At iRobot, the Mission is the Motivation

By: Mark Harbeke
Submitted: 2007-01-17 11:49:57
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Ask iRobot Corp. CEO Colin Angle how his 16-year-old consumer and military robotics business competes with other tech firms to recruit new employees and you’d hear a short, exuberant answer: “We build robots!” To-the-point statements like this back the Massachusetts-based organization’s commitment to engaging employees and customers alike along every step of the development process, from concept to finished product. Eschewing long-winded mission statements, the company builds robots with five simple goals in mind: build cool stuff, deliver great product, make money, have fun, and change the world.

Creating an environment that allows employees to reach these goals has helped grow iRobot’s revenue by 58 percent over the last year. (During the same period, the number of employees increased 87 percent.) This astounding performance from a company that, Angle says, failed 18 times before finding success resulted in him being named a FORTUNE Small Business/Winning Workplaces Best Boss in 2005.

In less than three years the 300-person firm went from having no HR staff in place to scouring colleges and universities seeking top engineering talent in addition to recruiting experienced professionals. iRobot formally structured its HR component after two of its products took hold en route to changing the world. The company’s Roomba floor vacuum is now a household name, and on the military side its PackBot robots are well known to the U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan whose lives they’ve saved.

The Roomba was developed based on the suggestion of an iRobot employee. That employee was Paul Sandin. In 1997, with the help of a fellow roboticist, Sandin transformed what was a simple, Lego-constructed robot with rudimentary intelligence into a floor vacuum that became, in the words of iRobot Consumer Products General Manager Greg White, a “killer application” of artificial intelligence. Sandin’s time and the blessing and seed money of Angle paid off: Roomba is iRobot’s most successful product. A similarly named floor-washing consumer product, the Scooba, hit shelves earlier this year.

On the military side, Angle says that over 500 of the company’s PackBots have been deployed in several Middle Eastern nations. Their function, he says, is to find and diffuse bombs – a difficult and extremely dangerous task for human soldiers. The robots do this hundreds of times per day. “They can go into buildings ahead of soldiers and do the more dangerous scouting work,” Angle says. After seeing them in action, soldiers have flooded iRobot’s customer service department with phone calls and letters of gratitude.

Consumers’ desire to thank the tech firm for a job well done does more than validate the work of employees like White – it inspires them. “Our robot development begins and ends with consumer insights and the vigorous focus on solving real consumer problems,” he says. “A testament to Colin’s leadership style is the fact that, though he has very strong opinions, his voice and all voices are equalized by fact.”

One employee feedback-gathering tool used at iRobot that supports White’s claim that fact is king is a “wiki,” a do-it-yourself encyclopedia. A high-tech way for employees to ensure their ideas or follow-up to past ideas are saved for future reference, the wiki is a hit with Angle. “It’s just a great knowledge capture tool that ensures that ideas generated during meetings and brainstorming sessions aren’t thrown away on a sticky note,” he says.

Besides building cool stuff and knowing their ideas are being stored and put to good use, employees like the fact that iRobot offers them an employee stock option plan – a big way for the firm’s leadership to show that their expertise at all levels is valued. However, Angle admits that the company’s benefits package is not its primary employee motivator. The true stimulant is the organization’s forward-thinking work with the mechanical, electrical and software elements that engender its robots. “Our quality of work, the inherent challenges and our collegial environment – that’s what motives people,” Angle says. “They also appreciate the fact that we’re open with our financials.”

Having a workforce that is appropriately rewarded for its commitment to iRobot’s mission and values has resulted in a unique synergy among work teams. This, Angle says, is not only the goal, it’s necessary due to the nature of the company’s products. “I think our teams are multidisciplinary because robots are fundamentally multidisciplinary,” he says. “Plus, our marketing function operates differently than at other companies. Typically, you have R&D work on the product, and then it’s given to marketing to figure out how to package it for the audience. We bring marketing in early, during the ideation moment.”

This synergy, along with the aforementioned benefits and employees’ commitment to the firm’s underlying values, has kept morale high. “Employees respect Colin because he constantly challenges them to think of ways that will help deliver innovative yet practical robots to people around the world,” says Parna Sarkar, iRobot’s director of corporate communications. Naturally, this focus has also positively affected retention: Angle reports that the firm’s voluntary turnover rate is just 3.5 percent. “Our people are here because they believe in our mission to make robots a part of daily reality,” he says simply.

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