We took the time to identify these core values, and now we use them to select candidates that are a good fit for our company, during performance evaluations, and when considering an employee for a promotion.
Here are the core values that help our team members excel in our company
Do you put the company ahead of the individual motives? Are you accountable and demand accountability from others? Are you trustworthy? Are you comfortable giving and receiving constructive feedback? Do you truely care about your coworkers?
Are you so hungry you will do whatever it takes? Are you doing the work necessary to breakthrough through to the next level? Do you have and practice the “shoshin mentality” everyday? Do you take responsibility for your mistakes, learn from them, and share the lessons learned with other?
Do you fail fast, learn, and iterate to win? Do you use extreme speed to your advantage? A company complacent and comfortable is in
Do you question everything, debate, challenge ideas openly? Do you start with first principles without jumping to assumptions? Do you improve and simplify processes, introduce new ideas and products?
How did you show up this Quarter? This Day, This Week, This Month?
Merit-Based Culture: We promote based on merit and results—nothing else.
Focus on End Results: We are a results-oriented organization. Always keep the end goal in mind.
Mistakes Are Okay, Hiding Them Is Not: Mistakes are part of growth. Fail fast, learn fast. but make sure mistakes are highlighted so everyone can learn from them and improve our systems and processes
Encourage Debate: We explore ideas openly with our teammates. Healthy debate is encouraged—even if it means disagreeing with the CEO. Innovation thrives in a culture of honest discussion
Set High Standards: You get what you tolerate. Don’t tolerate low standards.
Sound Decisions Making: We trust you to think through problems and make sound decisions. Take ownership of your judgment and actions. Be aware of your biases and use decision making frameworks.
High Level of Trust: We want teammates we can trust. Be honest about what you say. Be someone your teammates can rely on.
Stay Lean & Frugal: Being frugal with resources trains us to accomplish more with less.. Most of the time, most tasks can be accomplished with very little money if we think through the task. It’s important to test at a small scale to validate ideas quickly prior to investing a lot into a project.
Leadership: Everyone is expected to lead. You don’t need to be a CEO to be a leader. Great leaders have good decision making. They hire and develop the best. They lead by example especially when things get tough. They are not afraid of surrounding themselves with team-mates better than them.
Think Big: Small thinking leads to small results. Big thinking leads to big results. If you’re going to be thinking anyway, you might as well think “big.”
University of Michigan
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