Chris Simchick and Scott Barnyak must have missed the memo that companies are supposed to hunker down and not hire while times are tough. The two principal partners of SDLC Partners LP, a 230-employee business and technology consulting firm, hired 100 employees last year and have big growth goals planned for the company.
Founded in 2004, SDLC saw 2011 revenue of more than $24 million, which Simchick hopes to turn into $120 million by 2020. With a focus on strategic planning, cultural values and hiring top-level talent, Simchick and Barnyak are well on the way to making that goal a reality.
“That kind of growth creates tremendous opportunity, but it also creates those challenges for people to step up in a time frame that is meaningful to the business,” Simchick says. “It’s the expectation if you’re going to be a partner at SDLC Partners that you are responsible to challenge ideas, challenge thinking and come up with opportunities.”
It’s this type of mentality that has put SDLC in growth mode. To take full advantage of the opportunities that present themselves, the company plans for the future.
“About 2.5 years ago we embarked on a strategic planning process,” Simchick says. “We engaged an outside firm … not just to facilitate but to bring a process to the table that we then implemented and institutionalized within the company which links both the growth and culture.”
The management team meets once every quarter with the outside strategic steering partner to drive the plan forward.
“No. 1, our team walks out of that room very aligned around the most important things we believe will have the greatest impact for the company this business year. No. 2, we have a plan of attack and an owner of each of those initiatives for the next 90 days.”
Utilizing an outside party helped SDLC see things they might have otherwise missed.
“If you’re not using some outside objective help to do that, you’re probably missing an opportunity,” Simchick says. “The guys that we’ve engaged and worked closely with have gotten to know our business, have gotten to know our people and have held our feet to the fire in terms of being honest and challenging ourselves.”
It is also critical to keep an open mind and listen to other perspectives.
“You have to admit that you don’t know it all and use that as a theme for when you engage both outside help and when you’re looking to hire into the company,” Barnyak says. “One of the challenges that leaders need to be aware of is it’s real easy to hire people like us. You have to make a conscious effort to hire complementary people who bring different skills, techniques and personalities to the table to help you think differently.”
The hiring process is often the most difficult part about running a growing business. Simchick and Barnyak make sure they are always looking for potential new hires.
“One of the biggest challenges is identifying and hiring enough of the right type of people that fit well into the firm,” Simchick says. “If there’s one thing that we’ve continually talked about, it’s how do we accelerate that hiring curve.”
As SDLC has grown and hired new people, Simchick and Barnyak have made sure to keep one thing constant: the company’s culture.
“As the company continues to grow, holding true to that culture that we’ve built is front and center,” Barnyak says. “It’s culture first, skills second. As hard as it may seem at times, particularly while you’re growing fast and you need that technical skill in the company today, hiring to the culture and growing that person in the long-run tends to have the better impact, particularly if culture and core values and those things are important to your organization.”
HOW TO REACH: SDLC Partners LP, (412) 373-1950 or www.sdlcpartners.com
Diversify your services
While strategic planning and hiring the right talent have played a big role in the growth of SDLC Partners LP, principal partners Chris Simchick and Scott Barnyak look to diversify the company’s services to create new opportunities.
“We looked at horizontal offerings that would apply to almost any industry in a generic sense,” Barnyak says. “It’s leveraging your core and seeing what could be transferable. The trick is finding the right amount of domain expertise to blend with that to lend you some credibility in that area.”
You have to challenge your people to think differently to find ways to leverage the investments that you’ve already made.
“Those become the differentiators that both clients recognize and are where we gain big wins internally because someone stepped forward and identified an opportunity,” Simchick says.
No matter how appealing an opportunity may seem, you have to keep focused on what you’re best at.
“It takes discipline because it’s real easy to get distracted from your core and the things that you do well,” Barnyak says. “If you’re doing something really well and it’s within the core business, extending that core to another industry is viable, but you have to be careful that you don’t get easily distracted and take yourself away from the things you do really well.”
