Lately, and probably due to the fact that I participated in an episode, I have been consuming podcasts with voracity. It’s nothing short of amazing how, within a short period of years, a completely new form of storytelling and idea broadcasting evolved into a finished and refined medium. There is something to be said about idea transmission as the primary mover of innovation and tech, but that is for some other time.
The latest podcast I’m binging is the second season of Land of The Giants, dedicated to the rise, and further rise, of Netflix. The first episode relates the very peculiar corporate culture at Netflix. Anyone, at Netflix, is replaceable. In fact, mid-level managers are encouraged to asked to determine whether there is anyone else that could perform better than any current employee. If the answer is yes, that underling will be fired. It seems ruthless, but this cutthroat mentality is paid for with absolute transparency, and everyone is open to criticism from anyone. That means that if your manager deems you unfit for Netflix, you have its entire financial records and project reviews at your disposal to defend yourself (and maybe throw the manager under the bus).
In any case, at one point in the podcast, Netflix CEO and founder Reed Hastings is asked just how committed is he to this corporate culture. He is basically questioned if he really believes in his company’s creed, or if it’s a myth building tool, a corporate branding gimmick. Hastings knows that having an out of the norm, unorthodox methodology is frowned upon by his peers, so he responds with an example: “Enron had its core value etched in stone, chiseled into the wall on the lobby of their headquarters. Chief among these values was ‘Integrity’. That word remained at the lobby right until all the board members and operating staff were arrested for fraud, and Enron folded”.
Hastings made his point clearly; corporate culture and values are either completely meaningless, or they have to be observed faithfully and to the letter. So, naturally, I went and looked back at my own.
- Dedication. A good start, this period of forced confinement and social distancing only reinforced our team’s dedication. Freed from social constraints of following a schedule and forced commutes to the office, we found work flows as undisturbed as ever, if not freer. It is not by chance that the word Dedication tops this list; when we were starting, feeling out the market, and slowly perfecting the business model, only persistence carried us through to where we are, and there can be no persistence without dedication.
- Integrity. Ok, just as long we don’t end up being arrested… Actually, this is a tricky word. Obviously, BY FOODS honours its agreements, so in an ideal world we wouldn’t have to incorporate Integrity as a core value. But, I think, in our particular context, it means simply that we do not make promises we cannot keep – we deliver. As the Enron example that Hastings shared demonstrates, values are not shown by words, but through behaviours, so we need to show integrity in all our dealings always. That way, we build trust with our partners, and we send a message inward, to ourselves, just because it is easy to lose sight of who we are supposed to be. By dealing with integrity, we constantly remind ourselves to be honest and trustworthy.
- Objectivity. It’s easy to get lost among all these nice, pleasing words and this entrepreneurial mentality, and it’s easy to fall into our own hype. The only way to fight this tendency towards delusion, is to come to terms with reality. We are what we are. We have the potential to be so much more, but we started as so much less. We must remain humble. Conscious of mistakes and missteps, and we must pick our battles. Objectivity is the antidote to the both cynicism of the corporate world and the fake glamour of running on motivation alone. If we start a negotiation with a potential partner it is because reality informs us it is the right thing to do.
- Motivation.
- Will to Win.
- Passion. Ok, I may have gone a bit overboard here, but if anything, this matters the most to me. Without the will to succeed, BY FOODS would not exist. It’s public record me and my team knew little or nothing about this trade – or these products – when we started. When we did our first trade shows in London and saw the reaction after the first bites our natas, we were done. That alone fueled our passion for this project. We have never been, since that moment, not motivated to push our products into the world market. This drive to succeed educated and shaped us into what we are now – it’s not easy to describe this value in a word. So I used four!
- Quality. Like integrity, this one may seem obvious and mercantilistic. Of course we value quality, and the cynics would say that even if we didn’t, we would say we did. But, again, this acts more as a reminder to ourselves than as a message to stakeholders. We can boast all the quality in the world, but if someone does not taste it as he samples our products, it means nothing. Quality comes from the high standards we place upon ourselves, our production and suppliers. It is important – imperative even – that we never forget that the reason we got so motivated on those first trade shows, is because people recognized quality in our products. If we ever lose that quality, BY FOODS dies, and becomes something else.
- Thought outside the box. By simple virtue of educating ourselves on our own. Discovering markets and channels, perfecting recipes. One would think there is not much leeway within this industry for thinking outside the box, but then again, not many branded products are built from top down like us. There is always a way to attack a problem in a disruptive manner.
So, mostly I am happy with our core values. I do live by them. I am confident my team does too. There is perhaps some redundancy I could have avoided, and some words may seem trite and meaningless if taken out of our particular context. But, all in all, these values are an accurate representation of BY FOODS, and the culture our team has grown into. It is fascinating to see how quickly new members of the team pick up on our values organically. I am confident I did not set them up for failure by creating a value system they cannot or will not identify with. And, unlike Enron, but very much like Netflix, these values are not set in stone. There is always room for improvement.