Why Performance Bliss Needed to Exist
Pre-History
Founders Doug Mulkey & Eddie Davis have a long history of managing teams.
Doug built a career managing software development projects for companies both big and small including Sage, Metavante, Ultimate Software/UKG, & startups.
A serial entrepreneur, Eddie started managing sales & maintenance teams in his early 20s and expanded to business development, marketing, support, implementation & more for startups after moving back to the United States and focusing on technology.
The Overlap
When they met, Doug (CTO) was tasked with leading the R&D team and Eddie (COO) was tasked with leading the revenue team for a US-based startup that was attempting to disrupt multiple entrenched public companies including accounting software providers and payroll companies.
And like many startups, their hair was on fire with new employees to train and new ideas that needed to be delivered every week.
Finding time to develop talent was challenging but individual contributors deserved the right feedback and mentorship that would help them find their true talents and put them on paths to long, successful careers.
And it was almost impossible to provide that.
What They Tried
Even startups can have some degree of feedback mechanism but like many initiatives that are launched without the ability to truly commit, they can both help and hurt.
Doug implemented pair programming but only some of the senior developers were senior enough to mentor others.
Eddie had individual contributor sales reps managing a particular area of analytics for their teams.
Results Were Mixed
Team members enjoyed it when feedback was available and felt neglected when it wasn’t shared.
Unstructured, under-resourced “systems” had their challenges:
- Individuals weren’t able to really see their progress
- Group learning wasn’t adequately documented to the point that it became habit
- Reporting to the CEO and CFO was challenging and ad-hoc
- The overwhelming sentiment from both individuals and “management” was the organization wasn’t “getting better fast enough”
There Had to Be a Better Way
Having moved on from the very US-centric startup, Doug & Eddie stayed in touch over the years, talking technology trends and sharing cross discipline wisdom (revenue world, R&D world).
Eddie owns a company in Costa Rica and watched it chart the second worst unemployment rate in the world during Covid, in large part because the international companies were closing their offshoring there over performance issues in those offices.
And they both had an interest to launch something together to benefit the international community.
And then an idea emerged. What would happen if a platform existed to create structure around feedback and allow managers to share in the work of developing talent with the people they managed.
And what if access to the system was available to literally any business, not tied to huge corporate payroll systems that only serve the US market?
So Performance Bliss Was Born
With Doug focused on product development and Eddie focused on getting the tool into the hands of the international companies that really need access to best-in-class tools for leveling up their workforces.
With an official launch of September 2024, you won’t find any reviews yet or even public access to the product yet.
But if you want your team to get early access to a very affordable way to incentivize actionable feedback and then turn it into:
- Career development for individual contributors
- A framework for managers to manage better
- Over time:
- A more talented workforce
- Lower hiring costs
- Faster onboarding
- Higher retention
…then feel free to sign up for early access. We’d love to get to know you and your company and work to help you solve your performance improvement challenges.