Lifting a leg on our company values
It’s already been a year since I’ve left San Francisco. That’s a good chunk of time to reflect upon. I often tell people that I’ve been learning so much, but without recording it, it’s hard to explain. Learning’s not automatic; reflecting upon something is makes you really learn it, which is why teaching is the best way to learn — I never really got AutoLayout until I taught it. (Compression resistance and content hugging priority never really made sense to me until I had to teach them; I’d just fiddle with one or the other until the errors went away.)
Where do you start with a year, though? It’s a daunting task, so I immediately gave up. Today I’ll just focus on just the last week, which has been spent with Chuồn Chuồn, my new miniature poodle puppy. Hopefully this helps justify all the time I’m spending on my ugly little puppy.
Chuồn Chuồn has really shed light on how inconsistent I tend to be, and how that makes my life harder. One of the most inconsistent things about me is my daily routine: I sleep, wake, and eat at unpredictable times, but that doesn’t keep me up at night, so to speak. Housebreaking, on the other hand, was wholly within my control and I’ve been failing, mainly due to a lack of consistency.
I’m not supposed to teach her to pee inside, but at night time I don’t like waking up so I set up a little pee area by the bed. Now she’s confused because there’s inconsistency on whether she should pee inside or outside.(So of course she reconciles all of this by peeing all over my favorite stuff.)
Naturally, all this thought about pee and poop led me back to the company I co-founded. Have we consistently rewarded the right behaviors? What are the right behaviors? Enter the company values — company values inform everyone about what behavior we’ll reward. For my puppy, it should be “pee outside” and “stop eating your own poop”. (Seriously, I cook you fresh meals. And you’re going to eat your own poop?)
I’m proud to say that we’ve always put the student first at CoderSchool. From the very first day, our first priority has always been providing a high-quality, unparalleled educational experience, and as a result, over 90% of our students would recommend our classes to a friend. That’s us peeing outside.
For help phrasing our other values, I drew inspiration from Zenefits, a company I’ve been curious about ever since my co-founder from a previous startup left to join them. A few months back they appointed a new CEO, whose first order of business was defining new company values, which I found enlightening:
Zenefits’ company values were forged at a time when the emphasis was on discovering a new market, and the company did that brilliantly.
Now we have moved into a new phase of delivering at scale and needing to win the trust of customers, regulators, and other stakeholders. As an entrepreneur myself, I know that Zenefits can never lose its innovativeness and willingness to experiment.
But at the same time, I believe a new set of values are necessary to take us to the next level.
Effective immediately, this company’s values are: #1 Operate with integrity. #2 Put the customer first. #3 Make this a great place to work for employees.
Zenefits may sound like an odd choice for a role model given their recent public troubles, but I really love the succinct and direct nature of this email. At CoderSchool, I’d like to think we have done a good job about being consistent, but I think it’s time to formally articulate this in writing.
CoderSchool has been forging its values through a a time when the emphasis was on discovering a new market, and the company did that well. Now we have moved into a new phase of delivering at scale.
Effective immediately, this company’s values are: #1 Put the student first. #2 Move quickly. #3 Always be learning. #4 Pee outside.
