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Happier Workplaces: Four Essential Ingredients for Building Them
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Last week we held a panel discussion on ‘Building Happier, More Human Workplaces In The 21st Century.’ Moderated by our Managing Director of Shortlist East Africa, Ariane Fisher, this fascinating conversation highlighted key ways you can increase employee satisfaction and reduce attrition rates. Many thanks to our panelists Ria Shroff Desai, AVP People Operations at Sula Vineyards, Dr. Marcus Ranney, General Manager, India at Thrive Global and Gaurav Singh, CEO of 3.2.1 Education Foundation for sharing their insights with our audience. Thanks to the Ministry of New for hosting us!

The panelists shared many of their experiences and approaches to creating happier workplaces — we’ve distilled them here for you:

1. Managers that provide ‘psychological safety’

Ria Shroff Desai, AVP People Operations at Sula Vineyards

When stressing the importance of managers providing relentless support to their employees, Ria Shroff Desai explained, “I believe in the power of good managers. It is a very well documented fact that employees do not quit jobs, they leave managers.”

“One of the most important things managers can provide to employees is psychological safety. This was something that Great Place To Work has done significant research on — the importance of psychological safety in several Asian countries. They found that Indians tend to value ‘psychological safety’ ten times more than people working in other countries. When working in a team, aspects such as teamwork, innovation and collaboration were not regarded to be as important as support from their managers.”

“Employees take risks. They need managers to have their back and provide feedback in a non-threatening manner.”

2. Instilling a sense of purpose in employees

Dr. Marcus Ranney, General Manager, India at Thrive Global

Thrive Global is a U.S.-based behaviour change technology and media company founded by Arianna Huffington that is dedicated to ending the stress and burnout epidemic worldwide. Dr. Marcus Ranney, the General Manager of Thrive Global in India, shared how crucial instilling a sense of purpose in employees is for creating happier workplaces that prevent burnout. He said, “As we look at a workforce that is becoming increasingly stressed, increasingly burnt out at work, if we as managers are able to drive a connection between the job a person is doing, who they are doing it for and what that person gets out of that piece of work. We will hopefully be able to build much happier and more productive workplaces.”

Talking about the methodology to instill this culture in your company Marcus said, “you can take micro steps towards getting happiness and purpose at a workplace”.

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Dr. Marcus Ranney sharing his thoughts during the Q & A session with the audience

While addressing the challenges you may face in your company when trying to achieve employee satisfaction — Dr. Ranney not only highlighted the role of stress in straining the workforce but also shared his opinion on instilling a sense of purpose in employees that can give way to happier workplaces.

“80% of India’s workforce says that they are stressed at work. 60% of whom wanted to leave the workforce because of the stress. 92% of millennials said they do not have the resilience to cope with the stress around them. This immense pressure is causing strain on the workforce.

I feel the solution lies in creating a sense of purpose for employees. Several companies, including Hindustan Unilever and Thrive Global are currently working on creating that sense of purpose and belonging to motivate millennials and other members of the workforce.”

3. Thinking like an employee, not a CEO

Gaurav Singh, CEO of 3.2.1 Education Foundation

Gaurav Singh is the founder of a pathbreaking education organisation called 3.2.1 Education Foundation. Drawing from his personal experience, Gaurav said, “I always wanted to build a workplace that I would want to work at”. In terms of culture, career progression and overall learning, Gaurav believes it is more about the journey than the destination. He said, “We want our employees to have a journey that they look back at fondly” and that is the culture he is trying to build.

4. Allowing employees to prioritize their families

Citing a practice that has been applied at Sula Vineyards to satisfy their diverse workforce, Ria Shroff Desai spoke about coordinated leaves: “We made a decision about three years ago that Sula is going to take school vacations. Our entire company is going to go on leave twice a year, including the CEO. The reason we did that is because we are a company of families. And schools have their summer holidays in May, so we are not going to penalise you for taking time off to go on a break with your children. We review this policy every year and it has been a success”.

After the panel, the audience had the opportunity to make peer connections as well as share real-life experiences as managers and employees. It was a wonderful opportunity to see several high-caliber professionals talk about the impact of implementing policies to boost friendly behavior at offices that can lead to happier workplaces. We want to give out a special thanks to our panelists for their time and insights.

To stay in the loop about future events (across India and Kenya) and to receive talent tips and resources straight to your inbox, sign up for our newsletter here.

More about our panelists

Ria Shroff Desai

Ria is AVP of People Operations at Sula Vineyards, whom you all know as the maker and seller of some of India’s best and most premium wines. Her expertise includes working with CXO teams to align strategic goals with actionable objectives and the people required to attain them while focusing on building strong, sustainable and smart teams. Outside of work, Ria is passionate about the social and nonprofit sectors and loves to take on pro bono consulting assignments. She is also a runner — and has completed 3 half marathons!

Dr. Marcus Ranney

Dr. Marcus Ranney currently the General Manager of Thrive Global, India, has previously served as a medical officer in the Royal Air Forces and at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. Marcus, a champion of wellbeing, was appointed as a ‘Global Shaper’ by the World Economic Forum in 2013. Working as a Futurist, his current research is focused on what the future of health and society will look like in 2030. Marcus is a keen athlete and long-distance runner, holds a Guinness World Record for backward running and thoroughly enjoys being a father to his two young children.

Gaurav Singh

Gaurav Singh, the founder and CEO of 3.2.1 Education Foundation, is an engineer by education who worked at Accenture before becoming taking up the challenge of becoming a Teach For India Fellow in its founding batch. He started 3.2.1 Education Foundation in 2012 and was awarded the Ashoka Fellowship and Echoing Green Fellowship in 2013 for his work. 3.2.1 Foundation has completed its engagement with over 80 schools impacting more than 1,500 educators and 70,000 children.

 

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Seven young business leaders in Kenya share the best career advice they ever received
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Whether you are just getting started or at the peak of your career, insightful professional advice will not only help you excel in your day-to-day but also see you through career transition and advancement. At Shortlist, we are consistently inspired by our clients and partners who have made their mark in Kenya early on in their careers. We asked seven young business leaders in Nairobi to share the best career advice that has propelled them to rewarding and impactful careers.

Tweet us at @Shortlisthires with your favourite one!

Christopher Madison, CEO — Dentsu Aegis Network

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Christopher Madison is CEO at Dentsu Aegis Network, a Marketing and Advertising company that innovates the way brands are built. Dentsu strives to make its clients’ brands win in a changing world. Chris shared the best career advice he’s gotten with us:

“The worst business advice I ever received was ‘do what you love’ at my New York University graduation-commencement. I have since learned “do what makes you money” works much better for me. I know, I know — it’s not exactly the stuff that makes a good Instagram post. And on one level, this approach goes against everything our culture tells us we should do with our careers. But there’s something to be said for financial stability.

To a greater extent than most of us want to admit, you’re only as principled and independent-minded as your bank account allows you to be. “Do what you love” is probably much better advice for someone who’s born rich, or holds a tenured academic position, than it is for the rest of us 99 percenters.

Besides, are we really so sure that the best thing to do with passion is attempting to monetise it, anyway? Why assume it’s easier to turn passion into money than it is to turn money into passion? Why not side hustle for love, and enjoy your career to make money?”

Lelo Koinange, Regional Operations Manager — Humanist Institute for Co-operation with Developing Countries (Hivos)

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Lelo Koinange is the Kenya Regional Operations Manager at Hivos, an international organisation that seeks new solutions to persistent global issues. Hivos works on projects that are against discrimination, inequality, and abuse of power with the aim of moving to a world where all people have the same rights, irrespective of gender, beliefs or sexual orientation. Here’s the best career advice Lelo received:

“I had a great HR mentor earlier on in my career; she was both fire and wind on any given day. What resonates with me till today was her opening and closing statement at literally all meetings and that was, “Go the extra mile, never settle for what’s expected of you” by Nadya Salim.

I know you’ve heard it a million times, but the truth is if you want results you have to be willing to put in the work — and more. Develop a great personal brand that’s based on working harder than everyone around you. A few guidelines for this:

  • Get in early
  • Ask the questions no one wants to
  • Do more research than what’s requested
  • Understanding the business of the organisation no matter your position in the organisation
  • Take risks early on in your career
  • Identify your skills and utilise them
  • Acknowledge that mistakes are part of learning

…as long as you never ever settle for what’s expected.”

Wawira Njiru, Founder and Executive Director — Food for Education Foundation

Wawira Njiru is the Founder and Executive Director at Food for Education Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation in Kenya that provides heavily-subsidised meals to students in urban primary schools. The firm sources fresh food directly from farmers and uses a central kitchen model to deliver the nutritious meal. Here is the best career advice Wawira had to share:

“I was lucky to discover what I wanted to do early in life, but along the way, like any other young person, I found myself distracted by other interests I wanted to pursue. I started a Masters in Public Health thinking I wanted to get into the health system but discovered that I was not as passionate about that and decided to focus on building Food for Education and providing meals to more children.

It’s easy to get side-tracked especially if you’re talented (or think you are) in many things, but there’s a lot of value in mastering one thing and learning how to do it well.

There’s also a lot of value in consistency and learning how to do things excellently. It may sound boring but doing the same thing over and over will help you become better and a master in your field.”

Ariane Fisher, Managing Director, East Africa — Shortlist

best career advice

Ariane Fisher is our Managing Director based at the Shortlist Nairobi office. Shortlist helps growing companies in Africa and India build and develop world-class teams. The Shortlist platform screens candidates using predictive chat-based interviews and online competency-based assessments, letting employers skip the most time-consuming and bias-prone phases of hiring. Here is the best career advice Ariane shared with us:

“Surround yourself with the right people — There is no single greater influence on who you are and who you will become than the people you spend time with. Surround yourself with people who you think are doing interesting and important work, who you can learn from, and who you can grow with.

Listen, listen, listen — Develop the ability to ask great questions, and truly listen to other perspectives. Build comfort with having your mind changed with new evidence, and for making everyone around you feel heard.

Learn how to give and receive difficult feedback — Developing the skill early to give critical and constructive feedback to those around you, as well as seek out and truly receive critical feedback yourself, will help you in your entire career.”

Christopher Mwirigi, Learning and Development Manager — I&M Bank

Christopher Mwirigi is the Learning & Development Manager at I&M Bank Ltd, a privately owned commercial bank. The bank is a dominant player in the Kenyan market and has been consistently growing by innovating the type and range of products and services it offers. Here is Christopher’s best career advice:

“For me, I remember being told that, ‘Always remember that integrity is something that nobody can ever take away from you. You always give it away willingly.’ That was from a professional mentor, and it is a lesson that has stuck with me for the rest of my career and life.

Another one I received from a very special leader I reported to called Hellen Akello was, ‘Never come to my desk with a problem only, always come with a problem and a solution.’

She was a brilliant leader I must add, and that lesson has been with me ever since and will follow me for the rest of my career.”

Isis Nyongo’ Madison, CEO — MumsVillage

Isis Nyongo is CEO at MumsVillage, a vibrant online village in Kenya that enables mothers to access and share locally relevant content and products through peer-to-peer communities. The parenting website provides resources, support and expert advice for pregnant women and parents for them to relax and express themselves among a community of like-minded friends. Isis shared her best career advice with us:

“As I reflect on the advice I’ve received over the years, I consider myself quite fortunate to have a diverse pool of people in my life to seek advice from. One of the most important lessons I’ve learned along the way is to understand the perspective of the person giving the advice and how they perceive you.

For example, if your high school friend works in an industry completely different from yours, it may be more helpful to seek advice on navigating office politics (since they happen everywhere!) as opposed to advice on which graduate program to choose. The person giving the advice must be giving informed opinions and not just an opinion because you asked them for it or it was shared unsolicited.

That said, one of the best pieces of advice I received was from my brother almost a decade ago when I was deciding whether or not to accept an offer from a company for a senior role. He works in academia, and I work in tech so our fields and work environments couldn’t be more different. But this is what he said that helped me then and continues to help me to date:

“Know what people want you to do and if that is work you want to do.”

He shared examples of how when you get to a certain level of expertise, you’ll attract opportunities that want that expertise, but perhaps you no longer want to keep doing an aspect of what you’ve been doing so well.

For example, you may excel at building strategy documents but may get so tired of doing them that that’s the last thing you want to carry forward into a new role. This has helped me make so many decisions, big and small, about how I spend my time and also enabled me to open up opportunities to others.”

Fiona Mungai, Managing Director — Endeavour Kenya

Fiona Mungai is the Managing Director at Endeavour Africa Limited, a not-for-profit organisation that supports high-impact entrepreneurs around the world. Endeavour offers advice to entrepreneurs from a network of world-class business leaders with the aim of breaking down economic and cultural barriers to entrepreneurship. Here are the words of the best career advice that Fiona consciously tries to live by and have this far healthily manifested in her life as a young woman in corporate leadership:

“There is no truism or realism in the pursuit of WORK / LIFE BALANCE — it’s a myth. In order to thrive, we should strive to integrate what really matters into ONE LIFE with harmony — everything you do complements your life’s work.

I received this advice from a Harvard Business School Professor — Prof Lynda Applegate during an Executive Education Program. I initially thought this applies more to women as there’s a lot of discourse on working women trying to balance life and having it all together. As I reflect more upon it, it definitely applies across the board.

An example I can draw from is when I decided to go back to Graduate School — I had attempted to combine both school and work but found that at any given time there was always a casualty to my juggling and that tended to be school. And because I was aware that the networks and top tier education were integral to where my career was headed, I opted to enrol to a full-time program at the London School of Economics (LSE) and quit my job at a leading Private Equity firm.

Looking back, that was probably the best decision of my life as the LSE created amazing opportunities and ultimately turbo-charged my career in ways that I would’ve never imagined.”

Thanks to the seven leaders for invaluable advice!

What’s the best advice you have received in the pursuit of your career goals? We’d love to hear from you in the comments section or on Twitter @Shortlisthires.

For more career advice, Shortlist updates, and recruitment resources sign up for our newsletter here!

Related: Five young Indian business leaders share the best career advice they ever received

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Five young Indian business leaders share the best career advice they ever received
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It’s an exciting time to be a rising professional in India. Whether you work at a large corporate, a fledgling startup, or a nonprofit organization, you’re probably exposed to myriad opportunities to take on responsibility and create impact through your work.

We spoke to five young business leaders who know a thing or two about creating outsized impact early on in their careers and asked them to share the best career advice they have received along the way. Here are some tried and tested nuggets of wisdom for anyone looking to take their career to the next level.

Varun Deshpande — Managing Director for India at The Good Food Institute, a global non-profit that works towards building a more healthy, humane, and sustainable food system and replacing industrial animal agriculture with plant-based and clean meat alternatives.

“The idea of ‘inspiration’ is usually overrated, and waiting for an epiphany is just a waste of time.

For the vast majority of people who didn’t emerge from the womb knowing that they want to be cancer surgeons, ‘inspiration’ comes from diving deep into problems — headfirst, without knowing the outcome. Naturally, you should optimize for risk, skill-building, career capital, financial expectations, etc — but anybody who ‘knows what they want to do with their life’ and is driven by a mission, first had the benefit of deep engagement with problems. Grappling with questions, studying industries and companies, perhaps even suffering trauma and wanting to ensure nobody else has to — that’s what leads to certainty of vision, and there’s no excuse for just sitting on your hands and waiting for your ‘inspiration’ to come calling.”

Ria Shroff Desai — AVP of People Operations at Sula Vineyards, India’s leading wine company and exemplar of sustainability in the Indian alcobev and manufacturing spaces. Ria also spent over two years in the CEO’s office at Teach for India.

“The best career advice I received was to never be afraid of your team becoming better than you. As a leader and manager, the best metric I can evaluate myself against is when people start approaching those in my team instead of me directly to resolve their issues.

Don’t hold your team back from getting involved with senior management, allow them to take decisions in smaller projects and always, always have their back in public. You can always review and correct their behaviour or give feedback in private — but as a leader, always take the responsibility if things go wrong. Your team will support you that much more in the future.”

Rishabh Khosla — Previously Country Head for India at Shortlist and tied for the honour of being employee #1 (and also a perpetual source of gyaan for the team). Rishabh is now Business Head at Freedom Tree Design.

“Build your own empire” — With flat hierarchies, constantly evolving role definitions, and most people sticking to a job for 2–3 years, it’s on you to chart a vision for your career and role and make it happen. You’ll be surprised how much responsibility you’ll get if you just ask.

“Don’t overthink it” — People fresh out of college (myself included) tend to think WAY too much about every single path they could take or job they could be doing instead. As long as you’re doing good work, having fun, and BUILDING TRANSFERABLE SKILLS, you’ll be surprised where the next opportunity will open.

Harshil Karia — Co-founder and Managing Director at Schbang, one of India’s leading digital solutions agencies and among LinkedIn’s Top 25 Most Sought After Startups in India!

“The best piece of advice I ever got was from Piyush Vora, who said — “Don’t let anything or anyone get under your skin unless it’s absolutely worth it for you”. I found that so apt for a people-led business. We’re dealing with people who are working on short deadlines and hence may say something unnecessary that may destabilize us. We’re dealing with multiple diverse stakeholders who have the license to say what they feel like. Negotiations are always intense with all kinds of vendors and clients.

In all the fracas, it’s important to keep your cool and only be affected by things that are personally meaningful. Else everything should be measured, thought through, and business as usual with the most rational, calm decision making.”

“It’s a marathon, not a sprint”

Rushabh Vora — Ex-investment banker turned co-founder at SILA Group, one of India’s leading real estate services companies with clients including Mumbai Airport, Adlabs Imagica, and the Trident.

“‘It’s more important to know what you don’t know than to know what you know’ — this applies to every leader. You are not expected to have all the answers, you need to learn how to delegate and make yourself as dispensable as possible.”

“When you build a business, look at it as if you are running a marathon rather than a 100-meter sprint. Don’t look for shortcuts or short term gains. Invest in processes, people, technology and don’t take unethical shortcuts. Money comes & goes, but goodwill stays forever.”

What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received? Let us know in the comments!

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Career Advice: Kenya’s Leading HR Pros Share Career Tips
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This year we’ve hosted several career advice panels in Nairobi to introduce rising professionals to industry experts in their chosen fields.

We recently had the privilege of hosting Angeline Mutua, Chief Manager, Talent Management & Staff Development at Kenya Revenue Authority, Christopher Karani, Talent Manager at Unilever, and Christopher Mwirigi, Learning and Development Manager at I&M Bank to discuss key trends in HR, career advice for advancement, and wisdom on personal and professional growth.

Here are some of the insights they shared about professional growth and career advancement:

Advocate for your next opportunity

Learn how to sell yourself. Be bold and ask for what you want. Angeline shared that she was able to transition from a career in Communications to being an Executive Administrator and finally into HR by consistently seeking feedback and advocating for the next opportunity. She explained how early in her career, she would ask to take on new roles during meetings and presentations, building her skill set while showing her boss that she was capable of new responsibilities.

She shared that she was impressed with the initiative she’s seen from her younger colleagues: “This generation is not going to sit and wait for opportunities! They know they won’t just have a development plan handed to them.” Remember that if you don’t advocate for yourself, who will?

Stay up to date with industry news and current events

Christopher Mwirigi offered the career advice that keeping up to date with industry and business news could help you have meaningful conversations with leaders within your company and position yourself for advancement. Subscribe to industry newsletters and read the paper — not only to impress your boss but also to enrich your own understanding of your company’s work. Ask yourself: If you were in an elevator with your CEO, what would you want to discuss with them?

Chris Karani reiterated the importance of reading and continuously learning. According to a report by the World Economic Forum, some of the skills you know today will be irrelevant in the next two years. This means you need to seek out ways in which you will remain relevant in your career and workplace in general.

“Understand your industry and organization inside out and the ways in which you add value. Keep in mind that organizations are less afraid of losing you but more afraid of retaining an individual who adds no value to them,” said Chris. In the recruitment process, take the time to understand the organization you want to work for, what they do, the impact they make and what value you can bring on board.

There is no conventional way of landing your dream job

Take on the journey of self-discovery, start from where you are to get to where you want to be. It doesn’t matter what you studied, or what you are currently doing, keep going and seek out ways to drive yourself towards where your goal.

Angeline started her career journey in communications for a number of years, tried out other roles, before getting into Human Resources. Christopher Karani studied Computer Science in campus and currently uses technology to improve Human Resources practices across his organization, while Christopher Mwirigi’s first passion was football, and now applies the same teamwork and confidence in his HR career, focusing on learning and development.

Find a mentor

Mentorship is key to career and personal development. You may be lucky enough to find a mentor in a current or former supervisor, but more often, you will need to be proactive in seeking a mentor.

Is there a leader you admire in your organization? Or perhaps you know someone outside of work who is great at a particular skill set that you’d like to work on. LinkedIn could also be a valuable tool for reaching out to a potential mentor. Chris Karani offered the career advice that he made a list of professionals on LinkedIn with HR positions he aspired to, and then reached out to each of them with a thoughtful list of questions. One of the professionals who responded has been his mentor ever since!

This example highlights an important bit of career advice — be sure to approach a potential mentor with a clear “ask” and discussion questions, so that they feel their time is being used productively. And remember — sometimes finding the right mentor can be challenging but don’t be discouraged, you will find someone who is a natural fit to guide you with their advice and feedback.

Your attitude is fundamental

While confidence, intellect, and knowledge are key when it comes to making it in any field, your attitude has the potential to open doors for you. This could be as simple as being proactive when it comes to learning; often times you don’t have to have all that’s listed in a job description but your willingness to learn and grow sets you apart.

Part of having a positive attitude is not being afraid to fail. It is often said that failure is the best teacher. You learn how not do certain things, how not to act and it shows you what doesn’t work. No matter where you are in your career at the moment, remember you can always begin again and do better. Always focus on the possibilities of success, not the potential for failure!

Thanks again to our incredible panelists for their wisdom and career advice. Want to make sure you’re on the invite list for our next Careers event in Nairobi? Sign up for our newsletter here.

Related: Seven young business leaders in Kenya share the best career advice they ever received

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One Team: A Fifth Shortlist Value Enters the World
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By Paul Breloff, Simon Desjardins & Matt Schnuck

Our Kenya team, happy about our fifth value (or so we choose to believe).

A year ago, we wrote a blog about how Shortlist defined our values. It’s been fun to see the engagement with that blog, which has interestingly been our most popular one ever. We interpret this to mean that people really like stories about team culture & values — or people just happened to be Googling the term “swashbuckle” and stumbled on us.

So we thought we’d share an exciting development: We’ve added to our values!

Values, and the culture they help define, are living breathing things. Just as our team continues to grow, expand, change, move around… well, we wanted to create some space to revisit some of our basic building blocks and see if they’re keeping up.

And when we considered that, we decided: mostly, yes… but they were missing something.

Specifically, we wanted to call out the importance of team and collaboration a little more directly. We loved our existing values — but with a critical eye, we realized they came across as more individualistic than we’d like.. Own it; Act with intention; Find the adventure; Be a whole person. These are all things you can do just as well on your own, with or without a team.

In the time since we defined our values, we’ve seen how crucial it is to us to emphasize a team-centric spirit. We strive for the “we” rather than “I” in most things. We want people to act and believe that when the team wins, each individual wins.

This was brought home for us when we acquired Spire last year. While we brought the legal entities and office space together, we went through a parallel process of merging our team cultures and work-styles (see below white board). We realized how the values of both teams were more similar than different, and as a team we connected each team’s distinct values to a set of shared underlying principles and behaviors we could all get behind. With one exception: one of Spire’s value was “Generosity,” which was reinforced through mantras like “feedback is a gift” and practices like gratuitous fist bumping, which represented a generous burst of personal connection amidst otherwise busy days and personal agendas. We really liked that, and we wanted a little bit of that in our global Shortlist culture.

Epic work session merging Shortlist and Spire values…

To make the change, we learned a little bit from our last process: we made sure we pulled ideas from everyone, but ultimately took it upon ourselves as co-founders to define the actual words. We held three brainstorms across our offices in Nairobi, Mumbai and Hyderabad, collecting examples of what great team moments look like, what behaviors embody the teammates we want to be, and what sort of practices we want to avoid. We also collected different phrases or words or ideas that were particularly resonant for the team, and got lots of great ideas.

One of the brainstorms about being a great (and less great) team…

Then, the three of us co-founders combined individual journaling and co-drafting (hey, it worked last time!) to come up with the “new value.” We went back and forth, discussing what different words and phrases meant to us, and what behaviors we most wanted to enshrine and discourage. Ultimately we settled on the following:

One team. Teammates come first. Mood is infectious. Listen loudly. Feedback is a gift. “We” instead of “I”. When the team wins, we all win.

This captures so many different meanings for us. The idea that we’re “one team,” united by a vision, mission, and passion for unlocking professional potential, despite a variety of backgrounds, offices spanning three locations on two continents, and the dozens of individual life trajectories that have converged on the shared Shortlist adventure. These ideas orient us towards the credit-sharing “we” and away from the credit-hoarding “I.” They remind us that in our company (which we try to keep as flat and nonpolitical as possible), the best way to win individually is to help the team win. And they encourage us to think about feedback not as a critique, but as a gift from your colleague, who is giving it in the hopes of mutual growth.

Will this be the last change we make? Who knows, but probably not! But that’s all part of the adventure.

P.S. Curious to see the whole set of values? Search no more!

Own it. Be your best, even when no one is looking. High standards are contagious. Generate discipline. Drive for results. See the needful and do it.

Act with intention. Do the work to get clear. Buck convention. Big goals start with small steps; step with purpose.

Find the adventure. Changing the world should be fun. Inject romance into the everyday. Be bold. Dream loud. Swashbuckle.

Be a whole person. We’re more than our work. Seek balance and health. Learn from differences. Unlock your potential.

One team. Teammates come first. Mood is infectious. Listen loudly. Feedback is a gift. “We” instead of “I”. When the team wins, we all win.

 

 

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