When you read our blog posts, you may notice something different. Instead of gimmicky listicles, bone-dry company updates, and content for the sake of content, we make a concerted effort to spotlight the thing that sets us apart from other managed services providers or IT companies: our people.

What better way for us to celebrate our team members than by letting them speak for themselves? As Pliancy’s brand writer, I am an interviewer/editor/doula/sherpa, here to help my colleagues find and polish the one-of-a-kind stories that only they can tell.

Today, I’m stepping out from behind the curtain to share why amplifying individual voices is central to our ethos—and why you should look for the stories hidden around you.

What’s the Big Idea?

Each of our blog posts is focused on a Big Idea™, like valuing people over process, the utility of failure, or how to stretch your tools to their limits. Big ideas can seem untouchable, and many people claim they don’t have any. (Spoiler alert: we all do!)

Big ideas are intimidating because we typically only see them after they’re fully formed. And even when we know, intellectually, how much effort must have gone into refining them, it doesn’t quite click. We only see the seamless TED Talk with the perfect, clever title and think, ‘I could never do that.’ The scrapped concepts, the hours of rehearsal, the flubbed lines, the crises of confidence—all of it lurks just barely out of frame.

I’ll let you in on an important secret: despite their name, big ideas come in all shapes and sizes. They aren’t always immediately obvious, either. With the right help, seemingly unassuming statements can eventually reveal themselves to be bigger, brighter stars.

An Outside Perspective

“No, I really don’t think I have a big idea,” you might insist. I get where you’re coming from, and yet I must respectfully disagree.

The things you do every day—the knowledge you have, the tasks you accomplish, the instincts you’ve cultivated—may seem like old hat to you, but to an outsider? That’s magic. It’s easy for us to write ourselves off because we see how the sausage is made. We become desensitized to our own expertise, but it only feels commonplace to us because we wield it 24/7/365.

This is where I come in. My primary advantage in helping you find your big idea is painfully simple: my strength is that I’m not you.

That throwaway comment you made? It’s quietly revolutionary. Your extended metaphor for a technical solution? It’s the perfect encapsulation of your values. This anecdote about a client experience? It clearly parallels Pliancy’s mission.

With a healthy dose of objectivity, I can zero in on the methods and experiences and philosophical musings that are so imbued with your DNA, they could only ever bear your fingerprints. (We all know our fingerprints are unique, but how often do we actually think about that? We’re more concerned with how they smudge our glasses or blur our camera lenses than with the miracle of their uniqueness.)

Why Individual Voices Matter

When Marcus Olson founded Pliancy, his vision was to provide IT consulting services rooted in relationships, not revenue generation. Seven years and 130-odd employees later, we haven’t lost sight of that priority. The relationships we build—whether with clients or with one another—are all founded on compassion and empathy.

Deep relationships couldn’t exist at this scale without the folks who put the work in every day. Our blog honors the individuals who make Pliancy great, and our posts go deeper than any “Meet the Team” Q&A ever could. Those tend to give you fun facts and nothing else, and we each contain so much more than that. We have so many grander passions to share.

This blog lets you discover what drives us as people and professionals, and it is, by design, an egalitarian space. It’s not just for leadership, it’s not just for certain seniority levels, and it’s not just for technical staff. No matter the role, there is room for us all.

To me, this is the Pliancy way: letting people be exactly who they are and loudly celebrating what they bring to the table.

Inspiration In Situ

So here’s my big idea: in a world where authenticity is often performative or over-engineered, just let go.

There is so much around us just waiting to be uncovered. Why waste time constructing something that seems authentic when you could discover what already exists? True observation can mean the difference between sounding contrived and being a conduit for the voices of your company, organization, group, or community. Let them reveal their stories to you—even if they don’t know they’re doing it, and especially if they’ve convinced themselves they don’t have stories to share.