Be Connected to Our Culture

  The Beginning is So Important

   One of the biggest movies of 2010—The Social Media—tells a very revealing story of the founding of a company: Facebook.  In the factually based dramatization, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder and CEO, basically takes an idea that others brought to him for his collaborative help in developing, cuts the originators out, recruits some new people to help him and then cuts them out as well when it starts to take off.  (To be fair, there are some redeeming features to the Zuckerberg character portrayed in the movie: For example, being incredibly disciplined, single-minded and focused on one idea.)

  The culture of Facebook, the company, is no doubt only really understood from the inside, but there is a strong probability that the traumatic founding—multiple, multimillion dollar lawsuits involved—has had a profound and lasting impact on the way people behave towards each other. 

   Why is all this important?  Because the culture of a company—and each organization has one—is rooted in its founding and in the beliefs, values and actions of its founders. 

  LaserShip and our culture is exactly that way.  The belief structure of the founding is still our belief structure today.    

   Our organizational culture was formed early on as a reflection of the founder's beliefs. As these beliefs proved to be a successful formula for forming and conducting business relationships, it has remained intact.  It spread slowly, from one generation of employees to the next: What was important to the founders of the company became important to the first generation of employees and managers and the next and next after that.  Overtime, the values of the organization became the corporate culture: How we do things, how we relate to each other.  

  In the beginning, the fundamental driving values were a set of shared beliefs—All of which you today should still find to be prevalent, relevant and actionable:

  

·         Work together

·         All hands on deck

·         Do whatever it takes to get the job done

·         Keep relationships alive

·         Trust each other

·         Do what feels right in your heart

·         Reward performance

·         Teach the next person in line

·         Take care of those around you

·         Give your all each day

·         Make it better tomorrow

·         Be passionate about what you do

·         Show the world your good side

   Eventually, these shared beliefs made their way into five value statements or focuses of the business:

CUSTOMER FOCUS—driven to create satisfied, long-term customers through superior service.

EMPLOYEE FOCUS—driven to recognize, reward and respect the contribution of our people.

ETHICAL FOCUS—driven to demonstrate integrity to customers and employees through honesty and fairness.

QUALITY FOCUS— driven to constantly improve our performance.

IMAGE FOCUS—driven to conduct ourselves in a professional manner.

  These are the values that we (and all of you as you go about your daily work) should be basing your choices and decisions upon.  

   Our values are “contributory values,” because practicing them on a daily basis contributes to achieving our long range goals. Our values are essentially a behavioral guide:  They guide us toward not only what we want to achieve, but perhaps more importantly, how we want to achieve it.   For example, taking care of our customers, being honest with them and providing quality services all contribute to helping achieve our goals of having long-term relationships, being proud of our achievements, generating growth, developing opportunities and increasing prosperity.

   Each of us makes choices each day—how we are going to: Answer the phone, Reply to an email inquiry, Input data that will update customers, Sort packages for delivery, Decide who is allowed to deliver a route…etc.

   All of these are important decisions that you make—and most of them are not constantly observed, monitored and supervised by someone above you.  What guides you as you go through your daily choice making is our culture, our values, our accepted modes of conduct.   

  Each choice you make—and please think about it—should pass the Values Test:  Is this what we want to achieve and is this the way we want to go about doing it?  Does my choice enhance who we are, reflect where we have come from, improve our ability to grow, prosper and provide opportunity?  

   If your daily choices pass the test, then thanks for being connected to our core.