Netguru Values #3: ?? Be brave, curious and experiment. Learn from all successes and failures ??

Our organizational culture at Netguru is based on seven values. I’d like to tell you a little bit about each of them. Let’s talk about “Be brave, curious and experiment. Learn from all successes and failures” today.

The content below is a 1:1 copy of a post I shared on our internal blog in 2020.

Enjoy the read & share your thoughts in the comments.

I’ve split this into 3 sections for every Value:?

• general thoughts;
• “over”: examples were we are going too far (as you can take everything to the extreme and damage its true meaning);
• “under”: examples where I’d say we can’t say we are living up to the value.

General thoughts ??

We used to say “Move fast and break things” but this Facebook mantra got some bad press recently. If you are controlling most of the world's information, some people think you should not be “breaking things”.

For me this is a followup to our value #2 - as we take ownership we want to be brave and curious, we want to make sure we are not staying on the safe side, we go out of our comfort zone. We accept failure and plan in a way that allows us to recover from it quickly if it happens.

Over???

Examples were we are going too far (as you can take everything to the extreme and damage it’s true meaning):

1. Being reckless. Putting all your money on red in the casino is not being brave - it’s being stupid. The risks we are making must be calculated and small enough not to kill us if we fail.
2. Experimenting when peoples’ life, health, or wellbeing is at stake. Airlines are slow to innovate for a reason. I’m not particularly interested in flying an MVP plane.
3. Repeating the same mistakes. Trying the failed approach over and over again is not “experimenting”.
4. Experimenting just for the sake of it. When something is not broken maybe we don’t need to fix it. Sometimes the status quo is good enough and we can invest our resources in changes that have more leverage. I have to say this is something I struggle with personally the most. I’m a sucker for all new shiny gadgets, apps and life hacks.

Under???

Examples were I’d say we can’t say we are living up the value:

1. Not sharing lessons learned. We are part of an organization, just because you learned something doesn’t mean everybody else did. Share your learnings with the team and document them. Help them focus on making “new mistakes”.
2. Not learning from others' mistakes. Obviously! This is why we say “learn from ALL successes and failures” - not only yours.
3. Accepting things at face value. Usually reality is created by other people that are not smarter than you, and you can change it, or influence it.
4. Not fighting for your ideas. Being brave in the office environment many times means to stand up and share your idea with others, exposing yourself to critique. It’s hard but necessary to do it in order to change the organization for the better and grow as a person.
5. Not being bold enough. Sometimes we need more than an incremental change. Sometimes we need to change how we think. This is bigger and harder to do as an experiment.?

If you have any thoughts, feel free to leave a comment.