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ยป VISIT US ONLINE @ DSNEWS.COM 63 COACHING TEAM ALACRITY If there's one attribute Alacrity CEO Jonathan Miko particularly enjoys, it's the true team environment. In the law offices where he worked before joining the company in 2004, the team atmosphere always "felt kind of forced." Yet at Alacrity, people have to work as a team. "You can't isolate yourself and just focus on your own work because really it is the whole company's work. In order to get your job done, you have to work with multiple people within the company every day." That makes Miko, who became CEO in 2013, the company's head coach. It's a position he can bring a different perspective to by drawing on his experience coaching his son's hockey team. First off, it's all about the fundamentals. In hockey, there are certain basic things that a player needs to be successful: You have to be able to skate, handle the puck, and pass and shoot. And you need an understanding of the game. At Alacrity, too, Miko looks for all company employees to develop and perform the fundamentals. For the services company, those are answering the phone, solving people's problems, and applying technology to support those solutions. "Before we can say we're going to grow 15 percent or we're going to enter this new industry, we have to ask, 'Do we remember how to skate and shoot and pass, and do these skills translate to that new industry?'" The company's success is always going to come down to whether or not it executed the fundamentals correctly, Miko said. As coach, Miko also needs to keep an eye on the company's competitors. Just as he'd keep an eye on an opposing team's plays to determine if a counterattack is needed, he tries to gauge whether new moves in the industry are a threat. They might also be a flash in the pan, he said, which would leave him counseling his team to "keep playing your game, let them do what they want, that's not going to affect what we're trying to do." COVER STORY INDUSTRY INSIGHT INDUSTRY INSIGHT INDUSTRY INSIGHT JONATHAN MIKO POSITION: CEO HOME OFFICE: Eugene, Oregon JOINED ALACRITY SERVICES: 2004 ALMA MATERS: Rutgers University, New York Law School JASON KENDALL POSITION: Director of New Program Development HOME OFFICE: Charlotte, North Carolina JOINED ALACRITY SERVICES: 2015 ALMA MATER: North Carolina State University KEITH HEMMER POSITION: Chief Business Development Officer HOME OFFICE: Charlotte, North Carolina JOINED ALACRITY SERVICES: 1999 ALMA MATER: Virginia Tech