The Culture in Simbient
When looking for words to describe our culture we looked
inwardly at the core values we saw every day in our team. We
then set two evaluation criteria;
- Is it really important inside our organisation?
- If we were penalised for it (ie, it would cost us a deal) would
we still keep it?
I must admit, we didn't think this up ourselves. These ideas
come from a Harvard Business Review article - Building Your
Company's Vision by James Collins and Jerry Porras. Well worth a
read.
We reviewed our initial list and agreed the following would
best represent our values and allow us to drive the culture of the
company;
Respect for others, their abilities and
ideas
It is all too easy these days to become insular, ignore others,
place unrealistic demands on unskilled people, ignore good ideas
because you don't want to change. This core value was designed to
show that we believe everyone has their value and needs to be
respected.
Open and proactive
A simple core value that means we do not believe in covering up,
being deceptive or telling half-truths. We take a very open
approach to all our interactions and have a desire to be proactive
at all times on all issues.
Continuous Improvement
A fairly standard value but quite often ignored due to ongoing
business pressures. We insist on reviewing all our projects,
services and deals to ensure we learn from them and continue
to improve everything we do.
Take responsibility and move forward
Blame is easy but worthless. Some people deny responsibility,
become dishonest and even quit. Taking responsibility and admitting
mistakes allows everyone to move forward, resolve issues and feed
back into the Continuous Improvement process.
Our core values will drive our culture. We are reviewed against
these values and look for feedback from our customers on our
performance against these values. We continue to develop our
working culture based on these values and look for examples of our
values in action.