Our team interviewed candidates for several positions over the past few weeks, and it got me thinking about core values. Terms like core values, core purpose, vision, and mission mean different things to different people.  For some they are meaningless cliches, for others they are necessary parts of your story but only at a superficial level. Our team puts a lot of thought into what they mean, and during the second half of this year we invested a lot of energy in redefining them for ourselves and our entire team.

Core values are especially important for us in the hiring process. It is more important for us to find a match based on values than on skills. We base this preference on the belief that the right person will acquire the skills necessary to be successful. The person with the right skill-set that is not a values match will most likely not magically transform themselves into a values match.

We redefined our core values recently, and you can find full descriptions of them here. In brief, we look for people that are willing to live up to the following:

• Be Committed
• Be Humbly Confident
• Be Trustworthy
• Be Optimistic
• Be Hungry

In practice, we use these guiding principles during the hiring process, when we onboard new team members, and during our everyday activities. In our “Quarterly Conversations” review process, we do a simple assessment jointly with each team member to establish how consistently they live up to these values. The whole point is to build and maintain the best team.

Each of us has our own thoughts about what these values mean to us, and in an upcoming series of videos, our leadership team will explore these thoughts in more detail.

What I ask you to think about is what you would think of a company full of people that lives by these principles every day? What would you expect from such a company? We believe in this so strongly that we think a team full of people that share and live by these values will excel in everything we do, to the benefit of all our clients, suppliers, and other stakeholders.

If you’re a potential client, a potential team member, or a potential supplier to whom these values appeal, contact us here.