Name five things important to you and your company
Real quick — can you name five things that are super important to you and your startup? Can everyone on your team, or in your company? Will everyone have the same answer? What about your customers, or your vendors? Would their answers about your values be the same too?
The best way to make sure that everyone involved is on the same page is to document your values, share them far and wide, and start every new business conversation with them. That’s one of the many things we’ve been working on at FarBridge this week, and you can read about our values over to the FarBridge blog.
I used to roll my eyes any time someone wanted to talk to me about company mission statements or shared values. They felt like corny motivational posters at best, or complete corporate bullcrap at their worst. And while I’ve always thought that having a good company culture was important, I figured culture was something that just happened… on accident or through osmosis.
Leaving your company culture to chance is ok when it turns out great. But that’s like throwing a bunch of random foodstuff into a bowl and hoping that it turns into chocolate chip cookies. Without a specific set of values that everyone can know and agree on, your culture can drift, get muddy, or even become downright poison. I’d rather make cookies on purpose.
By posting and sharing our values, we can use them to evaluate new opportunities, point potential collaborators and partners to them, and encourage each other to live up to what matters most to us. Besides — your company can’t only be about making money. Making money is an essential part of business… it’s like breathing. But you have to do more than aspire to “breath every day.”
I encourage you to to not just think about what’s most important to you, but to write it down. And if you want an extra level of pressure, share your values with the public. Your community will definitely let you know if you’re hitting the mark or not. This transparency helps keep me grounded, and encourages me to put that extra amount of editing and polish into the things I want to put my name or the company name on.
Big thanks to the family and friends that gave us feedback on the FarBridge values. And huge thanks to Bradley Jeansonne for the awesome concept artwork, and Nathan Hanners for the rad FarBridge logo. Consider this the first tiny sneak peek at what we’re making. :-)
See y’all next week! Play nice!
Patrick
P.S. Here’s a picture of me, for social media sharing reasons. ;-)
