Identropy's Company Culture
Posted by Frank Villavicencio on Mon, Oct 10, 2011
Last week, we kicked off our Q4 2011 here at Identropy, and it is exciting to see how much the company has grown in 2011.
We updated our Intranet with the video and slides from our quarterly meeting, and I felt compelled to borrow content from our Intranet and share it with you all. I must confess that at first, I was very hesitant to publish this on our blog, but after very good internal encouragement from the whole team, we agreed to go ahead.
Earlier this year, I wrote a blog post on the topic of creating a strong company culture, which is a great preface to this post, given that below we describe Identropy's Company Culture. This is a subject that is close and dear to our hearts at Identropy, but in the spirit of transparency (one of our core values), here we go...
Why Define our Company Culture?
As Identropy continues to grow, we want to focus on those things that have made us successful and pay attention to creating an environment that allows us to preserve and foster those things, as well as allow us to scale up without losing our DNA as a company.
Having a strong company culture is allegedly the key ingredient in the sustained success and durability of organizations in the information age (Ex. Google, Zappos, Netflix, Softtek, TD Ameritrade, Amgen).
There are several industry initiatives such as the Social Happiness Movement, and new social psychology theories such Ecosynomics & Harmonic Vibrancy, which focus on the positive effect of a strong company culture in its overall performance. In particular, Harmonic Vibrancy is what people experience when they are identified with and acting out of their greatest potential. In simpler terms: if the organization’s core values align with its employees’, the organization achieves exceptional performance and employees are happier.
For these reasons, and inspired by a few really good books on the topic, in Q1 2011 we started to define Identropy’s culture. The first step was to collect our employees’ feedback, and to that end we conducted a short online survey. This exercise allowed us to identify our core values.
Our approach to defining our culture was relatively straightforward:
- Identify the company’s core values
- Document and publish them
- Commit to them
A bit more context: Have you ever been “in the zone”?
In positive psychology being “in the zone” means experiencing “flow”. Flow is a concept proposed by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi.
According to Csíkszentmihályi, flow is completely focused motivation. It is a single-minded immersion and represents perhaps the ultimate in harnessing the emotions in the service of performing and learning. In flow, the emotions are not just contained and channeled, but positive, energized, and aligned with the task at hand.
“Flow can be addictive… but an addiction that is healthy for you in so many ways…” - Sir Ken Robinson in The Element - How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything
Identropy's Core Values
Innovation
- Never settle for the status quo, even if it’s good
- Continuously create new and better ways of doing what we do to make it better
Autonomy
- Own your career
- Create your own path; seek a partner for some guidance
- Right a wrong when you see it. Don’t wait!
- Manage by deliverables. Never micro-manage
Customer Service
- Having happy customers starts by you listening
- Put yourselves in their shoes. What would you want?
- Communicate effectively. Prevent misunderstandings
- Deliver hard and fast. But don’t get sloppy
- Make a connection. Build relationships
- Always do what you promised
Vision
- Strive to solve real customer problems
- Have a positive vision for your tasks, projects, and career
- Think long-term
Knowledge
- Read
- Especially about your domain – Know your domain
- Don’t overlook the details. Know them too
- Create knowledge by analyzing experiences
- Practice applying knowledge to your daily work
Drive
- Mix vision, passion and action
- Work the mission to completion
- Execute tenaciously
- Don’t stop! (unless the vision changes)
- Love winning
Friendliness
- Be easy to get along with
- That doesn’t mean you have to be everyone’s best friend
- Enjoy helping others. Share. Compliment. Empower
- Never play the politics game
Partnership
- Where possible, work with someone. It’s more fun that way
- Two brains are better than one
- But be smart selecting the right partner for the job (colleague, vendor, etc.)
Humility
- You are great at X, but realize that there’s always a better X’er than you
- Remember that Identropy can never realize its vision without the team
- Admit mistakes with grace
- Respect opinions of customers and colleagues
Transparency
- Be pathologically honest
- Transparency and honesty creates trust between people
- Sometimes, it may cause you embarrassment. That’s OK. It’ll pass
Identropy's Culture Book
Much like Zappos, we set off to create our own culture book in March of 2011. Our first step was to collect our employees’ thoughts and input, and to that end we conducted a short online survey. Participation in the survey was optional, and everyone had the option to keep their responses anonymous if they preferred.
In the survey, we asked our employees to “describe in 150 words or less why you work for Identropy. Consider: why are you at Identropy and not elsewhere? Say it is Monday morning, what motivates you to come to work?”
The only edits were typos, but aside from that, here is what we got...