Mind Over Machines Featured in SmartCEO's Big Idea Book
The (Golden) Rules of the Game

Owings Mills, MD – January 01, 2008 - Mind Over Machines, Inc., an information technology solutions provider to government and commercial accounts, announced today that the Company founder and chairman, Tom Loveland, was recently featured on the cover of the widely-read magazine, Baltimore SmartCEO.

Give to Get
Two or three business decisions in my life have been very, very good. One of the best started with a simple handshake.

I had created QCard, the core application for HIQ, a Baltimore legal and corporate services firm. Jim and his team loved QCard. (Still do.) And all was good.

A few years later, Dennis, an entrepreneur with visions of creating a national network of such firms, visited HIQ for a conversation. They got around to discussing software systems, and Jim showed off QCard. They talked. Jim called me. I went right down and the three of us chatted.

Dennis seemed like a straight shooter…so I took a risk. Right on the spot I GAVE him QCard. All I asked was that he hire me for any future enhancements. One month later, National Registered Agents, Inc. (NRAI) officially opened for business.

Thirteen years later…NRAI is third in its industry in the nation, with Mind Over Machines delivering 100% of its information systems every step of the way. Dennis will tell you we provide perhaps 40% of their strategic business ideas.

We created and continually enhance an extensive extranet of workflow applications supporting hundreds of employees in dozens of offices nationwide. These systems support thousands of attorneys and legal staff, and well over 100,000 customer entities – including most of the Top 200 American law firms and many of the Fortune 500.

All this from a gift and a handshake.

Tell the truth
The CIO was worried for his job. His employer, the Office Products Network of North America (OPNNA), had contracted out the development of a mission-critical enterprise application that would provide the core of their service. The CIO‘s relationship with the vendor had soured; it was increasingly difficult for him to gauge the quality of the work being delivered.

OPNNA found me and asked for an independent audit of the application source code. Reviewing it, I was very impressed. It was clean and well-documented. I remember thinking, “I’d love to hire someone who can write code like this!”

So I assured him the system was solid. No need for concern. No need to hire me.

Some weeks later he called back with a small project for me, an enhancement to the same system. “Probably a couple weeks of work, Tom.” He had approached the other vendor, but they declined the opportunity.

I sat shoulder-to-shoulder with the CIO for three hours as he guided me through the system. Suddenly, a light bulb moment: I pointed to a field on the screen and asked, "If we broaden the scope of what’s captured in this field...won’t that accomplish your goal?" He cocked his head to the side, stared at the screen for a few seconds, and said, "Yeah… You know, Tom… I guess it does. Thanks!"

Instead of two weeks, I was done in four hours.

But good things come to those who tell the truth. Months later, the CIO called again. After I’d talked myself out of work twice, they just had to have me. They fired the other vendor and gave me the entire project, enough to hire a full-time employee with confidence.

And not just any employee. The programmer whose code I’d admired joined me, marking the beginning of Mind Over Machines.

We delivered a great system. OPNNA grew nicely…to $1.2 billion in revenue, before selling themselves to Corporate Express.

Do unto others
"Tom, we don't outsource application development projects anymore." I had just asked Stephan, responsible for delivering all enterprise-wide applications in this very large organization, how we might help. "These projects always come in 2 or 3 times over budget." The opportunity appeared lost.

The first time I met Stephan, he brought his wife, pregnant with their first child. They were fresh off the proverbial boat, having just emigrated from Ukraine. The scene was an American barbeque at my house. The purpose was a follow up job interview. Stephan was smart and I hired him. My first employee; his first job in America. We worked well together, respected each other’s talents. But after a year, with a young child and supporting more and more family members as they immigrated, he resigned for a more secure job. Fast forward ten years.

Stephan thought for a minute and said, "But you know? If there was somebody I trusted...."

A wonderful by-product of treating people well is sometimes they graduate to positions of influence and return the favor. In this case, we took over a stalled project, porting an 18,000-user client-server application to the web, clearing the bug list, adding long-requested features, and bringing it into compliance with Federal labor law.

The improved system enabled hundreds of people to get the job done faster, cut trouble tickets by two-thirds and improved the organization’s reputation. Now the system is being rolled out to two additional organizations to serve more than 300,000 active users.

These are just three examples of how doing good can lead to doing well. I'm sure you've seen the same thing in your life. The way the game is played may change often, but the Golden Rules are always the same.

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