Fostering Innovation & Collaboration with Itential’s Committee Week

Itential is a truly special place.

When I try to explain Itential’s company culture to friends, family, and colleagues, corporate jargon buzzwords like, “family,” “dedicated,” “innovative,” and “inclusive” all come to mind – but honestly, they just don’t do our company culture justice. So, instead of reciting a list of buzzwords, I tend to take a different approach and describe a unique experience that better embodies who Itential is and how we create and support our company culture.

This experience is what we refer to internally as “Committee Week” — a weeklong company brainstorming event that fosters innovation, cross-team collaboration, connection, and results in an enhanced company strategy.

What is Itential’s Committee Week?

It’s a fairly simple concept. All Itential employees, also known as Itentialites, are broken up into a handful of committees (think breakout sessions at your favorite conference) that are dedicated to shaping a key piece of Itential’s overall company strategy. Each committee is composed of members from different teams and departments across Itential allowing for more diverse collaboration and providing the opportunity to work with people you don’t typically get to on a daily basis.

For example, say you have a highly technical committee focused on building Itential Pre-Built Integrations. This committee would consist of a mix of people from different teams such as Sales, Delivery, Customer Success, Product Development, and more. While some of these teams may not necessarily have a direct impact on the technical build of adapters, they can provide new insight and ideas that those responsible for building them may not have. The Delivery Team has better insight into the challenges of onboarding Pre-Builts for customers, Sales Team knows what prospective customers want to see in new Pre-Builts, etc. Every team plays a role in shaping the future of the strategy based on their unique view.

These committees work so well because they are designed to give every Itentialite a voice, catalogue every idea that is generated, and provide the best guidance for company roadmaps and strategy so our customers always have the best automation software at their fingertips. If any ideas do not make it into the strategy at that given moment they are added to a backlog, ensuring that Itential always has a full library of business-driving ideas. This structure of idea generation perpetuates a culture that values the expertise and talents of all its team members. It also drives home Itential’s philosophy that organizations thrive most when all employees are treated as equal stakeholders — equally responsible and equally recognized for the success of the company they work tirelessly to grow.

Why Itential Supports Committee Week

Itential’s very first Committee Week was held in 2018, and since then we’ve hosted eight different Committee Week events, where 160+ Itentialites have generated what are ultimately too many ideas to count.

This practice changes our strategy, challenges our perspectives, and unites us as a group of people with a singular goal: to ensure that Itential remains the innovative, agile, and progressive company that we have been since inception. It keeps us grounded at the root of our principles and ensures every Itentialite is heard, no matter how much we’ve grown.

From a human perspective, it breaks down communication silos, pushes us out of our comfort zones, and encourages productive and impactful interdepartmental relationships. This past Committee Week, we even took it a level further. The people spoke and demanded some more fun focused on bonding our teams. This new addition included themed days, virtual trivia and even a costume contest, which really brought out the “creative” side of Itential — and by creative, I watched Black Panther characters lead presentations and utilized the rustling of a giant Buzz Lightyear suit making its way down a hallway to signify that it was time for the next topic (consider it your end of speech music).

As I said at the beginning of this blog, this type of culture can’t be described by a couple of corporate buzzwords (I’d like to see you try), and the value of Committee Week is hard to capture with a string of characters on a piece of metaphorical paper. The only way to truly understand it is to become a part of it.

Our world-class team is always finding ways to disrupt the status quo and we’re growing faster than ever. If you want to become an Itentialite, check out more on our Careers page, and check out a full list of open positions to see where you can fit in.