What drives us?
We have always been driven by values that set us apart from other service providers and employers. By following these values closely and using them when hiring and acquiring new clients, we can ensure that we continue to live by the same principles we want to be known for. Read on to find out what our values of Communication, Agility, Teamwork, Self Awareness, Understanding, Integrity, and Tenacious Learning mean to us
It all starts with Communication. We operate in a world where miscommunication can be very costly, and the more we can accurately communicate with each other and clients, the better our output and efficiency. By communicating well and often, even if it’s uncomfortable, we can find resolutions to even the most difficult challenges.
Dealing with those challenges and the world of software, in general, requires Adaptability, but we believe that we should be agile at all levels, willing to move in entirely different directions when needed, and making those pivots with grace and expertise.
Teamwork has always been a defining value for us. For many companies, teamwork is assumed, but we focus on it and continually improve it. We hold each other accountable positively and look to fix any potential conflicts immediately. We encourage you to take the time to improve our teamwork, be it thoughtful code reviews, documented processes, or just another set of eyes.
Self Awareness and being able to accept new perspectives is vital to the success of our work. We need to understand not only our work from our perspective but from everyone else’s, too. We are also aware of our immense privilege as developers, and we can use that to better the world.
Understanding people is also critical to our success. Whether interpreting a client’s needs or understanding the complexity of a feature, being able to flex our minds to wrap our heads around things entirely is one of our superpowers.
We always act with Integrity towards each other and our clients. We do this not only because it’s good for business but because it’s the right thing to do, even if we lose money or turn away business.
Finally, Tenacious Learning, as we are continually improving ourselves. You can’t stay stale in this industry, and we pride ourselves on our ability to learn any technical skill as needed while enhancing our life skills.
So what do we do with those?
It's easy to talk about some values, post them on the website, and move on, with no one remembering what they are, let alone what they stand for. At Hello World, we use these values in every aspect of our work.
When we meet a new client, we are quick to bring up our values to them because we are also using them to decide who we want to work with. While one of our values is adaptability and we can take on all sorts of disparate clients, we do need to make sure that they can at least see why we hold these values. Otherwise, the working relationship could be fraught with awkwardness.
We are also beholden to them at all levels of our work. All hiring and firing decisions include a look towards the values and we use them when performing performance evaluations. Each week we find someone in the organization that has done something to highlight those values and we recognize them in our weekly meeting.
With one of our values being adaptability, we try to review these values often to make sure they still represent the company we are and want to be, so these could very well change in the future, but until then, these are the atoms that we use to build our organization.
This post was inspired by a conversation with Alicia Nagel. For effective branding-based design services, check out Alicia Nagel Creative at www.alicianagel.com