SwissBorg: Engineering values
Values are the guiding principles that define actions and decisions. They are the beliefs and behaviours that shape the culture and the character of a company.
When done right, values can create a shared sense of purpose and inspire employees to do their best work.
Until this point, we have had only SwissBorgs values, whilst they apply to engineering they are aimed at the whole business. As we grow, we feel that now is the time to create an identity for our engineering team and introduce values that apply only to us but still connect to the wider mission and values.
How did we create our values? With our engineering team of course! Getting our engineers opinions was crucial in identifying what our key values should be. We achieved this by creating an open forum about what working at SwissBorg means to them, the unofficial values that they feel we already follow and how they see our environment.
A lot of the feedback we received overlapped, which was amazing to see. It means that even without “official values” we had created an identity within our engineering team.
Buzz words should be more than fancy internal documents and we want our values to have a purpose, so we have whittled them down to three simple core values:
Engineering empowerment
We’re committed to empowering our engineers to unleash their full potential. We believe in encouraging each individual to take ownership of their work, make autonomous decisions, and drive success not only for themselves, but also for our wider engineering team.
Collaboration and teamwork lie at the core of our culture. We strive to foster an environment where our engineers can work together seamlessly to tackle complex problems and achieve shared goals. By prioritising collaboration, we’re able to build a stronger team that consistently delivers top-notch results for our customers.
We provide our team members with a clear vision and purpose, enabling them to align their efforts and work together effectively towards a common objective.
We build trust with transparency
We aim to create a culture of transparency and honesty. This means openly sharing our motivations, intentions, and actions with all team members to ensure everyone is aligned on what we’re doing and why we’re doing it.
We strongly believe that communication is key to success and prioritise early and frequent communication to ensure everyone is on the same page.
By fostering a transparent environment, we eliminate potential future obstacles and enable everyone to work collaboratively.
Embrace a growth mindset
For this value we focus on two areas, our team and product.
Our team:
We believe that there is always room for improvement and encourage our team to challenge themselves, set goals and work hard to achieve them. We continually seek to enhance the quality of our knowledge and skills.
Some examples of how we drive this:
Enabling a culture of continuous learning and development allows the team to stay up-to-date with the latest trends, technologies and incorporate them into their work.
Growth requires adaptability, our engineers are able to respond quickly to changing market conditions and user needs, as well as being open to new ideas and approaches.
Our product:
We are creating an exceptional product by delivering reliability and the highest quality. To achieve this, we’ve assembled a team of brilliant engineering minds with a passion for innovation. Our engineers leverage their expertise and creativity to evaluate every aspect of the product, from design to scalability, to ensure it meets our users needs.
We welcome experimentation and new ideas from all engineers, empowering us to continuously improve and enhance our product. As a team, we take full ownership and responsibility for our work, and we’re fully invested in SwissBorg’s success.
To summarise, in the words of Peter Drucker — “culture eats strategy for breakfast” an empowering culture is an essential component of long term success.
