08/19/2020

The 10 Essentials to Building a Values-driven Company

This is more important now than it ever was

The most successful companies we’ve worked with through the years have one thing in common: A clearly articulated and well-implemented set of core values. If an organization’s culture can be thought of as its operating system, then its values are the boot code. Values provide a blueprint for how people in an organization make decisions.

Ken Gosnell, the CEO of Experience, captured it well, “When a leader knows their values, they are able to make decisions quickly and with confidence. When the leader is unclear, the organization becomes chaotic.”

In our experience in cloud investing (Jake at Emergence Capital) and customer service (Anne at Guru), we’ve found that getting that code right early on is critical, so that as a company scales, decisions can be made in an efficient, decentralized manner while remaining consistent with the cultural OS. This becomes even more important as companies move to remote and hybrid staffing models. Modern technologies Such as Slack and Zoom can only do so much to stitch an organization together; timeless tech like values statements must be a key part of the glue that unites.

Please select this link to read the complete article from Fast Company.