What drives us to do great work?

Alright, real talk time about your job.

Why do you do what you do?

There's a common thread that ties us all together….

I think the best answer is: You want to feel something.

Think about that. It’s true. You want to spend most of your time each week doing something meaningful, that resonates with what you personally value. You want to feel that satisfaction, that sense of victory, and that sense of self-worth.

When you think about what you value, think about this: Values are not ambitions. You’re not saying, “A value of mine is accountability because I could improve on that.”

No. Your values are what already define you, what you are already proud of. They drive you forward to feel great about what you do and who/what you benefit.

Defining InnoVint's core values—our secret sauce, if you will, about what makes us tick so well —has been a fun and challenging journey.

Since I started the company nearly a decade ago, our values have been involuntary drivers behind our decisions and strategy, not necessitating written definition. But as you grow, this becomes less overt, less obvious. That guiding light is important to codify so to set expectations for behavior and prioritization, and ensure the team at InnoVint is aligned.

This process involved many iterations, starting with an all-hands sticky note session and concluding with Senior Leaders meticulously crafting every word that we believe mirror our truth.

The results are our five Operating Principles, which you can read more about here.

Here’s the catch, though.

Establishing your values is a milestone to celebrate, but the real work comes in how you execute on them. You need to take these to work with you daily, not just embodying them but acknowledging and recognizing peers who exhibit them.

At InnoVint, we’ve woven these into our everyday with programs like our InnoVinter of the Quarter Award, deciding who we hire, defining how we measure performance, and fun real-time engagement practices like Slack emoji call-outs when we see them demonstrated. They come up in every Quarterly Business Review to remind us of how we do our best work, with these principles leading the way.

There's so much more color to add around how to put them into practice, but that's for a new post on another day.

If you’re a founder, entrepreneur, or executive who’s been responsible for defining your company’s values or principles, I’m very curious as to what your process was like.

• What iterations did you go through?
• Who did you involve?
• How easy or difficult was it to get to the final set?

➡️ Let’s start the conversation! Share your thoughts and experiences below.

If you’re interested in this process, you can learn more about what to do (and not to do!) when creating an effective values program from the Harvard Business Review here. This is also a fun list to review for inspiration to see how varied and versatile these can be.

#companyvalues #companyculturematters #peoplefirst

Tom Shapland Chris Terrell Zach Kamphuis Todd Gottula Kelly Graves José Alberto Santos Drea Helfer Ann Reynolds Robert Morris Ronald Du Preez Caroline Calhoun Cathy Huyghe Rachel Woods Sarah Ferguson Kamal Shah Zack Scott Kevin Merritt Dan Strengier Libby Juelsgaard Pascal Finette Jane Finette Jason Sparrow