Over the years, we’ve seen the solar industry go through great highs and lows. With a new presidential administration in 2017, statehouse legislative challenges, mega-deals like Tesla’s acquisition of SolarCity, and market changes such as the convergence of solar and energy storage, we understand that our supply partners and installers may feel some uncertainty. So we’d like to offer our readers a theme song for 2017, which we hope will inspire all of us to stay positive and generate ideas on how to build on our success while continuously improving our businesses.
In recent years, Inovateus has borrowed from biomimicry, taking lessons from how dolphins work together to create and perfect our own work “PODs.” We’ve incorporated aspects of the “Team of Teams” concepts championed by retired U.S. Army General Stanley McChrystal, and integrated some of Verne Harnish’s “Rockefeller habits,” including “meeting rhythms,” which have improved the consistency and quality of our internal communications.
Given that music plays a big part in many Inovateus team members’ lives (including mine), one of the motivational tools we use is an annual theme song. In 2015, we chose the Beatles’ “Come Together,” when our theme was teamwork and reorganizing our work structures. Last year, we rallied around Stevie Wonder’s “Signed, Sealed, Delivered (I’m Yours)” as we saw our business grow exponentially through the signing of multiple major contracts, and worked hard on flawless execution of our projects. For 2017, we’ve reached back to one of the most popular rock anthems of the early 1980s, Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger.”
As you may recall, “Eye of the Tiger” is the fist-pumping song powering the opening sequence of “Rocky III.” The tune has gone on to become a staple of sporting event playlists for decades. At this point in the Rocky Balboa storyline, Sylvester Stallone’s iconic character has defended his championship many times over, winning fame and fortune. But he needs something to maintain his edge, his focus. The song embodies the will to win, the inner strength necessary to meet the challenge, and the need to stay hungry and keep the inner fire burning.
We didn’t choose the song because we see the solar industry or ourselves in a fight for our lives, but because we were drawn to the idea of how the tiger is incredibly dialed-in during the hunt, regardless of the distractions of the global forest. We want the same kind of super-focus and hunger from our team and for the solar industry as we grow our businesses to the next level.
We’ve learned a tremendous amount over the past few years, greatly advancing our knowledge base and skill sets, and now it’s time to deploy all those tools. So this year we want to maintain that eye of the tiger passion, focus and overall mentality as we keep distractions to a minimum, avoid getting side-tracked and increase the overall efficiency of our operations and performance.
There’s one more thing that makes “Eye of the Tiger” an appropriate anthem for Inovateus in particular. We realized after choosing the song that there was an obvious play on words: “eye” sounds the same as “I,” as in I-Team, one of the terms we use to describe ourselves. So “I of the Tiger,” it is then!
If you’re interested in learning more about Inovateus’ creative business management approaches, stay tuned for my article in the upcoming March/April 2017 issue of SolarPro magazine.
By TJ Kanczuzewski, president and board member, Inovateus Solar
