Not just a marketing claim!
When I posted the following sentence last week, I felt that it deserved a bit of explanation:
We want to create one of the best workplaces where we can all have fun using technology to impact this world.
It sounds like a statement you would see in a supermarket printed in colorful and bold letters, so I thought it was worth spending some time giving it a bit more substance.
Let’s break it into pieces and think about what it means and, more importantly, how we can work towards it.
1. ONE OF THE BEST WORKPLACES
It’s not just about having a MacBook Pro, a cozy office, free lunch, coffee, parties, and a ping-pong table.
I love this statement from Netflix and a lot of their culture in general:
“Great Workplace is Stunning Colleagues.”
Colleagues that you respect and learn from and enjoy being surrounded with.
Many of the Principles from Ray Dalio are also very inspirational to me, even though I understand that the “full transparency” described is particularly challenging to achieve. However, one principle that specifically stuck out to me is:
Never say anything about someone that you wouldn’t say to them directly, and don’t try people without accusing them to their faces.
No one at Ekohe wants to deal with office politics, and we should all be able to embrace criticism directly.
Finally, what’s important to me is that everyone feels that it’s safe to voice a concern they might have so that we can act upon it. To become one of the best workplaces, we need the feedback loop to learn from you and constantly adapt.
We’ll have the opportunity to dig more into our company values in the following articles.
2. HAVING FUN
We all have our different ways of having fun, and considering the share of our life spent at work (about a third!), we should all make sure that we enjoy our work. Enjoyment is “the state or process of taking pleasure in something”. As you start your day, you should be excited and looking forward to the challenge provided to you and satisfied by the accomplishments at the end of the day.
I also believe we all do our best work, are most creative and collaborative when we have fun.
Occasionally and unfortunately, there will always be a share of dirty labor — but hopefully, that should be a minority share of your work.
Of course, having fun doesn’t mean that we act unprofessionally and carelessly; many of our projects are business-critical for our clients.
3. USING TECHNOLOGY
In our case, software technology is our tool, and we express it through design and development.
It’s what we do best — but we need to continuously challenge ourselves, learn what’s new, keep an eye on the trends, and try new technologies.
However, it’s crucial not to over-engineer and use cutting-edge technologies on a critical project just because it’s fun. It needs to bring a business value or a user experience that justifies the risk of using new technology.
4. IMPACTING OUR WORLD
Probably the most challenging item on this list and the most powerful. Revenue and profits drive businesses, but impact empowers people and drives meaning.
As a humble start, I hope we have positively impacted the employees at Ekohe and the families they support. Yet, we would like to have a more considerable positive effect through our work.
All projects generate a positive impact, making our and our clients’ lives easier, optimizing business processes, increasing revenue, or reducing cost. However, we don’t always reach the scale and the long-lasting effect we would like to observe, such as: reversing climate change, improving education and healthcare in developing countries, innovating new sources of energy, clean water…
I sincerely hope this is an area we can either find more opportunities or have the capacity to initiate or support such endeavors. I feel the urgency more and more to get involved sooner than later.
As a reader, I hope you understand that it’s more than just a marketing claim; it should be an inspiration and a guide.
Wishing you all a good rest of the week,
Maxime
