Personal and professional values: we’ve all got ‘em. They represent our fundamental beliefs, and guide our decisions, and shape our behaviour. Company values perform a very similar function.
A company’s core values represent its fundamental beliefs, and act as guiding principles to help people understand what’s expected of them, in terms of behaviour, how decisions are made, and how to communicate and interact with one another.
For us, at Rulesware, it’s about culture. And “culture is everything” for our CEO, Anthony Lee. “We hire, and empower, truly amazing people at Rulesware,” he says. “Our business is truly built on that—and in order to ensure that those amazing people want to join our company, and that they’re inspired and supported everyday, we need to make a conscious, determined, ongoing effort to communicate and reinforce what values we stand for. That’s really what we’re trying to do with this values refresh.”
Lee says he’s inspired by Patrick Lencioni’s definition of a company’s core values as “inherent and sacrosanct; they can never be compromised, either for convenience or short-term economic gain.”
Our New Core Values
Why Company Culture Matters
A company’s culture actively shapes how people interact with each other. A healthy culture helps motivate employees, and builds loyalty. And a strong culture can unite people, even when they don’t share the same geography or background. Culture shapes expectations and behaviors that are common to all within it–no matter the experience, the title, or the geography.
We know, too, that culture attracts great people: the most common questions asked by our candidates in job interviews are about who they’ll be working with; the kind of support they can expect to receive in terms of learning and growth; the kinds of people who work here; and the kinds of values we espouse.
Culture, for us, truly defines us: it’s a reflection of the company itself.
Putting Our Values In Action
We know it’s nowhere near good enough to simply put these new values into the world. We need, and want, to make them truly meaningful–and to put them into action. This is why we’ve begun to clarify and outline the expressions and behaviors attached to each of our values, and to set up a series of programs attached to each value.
Each program encourages our team to explore the meaning and application of a particular value, truly enabling value-focused behavior, and clarified understanding of our core values within our company culture.
We look forward to sharing those programs with you.
Intrigued? Want to join our dynamic, values-led team? Learn more about Rulesware careers or get in touch.
