Growing With Our Company Virtues
Here at Animoto, we are a team that rallies together through good times and bad. It’s easy to celebrate the victories and wins during good times — and we’re very good at that. But, more importantly, we are great at lifting each other up when things aren’t going so well and the victories and wins don’t come so easily. We’ve been at this for fifteen years and have seen these cycles many times. It’s my belief that companies that stand the test of time are those that are intentional about investing in their people and their culture.
How exactly do you do that?
In my experience, companies with a successful culture are:
- readily responsive to feedback,
- agile in the face of change,
- and excited about growing through setbacks.
For our company, revisiting our core values, or what we now refer to as our virtues, is about making sure we do all three — and do them well.
How it all started
When we founded Animoto as a group of four friends, our culture was already built-in at the core of our business. Back in 2006, our company was founded on deep friendship, perfect trust and accountability, and of course — a lot of fun. We were able to scale this as the basis for our culture for the first several years.
When we grew to around forty employees, however, we ran into some natural challenges. So, the executive team put together our very first set of company values, seen below. These values are still up on the Animoto HQ wall, as a relic and reminder of where we started.
Although those values were a good stepping stone, the team soon outgrew them. Eventually, they looked to us like helpful principles and promises but they certainly didn’t feel unique to Animoto. So, in 2016, we went back to the drawing board. This time, we asked the whole Animoto team one simple question: Who are we when we are at our best?
We didn’t ask for the executive team’s take on our aspiration values, and we didn’t ask “Who do we think we should be?”, or “Who do we want to be in the future?”. We wanted to know how our team as a whole saw ourselves in our ideal state.
How our values evolved with our team
The responses we received were inspiring, to say the least. Even better, they had three common themes: humility, a problem-solving attitude, and passion/creativity/fun. We then tasked a small creative team within Animoto to take these themes and mold them into the values that reflected our culture. Here’s what they came up with:
These new values weren’t just memorable and distinct. They helped us make meaning of aspirations that were unique to our team. They helped us feel united and gave us a north star to strive towards.
How our team grew together — and what it meant for our company values
In 2019, we made a subtle but important change: we went from “company values” to “company virtues”. Inspired by Ben Horowitz’s book, What You Do Is Who You Are, he credits the Japanese samurai culture with saying, “Virtues are what you do, whereas values are merely what you believe.” That hit me really hard. The reality is that Humbletude, Betterfication, and Oomphosity have become what we do at Animoto — they are our code of conduct. These three traits are deeper than just our values. They’re our virtues that we live each and every day at work.
This year, we decided to take it even further. In the spirit of betterfication, and to ensure that our virtues are a growing reflection of our team, we took a deep, humbling look at the definitions of our company virtues. Here’s how we explain our three company virtues today.
Humble•tude
Previously, we saw humbletude as a combination of humility and attitude. Since then, we’ve realized that being humble and having an attitude can be polar opposites of each other. So, we thought through this with the team and shifted this value from “attitude” to “aptitude”. Why? Because we are confident in our abilities but believe we can always learn from each other.
Better•fication
In the past, we thought betterfication was strictly about our team at Animoto, our brand, or our business. Last year, we learned that our platform affords us an opportunity to betterfy much more. We believe that making the world a better place begins with each of us pushing for and becoming the change we want to see. At Animoto, we’re crazy enough to believe that we can change the world with this outlook.
Oompho•sity
We believe our diversity of thought, experience, background, gender, race, sexual orientation, and ability makes Animoto stronger and puts us in the best position to fulfill our company vision. We are proud to bring our full selves and unique talents to work every day. When we look at ourselves in the mirror at this stage in our journey, we know that our strength comes from our diversity.
Everything we do at Animoto is stronger when we bring together as much diversity as possible. That’s why we work towards this daily.
Have you considered your company virtues?
What makes up your company’s values (or virtues)? Have you and your team thought through who you are at your best? Do you live by what you believe? If you had to come up with a list of virtues for your team, what would they be? If you’ve already come up with that list, can everyone in your company recite them? Better yet, does everyone live by them? Drop a comment below and let me know!
