MindValley Blog

Over the coming weeks, I will be blogging a lot about “The MindValley Way” to help further build and cement MindValley’s culture. I am a firm believer that having a well defined culture will contribute greatly to:

• attracting and retaining the best employees
•  make work at MindValley far more enjoyable
•  help to take MindValley to the next level

At the core of ”The MindValley Way”, we expect ourselves to take ownership & initiative. 

What exactly does that mean?

At MindValley, everybody is given a lot of responsibility and freedom to get their job done.  We often let employees that have just started with us run some of our biggest money making websites or start to lead important new projects.  At the same time, we do not micro-manage.  Why?  First of all, I believe that great people manage themselves and don’t need to be micro-managed, they need to be coached and guided.  Secondly.  we have a flat organization and for a 15 people company, we are doing A LOT so there is no time to micro-manage anyone. 

However, that also means that every employee needs to take full ownership and take initiative.  Specifically, we expect that every employee should come up with their own action items of things that they should be doing to help move their project and the company forward.  Instead of waiting to be told what to do and what is next, we expect that everyone comes up with recommendations and proposed action items on how to best keep moving forward and achieve the targets that have been mutually agreed on. 

What have been the results of this so far?

Go getters tend to thrive.  They just grab the ball and run with it.  I believe it is better to execute and if someone makes a mistake they ask for forgiveness later.  At the same time, I have noticed that average people struggle with our culture.  That is because average people do not like to take initiative.  They do not like to think on their own two feet and they prefer to be spoon fed and told exactly what to do.  Well, we do not want average people.  We want great people and we are committed to creating a culture that is geared to see great people thrive and will hopefully quickly weed out the average people. 

I have also noticed that it is very important to keep communicating that this is part of our core DNA because when people first join they might find that sometimes they have an “empty to do list” and instead of sitting idle and waiting for what is next, we need to explain to them that often they are also expected to start thinking of what should be next to achieve the goals for the projects that they have been assigned to.  Having said that… that rarely happens since there is always a lot that needs to get done but we do want everyone to come up with lots of additional ideas and suggestions to take things to the next level.  :-) 

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 5th, 2007 at 3:32 am and is filed under From Mike. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.