Company Spotlight: RightPoint

Ivy Exec recently interviewed Vaiva Vaisnys, RightPoint’s Director of People Potential. RightPoint is an award winning digital agency and technology consulting firm.

The company brings industry-focused business strategy and technology expertise together with user experience design and creative services to help organizations transform the way they do business. The company is deeply rooted in an “intrapreneurial”, collaborative culture with a passion to “WOW” clients. RightPoint serves global leaders such as Abbott Labs, New Balance, Whirlpool, General Mills, BP, Redbox and Kraft.

Ivy Exec: You seem to feel particularly passionate about your company, and it sounds like others at RightPoint do as well.  What drives this spirit at your company?

Vaiva Vaisnys: We look for passionate people during the interview process, which certainly helps sustain this feeling, but in a lot of ways it starts from the top.  Our founders have an interesting story; they actually met in an elevator on their first day at college.  Their friendship and the values they foster are infectious.  We pass our positive energy forward like a relay race baton, doing excellent work and enabling companies to do better.

IE: Most challenging part of onboarding into your environment, and is that different at RightPoint than other companies you have worked with?

Vaiva: We face practical challenges because of our small size.  To give you an idea, we have only just recently hired an internal recruiter.  So we are building that capability incrementally.  It used to be that we would give a new hire a desk and a computer and say “go!”  Now we have an onboarding process to help new hires make connections with important people at our firm, who may be travelling or frequently out of the office, as well as to give them more organized insight into how our organization works.

IE: You have an unusual title, “Director of People Potential.”  How does your title describe what you do?

Vaiva: I had been working with RightPoint as an independent contractor for many years, and when I formally joined the firm we spent a lot of time consider what my title should be.  Among other things, my role is to find ways to invest to get the most out of people.  Certainly, we look for ways to offer competitive benefits to make sure our people are taken care of.  But, we also look for programs that will help people develop and help people be in a “good frame of mind” to do their work – so we pay attention to evolving our culture and even offering programs like yoga since f people feel good at work and if they can put work aside for a time, they will be more productive and feel better about what they do.

IE: In which area of your company do you expect the most growth over the next 12 to 18 months?

Vaiva: There are two areas where we expect to see the most growth in the next 12 -18 months. The first is CRM – specifically around helping companies improve their sales, marketing and service operations.  The second is customer experience – helping organizations improve their public facing web and digital marketing capabilities to better engage their target audiences online.

IE: What changes and challenges do you think your company and industry will see in the next 5 years?

Vaiva: From an industry perspective there will continue to be a war for finding and retaining the best talent over the next 5 years.  From a company perspective, our greatest challenge will be to make sure we never forget why we (RightPoint) were born.  As we continue to grow, it will become increasingly more difficult to bottle up the passion and energy that has made us successful and ensure that new team members in disparate services lines and in geographically dispersed offices know and understand RightPoint’s secret sauce.

IE: What attracted you to your company?

Vaiva: I was attracted to the company by the vision of the leadership and the passion of each and every person who works here.  I was lucky enough to the know the organization for a few years prior to joining and saw how the group sweats the details, in the name of delivering outstanding results – not only to clients but internally as well.  I firmly believe that culture is a key ingredient to a company achieving its goals and that that belief is shared by all leadership, which further enhanced the company’s appeal for me.

IE: What three words best describe your culture?

Vaiva: Collaborative, passionate, It’s a tie between open and fun.

IE: What are the two best perks that employees get at your company?

Vaiva: Working side-by-side with people who love what they do and want to do great work.  Having the opportunity to make an impact on what we do and how we do it.

IE: Which leadership qualities best ensure success at your company?

Vaiva: Openness, collaboration, entre- and intrapreneurialism.

IE: What are your hiring plans in the coming year?

Vaiva: Grow by 30%.

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