Values that changed everything
or how I met a vibrant and sustainable organizational culture
7:21 AM, I am taking the elevator to the 5th floor where the development department is located. Now there is nobody here and the light turns on automatically when I am entering my area. The working day begins with a cup of tea and planning tasks for today.
One by one the first colleagues show up. Each one has their own morning ritual, although it’s all similar in content. Soon the place becomes busy: some meet at the coffee machine, others are preparing their work space. This is a greeting time.
At Boozt, work hours are relatively flexible, but usually, by 9 o’clock you can see most of your colleagues. Wait a minute, I forgot to mention that Boozt is a successful Nordic company in which I am lucky to work. Cost per share at the time of writing this is equal to 53,00 SEK.
At first glance, everything works the same way as in other companies where I’ve worked, but in fact, I had never experienced anything like that before. And this is what I am going to tell you about in this article.
Here I want to talk about one of the crucial components of success not only for Boozt but also for any commercial or non-profit organization, sports team or group of berry pickers.
I had never before thought about what forces shape our commitment to the organization which, among other things, is expressed in a sense of duty for our responsibilities and the end result.
What I encountered while working at Boozt was the starting point in the study of processes that affect the way we work and the way we don’t work in the organization, and also why we ourselves behave in a certain way.
Now, while I am preparing for the meeting, I suggest you answer a few questions:
Do we believe in our company, our team, our mission, in what we do? Do we feel our involvement in the company? Are we going in the right direction? Are we in the right place? Is there anything that makes us believe that we are all important to the company? Is there anything that encourages us to treat our work in good faith and be responsible for that? Do we feel the positive impact of our professional activity on personality development? Is there a certain amount of passion for what we do?
If you can answer these questions in the affirmative — congratulations — your company has a sustainable organizational culture.
Organizational culture
Our organizational culture is not what drives us, but it’s what empowers this movement in every way. Without it, we would be independent workers who fulfil their obligations within their field of responsibility solely for the sake of material gain. No plans for the future, no worries about the fate of the company. You came, worked hours under the contract and left. It’s difficult to imagine a successful company without an organizational culture in which employees work with pleasure.
Organizational culture is the traditions, values, norms of behaviour that we accept and follow. It’s a kind of intangible asset that ensures success, resilience and prosperity of the company.
An organizational culture which is realistically and not only verbally shared and supported by the majority of the enterprise’s employees facilitates the effective solving of problems and productivity growth, stimulates it’s development and is a source of competent management decisions.
Accepting a company’s organizational culture doesn’t usually happen right away. You are joining the process gradually, then you either become part of it or not. Culture is strong precisely because collective representations mutually reinforce each other.
Whatever the organizational culture of the company is, it cannot exist without values that essentially define it. Values characterize the company. Speaking of Boozt, in combination with a democratic management style and a flat organizational structure, these values formed a strong organizational culture that played a crucial role in the development of the company and facilitated it becoming successful.
Values
In a broad sense, values are what people and society rely on when making decisions.
It withstands the test of time and employees themselves make the choice to accept or reject it. After a certain time, it becomes clear that adherence to these values leads to victories or defeats in business.
Values are extremely important because it provides employees a way to see what the company considers important for them to be sustainable into the future.
Norms and values that are actually exhibited will be converted into employee behaviour.
Values play a key role in how the organization operates from day-to-day and how it plans for the future
Trust, freedom and responsibility
These words taken separately are not so important, but together it forms the fundamental pillars on which the organizational culture of Boozt is based. It provides an opportunity to work in a friendly environment of general trust and responsibility, without limiting individuality, which in turn leads the company to growth and prosperity.
Whatever I encounter in the course of my work, I find its heritage everywhere.
The meeting is over and I am going to my desk. Coming across my colleagues and exchanging brief dialogues with them I can’t help but notice how organically and simply all this happened.
How we reached consensus at the meeting, how we distributed current tasks and how we exchanged ideas and opinions. And this is extremely important for employees who share these values, even if they are not aware of it. You can calculate the salary and the number of benefits you gain but the impact of shared values on your work cannot be quantified. But if employees are happy with their work and self-motivated enough, staff turnover is low and inter-team communications are effective — it may be a good sign that values work.
Trust. It’s pretty hard to work without trust. Alertness and suspicion in a team impede development. Control turns into an obsession and absorbs more and more resources and energy. The price of the slightest mistake is too high, risks are not justified, opinions don’t count, competence is in doubt, meetings are a significant potential for conflict.
In an environment of trust, you gain an additional incentive to justify the trust, which means working decently. You trust your colleagues and the company, they trust you. General trust strengthens positive sentiment.
At Boozt they say — we trust your opinion.
A person who trusts colleagues initially shows less negative emotions since he or she doesn’t expect unpleasant situations in advance. He/she is calm and open to everything new.
A prerequisite for the emergence of trust is a positive reputation, professional competence and honesty.
Trust empowers confidence in the work of the team so that accelerates the decision-making process, makes the work of employees harmonious. It allows you to increase commitment to the team, readiness for mutual assistance; it reduces conflicts as well as the costs of the leader to control the implementation of tasks. It provides an enabling environment for personal and professional growth.
In the broadest sense, trust is the expectation that a person or organization will act in our interests or not to the detriment of us even when we are vulnerable and cannot control them.
Freedom is possible through trust. If your opinion is trusted then you make decisions yourself. No one dictates to you how to do your work. You operate the way you want.
Lack of freedom means the suppression of diversity; it also restricts development and leads to stagnation.
We are free to take the initiative and act decisively in the best interests of Boozt and our customers.
Freedom allows you to discover new facets of knowledge, new ways to achieve business goals. It creates a favourable environment for innovation and research aimed at improvement and growth. Enriched with a new experience you become a more valuable employee and your decisions help the company keep up to date, constantly improve service and increase quality which affects loyalty and customer satisfaction.
Freedom is often underestimated. But without it, we cannot do great deeds. Under the close supervision of managers, it becomes much more difficult to think critically and on a large scale.
Act in the best interests of the company, research and take initiative, exchange ideas, boldly put forward your hypotheses; in general, use the freedom given to you. But do not forget that the price of freedom is a responsibility.
Responsibility follows freedom.
The connection is quite obvious. When making decisions you are responsible for them. Mistakes are excusable but irresponsibility is detrimental to everyone. Remember we talked about the trust with which it all starts? So, irresponsibility destroys trust.
Be prepared to bear responsibility — it is the price of freedom.
Despite the apparent simplicity of the definition, I would still like to highlight a few important points which sometimes maybe lacked to formulate a stable idea of responsibility:
- Responsibility is the presence of rights and obligations in relation to any activity as well as the associated sense of duty and good faith
- Remember, the company and your colleagues trust you and you should not undermine that trust.
- Having the freedom to make independent and dared decisions you must be prepared for the consequences.
- And even if you miscalculated somewhere and went the wrong way, responsibility means admitting your mistakes and willingness to take over and to do everything possible to fix and improve the situation.
- Responsibility is not limited to your obligations. A truly valuable employee is responsible not only for himself and his task but he also shares responsibility for the company. Sometimes it’s essential to go beyond the bounds of one’s duties and powers if it’s to the advantage of the organization. To do it you are given freedom and initiative.
At Boozt, you must accept responsibility as something natural.
Being responsible is much more profitable. It provides our employees with the desire to achieve the highest results.
This works as follows: you have a certain responsibility that you can expand by using your freedom which is available due to the presence of trust.
Boozt’s values are extremely deep in its effectiveness and application area while at the same time it’s completely simple and obvious. It is elegant and self-contained; it has nothing to add and nothing to remove. When I first read about it, not yet being an employee of the company, it really impressed me — it was the quintessence of everything that I tried to express for a long time in an attempt to determine which organizational culture is the best. And although some companies I know are close in culture to these values, I have never before met such a concise and clear wording.
Of course, the mere expression of these values is not enough, it must be strictly abided as well as inherently and unreservedly followed.
Values are not in words but in deeds.
This is what I feel every day at work. When I do my work or participate in meetings and when I make coffee or communicate with colleagues. This is our behaviour. I am glad that these values suit me. I am glad that our organizational culture has the power that will empower such a diversified community as we to work harmoniously and efficiently.
There are companies in which they have not even heard of organizational culture or those where it has never been implemented. In addition to all the benefits that the company provides, familiarize yourself with its organizational culture to understand the prospect of a long-term relationship. Determine if you can be a part of it or how much it suits you.
If you are a manager and your company has not yet established an organizational culture, think about it. It will help you create a harmonious relationship within the company and help all its employees to work as a single, well-coordinated organism. And determine values that will reflect the nature of your company so that it is clearly formulated and accessible to your employees.
Values help you find your way forward
On a personal note, what’s interesting to me is how you can use values to figure out which companies to work for.
We spend a lot of time at work. It’s not just work.
One of the most important questions is that you should figure out whether you are a culture fit for an organization.
Because you can deal with conflicts in style, but conflicts in values are tough.
Thanks for reading my article. I hope this material will be useful to you. This is nothing more than a symbiosis of processing information from different sources and my perception of reality. What else, right?
Special thanks to Jennie for contributing to this article.
