A culture built on PROGRESS

I've learned an essential lesson in nearly every corner of my life, from my professional roles to exercise habits to my new forays into parenting: incremental improvements lead to long-term success.

In life, when goals are nebulous, too big, or built on some external metric of 'ultimate success,' Things. Slow. Down - I. Slow. Down. And a month, a year, a decade down the road - the project, the idea, the destination hasn't gotten any closer.?

I later learned (with some dismay to my ego) that I wasn't the first to discover this principle and the overwhelmingly positive impact daily progress has on our lives. In fact, there's a lot of research to back up how vital small wins are to our sense of purpose and direction as individuals and as part of a greater whole.

Humans are wired to seek a sense of purpose and accomplishment. We can not simply be a cog in the machine if we are going to be enthusiastic about our work and be our best, most creative selves. Knowing what we do that serves - and hinders - this sense of progress is critical when building a culture and a company.?

At CertifID, we are lucky to have a clear mission - beyond furthering our careers, skills, and making each other laugh with Slack Memes; at our core, we want to eliminate wire fraud and protect people and businesses from its devastating impact. This "why" behind our company has been the biggest driver for me (and motivation on the most challenging days) and tends to motivate the type of employees we want to attract.?

However, a meaningful mission can not alone fuel a start-up through its ups and downs; how you get there is just as important to know as where you're going.??

We hired Matt Kilmartin , our VP of Sales, almost two years ago. Within the first couple weeks of joining, he approached me and said we needed to invest more heavily in our culture. This wasn't exactly the type of "I need more budget and better marketing" you'd expect from a new sales leader taking on his first VP role. But Matt isn't your average sales leader, and that's precisely why I knew I should listen.

Matt shared with me a framework he had used at his previous company to create guideposts around core values. And then we started noticing SaaS companies we admired, like GONG, using similar operating principles to bring clarity to the values that unify their teams. It quickly became apparent that CertifID needed a rallying cry connecting our team and keeping us focused on the principles we would lean on to guide our work. It also became clear that Matt wasn't interested in quick wins; he wanted to lay the foundation for a 1990's Chicago Bulls kind of team.?

We got to work. We knew that for the values of CertifID to become the fabric of how we operate, the entire team had to be involved. We blocked a few days and dedicated several working sessions to brainstorm what principles were most important to us, how we would express them, and tactics we might use to stay committed to them as we scale.?

It was nerve-racking to slow down on new product development and tactical work for our customers but looking back, I believe this was some of the most valuable time our team has ever spent. What resulted was not only an acronym that stands for our cornerstone principle of PROGRESS but what I consider a unification of our team's voices, beliefs, and values; and a founding testament to our company's culture.?

P - Protect the Customer?

R - Raise the Bar

O - Operate with Urgency?

G - Grow with Grit

R - Ride the Wave

E - Enthusiasm Spreads

S - Stay Connected

S - Send It

In another post, I'll dive deeper into each of CertifID's core principles, why we chose them, and some examples of how we use them to achieve progress over perfection daily.?

I recently read somewhere that culture is like concrete. You must be proud of what is mixed in the wheelbarrow of culture in the early days before it gets poured and set. If you're starting a company or just joined an early-stage business, invest the time to decide what principles matter to you and your team and how you want to operate. It was one of the best investments we've made, and hopefully, it will be for you too.?