Over the years, I’ve learned that company culture and values are an integral part of making sure that there’s cohesion within the teams and the company as a whole.
Listening to Brené Brown’s Dare to Lead audiobook (affiliate link), she explains the importance of “Operationalizing Your Organization’s Values” and that must start with identifying them.
I’m trying to learn how to build in public, so I’m sharing my list of values and the epigrams I came up with that illustrates my interpretation of each of them.
Here’s my list:
Accountability – Say what you will do, and do what you said.
Adaptability – Assess and adjust, continuously.
Commitment – Keep your promises.
Competence – Become good at what you do.
Contribution – Giving creates value.
Curiousity – Thirst for knowledge, hunger for learning. Seek to understand why.
Initiative – Every journey begins with a first step. Take it.
Perseverance – Often, things worth having don’t come easy. Don’t quit until the job is done.
Practical – You can’t eat fancy ideas.
Pragmatism – Nobody cares how the sausage is made, only how it tastes.
Reliability – Consistent quality that can be trusted.
Responsibility – Be someone others can trust to do what you’re supposed to.
Simplicity – Simple things are easy to understand, and easier to get right.
Brené makes the case that you can have many important values, but only one or two “core” values. I’ll let this list bounce around in my head and try to distill it down into my one or two truly core values, that all the others stem from.