A culture to call our own

Building the foundations of VTEX’s identity.

Disclaimer: maybe this article makes more sense if you already know VTEX.

We usually have to start explaining what we do, but this is (or should be) available on our website and brandbook. Anyway, even within this group of people who already know us, there are many levels of insight about the company.

There is a group of people that have never heard of VTEX, this is the first time. There’s also the group of people who attended one of our events, the group that has been to more than 4 VTEX Days… And don’t forget the VTEX team! And that even among teammates there are the ones who’ve been there for much longer than others.

The thing is that each group has its own opinion, experience, story and contact with VTEX. The ones who are in the team working every day with other peers will always have a different experience than folks who are from the ecosystem. On the other hand, that will always be different from a client that has been with us for more than 8 years. This is natural.

But VTEX is, essentially, the same company. How to make sure, then, that you (who are reading today for the first time about it) and a person who has worked at the company for more than 6 years read this in a similar way? Is it doable? I don’t know, but I’ll try. This article is about this journey.

The search

When I got into this culture thing, I went looking within anthropology and sociology, searching for a foundation for what I was doing. After all, there’s nothing better than to read about people that studied locals from Melanesia while trying to understand better the culture of my own company. In this research, I understood that culture has three pillars: individual history, social models and forms of expression.

Well, a culture is formed by individuals, the interactions between individuals and the ways they express themselves. This not only makes sense but also starts to become helpful in organizing thoughts. When I separated the insight levels of VTEX into groups, I was identifying different levels of interaction between the people and the company. I wanted to have an idea of how close each one is to a comprehension that can be almost complete. It will never be. Mine won’t, nor will anybody’s — because this is a fluid system. But you can get close if you look deep inside.

I have some drawings that help illustrate this. The first is exactly this radial thinking that represents the manifestations of culture in different spheres of intimacy. From inside out or outside in, it doesn’t matter. This mindset has been a determinant in thinking about our culture.

As you might have noticed, the center of this system is the individual. This is the smaller unit of cultural representation we can get. In chemistry, the atom was for a long time this unit, but this was before we discovered that there are other elements that constitute the atom itself. As we’re talking about culture and people, we can reduce these elements into a single topic which is an individual’s history — that includes all factors that shape us as human beings. The education we had at home, the schools we went to, the friendships, the political situation, relationships… everything counts.

In this sense, in every company, every new hire modifies the culture, and so does every dismissal/termination. Everyone modifies the culture all the time. The funny part is that the company have its own history. Now we’re in 2017, VTEX is one of the best in the world, we already have offices in 13 countries and more than 250 employees. How do you define the culture of a company at this stage? Well, you ask people.

The process

We made a series of open group discussions about values, company characteristics and what identifies us. It was an intense month that showed the plurality of this wonderful team and helped us visualize where the differences are, where the similarities are and, as you might guess, it wasn’t easy to compile all this.

And the process had already begun way earlier. Our new brand showed us that VTEX is an organism that generates value through exchange and encounters. This is why, for example, the intersection is very important for us, graphically speaking. Our mission, after all, is to bring talents closer to corporations.

Talking to different people reinforced the relevance of language and speech. Of aligning words, expressions and speaking the same dialect. It’s worthless if I come here and write about freedom than Geraldo (our co-CEO) writes about it in a way that’s totally different. If Mariano (the other co-CEO) does the same, then is an official mess.

The scenario is getting better for us but it’s still a bit chaotic: respecting the dynamics of our “organizational unstructure”, where each one says whatever they think is better, the result is that we lose a lot in alignment. So, the first role of the culture is to align the speech and to create these common expressions that must be comprehendible and reproducible.

At this point, we got into a theme that’s related to cultural techniques. I don’t even know if there’s such a thing, but I’d say that there might be. Anyway, what matters more, for now, is the definition of what is the foundation of our culture. So let’s get into that.

The definitions

The first sphere is what can be seen from outside, it’s intimately related to what we say, the way we communicate and make decisions. In this sphere, if you know VTEX, you’ll probably recognize the pillars.

Trust to be trusted

Trust. There’s no way that an organization like ours can work without trust. This is the great pillar of all relationships that involve VTEX within and outside the company. Trust and you’ll receive trust back. We’re trust-first.

Build for community

VPS is one of the biggest demonstrations of our community mindset. Once, it was our team’s annual convention but, at some point, we saw that it did not fit only us anymore. And the success of the second edition says more than I could. Look at the size of this stage!

Be bold

We are pink. Among tech companies, in a boring corporate environment, what could be bolder than using pink as your main brand color? And our B2B nature doesn’t let us lie: it’s not only to be cool.

Nice, these are the main pillars. This means that everyone, in all spheres, must absorb it somehow. Obviously, those who are late to the party will understand it differently than those who’s been following us for a longer time. Maybe they’ve even thought about this or realized it somehow but never wrote it down.

If we jump into this intimacy, aiming at the inner part of it, I ask: how do these concepts are reflected within the company? In what way does this guide our decisions? Spoiler alert: I’m a big fan of the Venn Diagram and, not by chance, it has intersections!

Let’s start from the premise that our team understands each one of these pillars and their meanings. What happens if we mix them?

When you mix boldness and trust, you embrace failure. You start understanding failure as part of the process, let go of the fear from experimenting and learn faster how to make more and better.

When you mix boldness and community you get that “we” is bigger than “me”. And it’s important to say this because we believe that the right decision is the one which is best for the majority. We use this principle from the business to the product, to events and basically everything we do.

The last intersection is between community and trust: we understand that everyone must be public. To do so is to balance earning trust and giving back to the community. We already have this dynamic internally and we’re starting to share it more and more with our ecosystem, following the VPS example.

Alright, with all that said it still lacks the center of all intersections! Remember that in the beginning, I said that the center is the individual? In our case “being” is what really matters. It doesn’t matter what you say, it doesn’t matter what you look like. You have to be. In our culture, who can’t be doesn’t fit. So, the center of this diagram shows us that we must be what we expect from others.

In case you didn’t get this yet, I’ll go further: I can’t demand from others what I don’t do myself. I can’t criticize something if I’m not willing to help or if I can’t do better. So, before anything, good or bad, I have to reflect on how I am in this aspect. Which is something we don’t do so often but will help us evolve as people and as a company.

And where do we go from here? Everywhere! From this point, we start creating other manifestations of this culture: individual values, practices, leadership principles and working mantras, just to start.

This is our DNA, the gravitational center of our existence. If we walk together speaking the same language, we’ll go far beyond our own imagination.

Conclusion

It would be hurried to finish this article with something definitive because the nature of this work is dynamic. As I’ve said before, each person influences the culture all the time and that’s where the beauty is: this single image of a diverse collective. The image is VTEX — it represents the unity of this whole, formed by each person that is, was and will be part of the team.

While I was writing this presentation for VPS, I had a conversation with Geraldo and Mariano and we talked about how amazing it is to see that our company and our way to work make us better, beyond the work itself. The values we used as a foundation of our culture can and should be used in life by whoever believes in them as a way to take action, think and make better choices.

This thing we’re building goes way beyond an e-commerce platform. The challenge now is to make these ideas more tangible and to bring them to our daily life in a way that can be used as criteria for decision-making and inspiration for work. This will only be possible if every and each one of us takes part in this construction. And we’re just beginning.