Culture and Core Values (via OrganizedWisdom)

I really liked this post from Unity over at the OrganizedWisdom Blog on their company values and culture.

I’ve been fortunate to spend some time with the guys at OrganizedWisdom and I know that they truly mean every word posted.  I’ve learned more and more that the key to a successful startup is a solid foundation of people and values.  I think people often get confused that ideas, connections, or money are the key to success.  From what I’ve seen, all of those things help but are not the key.  In fact I think all of those things are easier to come by when you have a solid core of values and people who believe in them.  I really like the core values laid out in the OrganizedWisdom blog post:

So here are the 10 core values that shape our culture…

1. Our people are our most valuable asset and our most important investment:
   Over 90% of our budget is invested directly in our team! It is ultimately our team who drive innovation and create success.
2. We only hire A-team players who are the best at what they do:
   We care as much about passion and a positive attitude as we do specific skills and experience.  We strive for a family spirit to create a fertile environment for service, progress and growth.
3. We dream big:
   We believe (and have proven since inception) that any goal we set for the Company, we achieve. We set big goals and constantly ask how can we do better, how can we innovate, and how can we help more people?
4. We focus on effectiveness and results:
   We work with each team member to define clear and measurable goals every month and use weekly metric reviews to stay focused and keep on track.
5. We believe transparency and collaborative communication makes us more effective:
   We get more done when working together which is why we use group communication tools for nearly everything we do.
6. We stay solutions focused when innovating:
   The mindset is not why we can’t do something, but how we can do something.
7. We don’t write plans, we mock our ideas.
   On the fly prototyping enables us to innovate rapidly, save valuable time, and get new creations live early and often so we can get invaluable real world feedback.
8. We continually test, experiment and optimize:
   Our product and the service we are creating are never done.  We use data and real-world feedback and iterate producing major transformations of the week.
9. We thrive because of our $0 Cost Office Model:
   Our going green virtually approach helps us do more with less, create happier team members, and invest our time and capital more effectively to better serve our users and our clients.
10. We’re passionate about an important mission — to create the most useful search service in online health…We hope those around us are inspired by our energy and passion for the OrganizedWisdom Mission to help people.

Check out the full post at the OrganizedWisdom blog.