The throwing around of jargon such as values, employee engagement and authenticity generally brings me out in hives! Usually I have to find what it all means to me and Your Own Place until I’m prepared to adopt it. Even then it feels stolen and fraudulent.
I’m so impressed by the CEO/Founders who know their values from the start. To have that courage of conviction when you’re 25 is just astonishing to me. I certainly couldn’t articulate them at the start and if I had, it would have only been to myself.
So it is after six years that they have been distilled into these. And they’re not finished. With the team we will be turning this jargon into something that means something. Something that means ‘us’.
Because I believe there’s not necessarily a right or a wrong way of doing these things, I’m glad we’ve been living the values before defining them. This way they’re not just words on a corporate wall somewhere.
Most of all, it’s only because of the team that we’ve arrived at any words at all. With a new team member starting next month, I always return to who we are and what our values are. With the best team ever, living the values daily, our new employee will be in little doubt about what these really mean.