A few of us from Prime Data had a great night at the Aurora Chamber of Commerce Business Excellence Awards last night. We had a some staff members, a couple of clients and a cherished vendor join us — because a good party should always be shared with the people behind your success. Thanks to each one of you for what you do to help us build Prime Data.

There isn’t a week that goes by that we don’t have a cause to congratulate a team member at Prime Data for something great they’ve done. Somebody’s solved a problem, made a client’s day, or just pitched in when the co-worker at the next workstation needed a hand.

And while we celebrate the little efforts throughout the year, I’m pretty chuffed that our local Chamber of Commerce made us a finalist for a Business Excellence Award.

We were nominated in the large business category against some really worthy competitors, so we already felt pretty good. And we knew that, win or lose, we’ve made some awesome progress as we’ve grown and that may have led to this nomination.

Much of what we’ve done is based on a great book — one I’d recommend to any growing business. It’s called Scaling Up, by Verne Harnish. It’s kind of been our manual for a couple of years now.

It’s helped us to:

• Make meetings effective
• Solve problems together
• Give everybody a stake in company goals
• Be transparent about company performance

We’re a much stronger team for having followed Verne’s rules for Scaling Up. And yeah, it’s nice to win, but the rewards of my team’s efforts in house have been awesome even without bringing home the hardware.

Having said that, I offer a big congratulations to all the winners and nominees in last night’s awards. All of you are helping make the town of Aurora an even greater place to do business.