Love People: Our #1 Company Value
All companies have a culture. Many companies believe culture matters. Some companies consider culture a competitive advantage (as our CEO Steve Irvine discusses in this talk). We think (and we’d be delighted to be proven wrong!) we’re the only tech company out there that has LOVE PEOPLE as its number one company value.
But what does it mean to love people? This is one of those questions that seems like it should have a straightforward answer until you realize it actually makes you pause and reflect.
What actions do we at integrate.ai take day in and day out to make this value come alive? How does it impact our decisions? How does it shape how we treat our colleagues, our customers, and, most importantly, the many people impacted by our machine learning algorithms and products?
Values are anchors that unify people with diverse perspectives (and we’re proud of our incredibly diverse team), enabling productive disagreement and progress. Here’s what some of us at integrate.ai mean when we commit to loving people. If you’d like to hear our point of view in person, come find us tomorrow at ElevateAI in Toronto!
Shradha Mittal, Talent:
Is it possible to fall in love with more than one person in a month? I did here at integrate! I’ve worked with several startups and never seen a 7-month old company with such a well-defined mission and value set. And these values were not just defined, but embodied, executed everyday via monthly meetings and a step in the hiring process. Everyone on the team has high professional and emotional intelligence. Everyone shows everyone else trust, compassion, and empowerment. We give each other feedback because we care and so we get better at what we do and as people.
Sandy Ward, Technical Team Lead:
Business isn’t about corporations, it is about the people who make up the corporation. When a company brings cutting-edge technology to market, it means people are placing a bet on the company. They should be greatly appreciated — or loved — for taking that bet. It’s even more important for a company to try and remember the initial excitement of a customer joining even after many years have passed and many people have changed roles. Our product is a relationship with the people at that company and we need to make sure we work at making the relationship better everyday!
Katharine Marek, Business Operations Associate:
Love People immediately sparked conversation when it was first suggested as a value at our offsite The more we talked about it, the more I understood it connected to our business goals. First, we want our platform to be great for people in business: we are using AI to help people and enable businesses to do new things, not replace people. Second, we want our platform to be great for consumers, improving customer experiences when interacting with big businesses. And finally, we want integrate.ai to be an amazing place for people to work. Love people is not just an external quality of our business: it also means we are building a workplace that is welcoming and comfortable to everyone who joins us. This commitment to loving people within the company makes working here an amazing experience.
Jason Silver, COO:
Love People — It means we put people first, always. Whether it’s our people, our customers, or the people our customers serve, we won’t ever compromise on doing what’s best for the people around us. To build a great company filled with ever growing and improving people, we need to put them first. To provide products that truly help our customers grow, we must focus not just on the problems we solve, but the people that use our products to solve them. To create the world we believe is possible with AI, the people our customers serve need our utmost love and respect so they can trust we’ll do what’s right for them.No matter the situation, no matter the scenario, we know that putting people first is always the right decision. It’s not even a decision, it’s a feeling. That’s why we chose to use a word as strong as love.
Ehsan Amjadian, Machine Learning Scientist:
Loving people means being able to see the world from their perspective, enabling me to appreciate them, their thoughts, and their feelings. It is only from this position of empathy that feedback gains its value, as it can be perceived as possible, relevant, and empowering.
Yevgeni Kissin, Data Scientist:
I love to be able to work on a product that is designed off-the-bat to help people. This is in contrast to a mindset which focuses on profits first. Working on such a product gives me a sense of pride, and genuine interest in making it a reality.
Megan Anderson, Business Development Director:
When we brainstormed company values for the first time in May, 2017, I wrote down 30 words to capture the essence of how integrate.ai makes decisions about everything from strategy to product to human resources. At the end of the brainstorming exercise, I realized that every word on the page alluded to one simple thing: love people. We live it every day. It’s why we constantly give each other feedback. Why we take each other to the doctor’s office so that no one has to go alone. Why we conduct two interviews exclusively devoted to values for every candidate. Why we cry with each other from both joy and frustration. Why we are careful to choose client use cases that will benefit their businesses while not compromising our mission to use AI to improve lives. Why we volunteer together. Why we check in on everybody’s emotional state at the beginning of every week. Why we want every client to feel excited about working with us. I think you get the point…WE LOVE PEOPLE. This is why I love this company and why I have a lot of optimism for the future.
Steve Irvine, CEO:
Love people has really become a core part of the ethos of this company. It is bold and memorable as a value, but it is also a big responsibility. Loving people means deeply caring about the people in the company that have taken on this ambitious mission with you. It means doing the right thing for people, even when it is hard or when no one will ever know. Love people is also a product philosophy — a fundamental belief that AI can be used to better understand people and give them what they want versus trying to manipulate or coerce them. It is about building a platform that gives people time back and minimizes their frustration. It reminds us to be empathetic and to care about the impact we are having on the world. It also creates accountability to act ethically, to consider the implications of what we are building for people and businesses, and to force hard internal and external conversations. Love people is the value that convinces the right people to join and the wrong people to never apply. It is idealistic and optimistic, yet raw and real. It gives people in the company a sense of purpose, helps to govern the way we behave, and influences the decisions we make. To love people is human, it makes a company feel like something different, something special. Above all else, love people is a feeling — one that reminds us to never lose focus on why this company exists, who we are, and the impact we want to have on the world.
Tyler Schnoebelen, Principal Product Manager:
I came across a definition of ‘dignity’ a while back that I really liked. It proposed that while things have value — making it possible to buy, sell, and trade them — people can’t be thought of that way. If I swap you out with someone else, something incalculable will have been lost and something incalculable will have been gained. I think part of seeing people as they are comes from not treating people as means-to-some-end and it means not locking them into some kind of box that reduces them to a static caricature. Even people who are pretty consistently one way are not actually always that way in all contexts. For me, loving people is paying attention to the shifts and complexities of individuals.
Scott Emberley, Business Development Director:
Whether intentional or not, great workplaces are built around mutual respect for others. This includes teammates, clients, suppliers and the communities in which they operate. I firmly believe that when decisions are not made inside a vacuum and consider the impacts on all stakeholders involved a company will achieve stronger outcomes. I’m a new hire, and the “love people” value and corresponding respect I saw among team members cemented my desire to be here!
Kathryn Hume, VP Product & Strategy:
I just read the many comments my colleagues bravely shared to contribute to this post. They bring tears to my eyes. They bring tears to my eyes because I feel so lucky to work on a team — to be part of an effort to build a culture — that orients its activities around the north star of loving each other, loving our customers, and loving the may people our products will impact. Anthony Doheny, my violin teacher in graduate school, always told me “you don’t have to like everyone; but you have to love everyone.” I believe that to the core of my being, and regret every moment where my actions don’t live up to what I know it would look like to act from a place of love. I agree with Ehsan that to love people is to embrace radical empathy, the work we must do to listen deeply to another to understand their story and perspective. I agree with Tyler that to love people is to radically embrace individuality, to delight in the surprises of individual existence, the surprises that tear down the rigid scaffolds of stereotypes, challenging us in machine learning to push our research to fairer, more transparent, and more accountable standards. I agree with Megan that to love people is to always be there for others, to always prioritize support for colleagues in their full individuality. And I have already benefited from the clear support, concern, and nudges towards empowerment from Jason and Steve on our leadership team. As a woman in technology, the greatest commitment I can show to loving people is to do my best to embody the ambition and drive I’d love other women — as other minority groups, as everyone — to know they can embrace in their career. It helps me love myself to know that doing so might empower others.
