk in the front door,” Thompson says. “They see the management team sitting there, transparent and out in the open. They see this sign in front of them — a very large sign that nobody can miss when they come in — and then everyone we ever talk to, whether it’s publicly on a podium or privately here in the office when we interview them or are getting oriented, they hear what we have said is our bar — never sacrifice integrity for growth.”
Thompson wants Ambit to be the finest and most respected company so people want to be a part of his team, and to do that, he has to set the bar high.
“From the very beginning, with everybody internally as well as externally, we set a very high bar,” he says. “We said never sacrifice integrity for growth. So often in business, people take shortcuts and think that those shortcuts will be the answer for their business and grow their revenues and will never catch up to them, but in reality, many of those shortcuts are doing things that will create problems in the future. Too many problems or too many shortcuts can derail any growing company or any company as it tries to get off the ground. Our philosophy was don’t worry about the revenue and speed of growth — although we have grown fast — let’s just focus on doing everything right and doing things the right way.”
He talks about this principle a lot and leads by example so that when his managers and employees are faced with tough decisions, they know how to act, as well.
“There’s a lot of gray things in business,” Thompson says. “There’s black and there’s white, and the gray are the difficult ones. The senior management team knew they weren’t going to be on top of every situation when gray occurred, so we wanted everyone inside the organization to know to choose the right thing. Don’t sacrifice integrity for growth. Growth isn’t just revenues — it’s personal advancement or any other activity or action in the business.”
And to ensure that people do the right thing and uphold their integrity and the integrity of the company, Thompson doesn’t ta
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these situations lightly.
“The effective deterrent is when people feel there will be a certainty of punishment when caught,” he says. “We make certain that if people are doing it wrong, they’re punished and removed from the business, and that helps people police each other and police themselves. They know we mean it when we say we’re going to be the finest and the best, so don’t take shortcuts. It’s just like parenting — kids will probe all the time, and they’ll find out when you’re serious about no and when you’re not, and they’ll take advantage of when you’re not.”
As a result, Ambit quickly gained a reputation as an honest and respected place to work.
“If you do things right and you set a high bar, and you show your success and also you’re very interested in everyone’s welfare as well as having an outstanding company that’s outstanding in all ways, people want to be in winning organizations like that,” Thompson says. “We’re attracting great people today largely because of the attitude and trajectory that we set at the beginning in 2006.”
