CrowdSpotter's Value's

Building your company’s vision is, in my opinion, one of the most important steps a CEO and founder will take in forming a successful company. The company’s vision and the values that accompany that vision will act as a navigation system for the organization. The company’s vision and values will help dictate key decisions such as who is hired, what products are offered, and how those products are advertised. The decisions made around a company’s value will help establish a culture at the organization.  If well established and purposefully architected, a company’s culture can become an incredibly valuable asset of an organization, helping keep moral high and making it a place people want to work for and with.

In knowing this, I thought I would take sometime to think about what my company’s core values would be. The 6 core values I have come up with were actually pretty easy for me to choose. This is because they are values I seek to follow in my everyday life and feel wouldn’t need to be changed because of changes in customer preference or moral shifts. The 6 values I have settled on are:

·      SIMPLICITY

o   Use financial and natural resources carefully.

o   Value the spirit over material objects.

o   Live simply, that others may simply live.

·      PEACE

o   Build conflict resolution skills.

o   Foster effective communication.

o   See conflict as a springboard to growth.

o   Seek elegant, simple solutions to problems or disagreements.

·      INTEGRITY

o   Let your life speak: your outer life reflects your inner life.

o   Treat others with respect and honesty.

o   Acknowledge interconnectedness and essential oneness.

·      COMMUNITY

o   Connect with all members of the community.

o   Be our authentic selves.

o   Balance needs of the individual with needs of the group.

o   Teach respect for everyone and the idea that everyone has a piece of the truth.

·      EQUALITY

o   Respect different people and different ideas.

o   Honor all faiths.

o   Celebrate a rich community made up of many cultures.

·      STEWARDSHIP

o   Protect and care for the Earth.

o   Promote environmental, economic, and social sustainability.

  

The 6 values are known as the Quaker Testimonies and are often referred to by the acronym SPICES. I came to know these values after attending a Quaker boarding school for high school. During my time there my classmates and I were required to sit in silence twice a week for 60 minutes. These periods of mandatory silence were often done in the format of Quaker meeting, the Quakers equivalent of Sunday mass.  To supplement these periods of silence and our understanding of Quaker principles my classmates and I were also required to take courses on Quaker history and ideology. It was in these classes that I learned about SPICES. While I am not a religious person I found the core values of SPICES to ring true for me. I fell they can be adhered to in all aspects on ones life. So for me it was easier to pick my company’s values because I want to company to be an extension of myself, it should therefore also hold the same values as myself.

While I was able to easily come up with the values, now I must work on figuring out the core purpose of my organization, my organizations grandiose goals (BHAGS), and a vivid description of what all of this would look like. A task that still requires much brainstorming.

http://www.quakersintheworld.org/home/testimonies.html

http://swarthmore.quaker.org/testimonies.htm