Patterns and anti-patterns in company values | Mux blog

Every company has values whether they’re stated or not.

Values are important because they help define behavior, and behavior is one of the most important parts of any organization. Behavior is like the operating system of an organization—give a set of inputs, what does an individual or team do? How do people act consistently as a team scales? How do you create a set of default responses, rather than requiring everyone to make every decision from scratch every time?

Values

Behaviors

Be Human

🧕 👷 🤵🏿

• Be humane. Be kind.
• Care personally (while challenging directly)
• Build inclusion and belonging
• Healthy team > individual heroics

Care Obsessively

📽️ 🔍 🎯

• Own your work
• Do good work because you care, not because someone makes you
• Every frame matters

Turn Customers Into Fans

🤜🏻 🤛🏿 🙌🏽

• Spend time with customers
• Look for opportunities to delight users
• Help customers succeed. We succeed if customers succeed (literally).

Do A Lot With A Little

🐜. 💹 💊

• Turn hard problems into easy problems
• Be opinionated and prescriptive
• Focus on ROI

Be Clear and Direct

🗣️ ✍🏽 🧘

• Challenge directly (while caring personally)
• Write it down: it's not finished until it's documented and discoverable
• Take the time to write and speak well
• Be present. Laptops down, video on.

Bias for Action

🏎️ 🚦🕺🏻

• Move fast: the large don't beat the small, the fast beat the slow
• If a decision is reversible, act at 70% confidence. Don't wait for 100%.