The Prowareness Culture - Ambition

Prowareness is a coaching & consultancy firm with distributed Agile teams located in India. We help organizations transform into software-driven responsive enterprises. In the past few years Prowareness has been growing rapidly. To enable and harness this growth Prowareness uses the “cell philosophy”. When a team (cell) reaches a certain size, it’s divided into two. This ensures the separate teams preserve a maintainable size and further growth is stimulated.

Prowareness has formed its culture along the way and it appears to be a culture with lots of differences compared to traditional organizations. People that enter our office feel this culture right away and are sometimes surprised and intrigued by our approach.

The Prowareness culture is based on 7 values:

• Teamwork
• Continuous learning
• Energy & craziness
• Commitment
• Openness and transparency
• Ambition
• Integrity

Undoubtedly, Prowareness is the most Agile company in the Netherlands. Yes, this is a bold statement. A statement that asks for a more detailed description.Therefore we will write a series of blog posts about our culture. Hereby culture is considered a result of the present mindset, behavior and skills. The areas by which a culture can be influenced are symbols, power structures, organizational structure, control systems, rituals and stories. We will describe the supporting activities and practices Prowareness uses to foster the values.

This blog post will be about the cultural value ‘Ambition’.

Cultural Value - Ambition

“Big results require big ambitions.” - Heraclitus. Without doubt Prowareness has big ambitions; namely transforming organizations into software-driven responsive enterprises. Transforming organizations means company-wide changes,  and as we all know; everybody wants change, but nobody wants to change . If you’re up for this challenge, you’re the right person for Prowareness! We give an interpretation to ambition’ by using practices as ‘Grow or Go’, ‘Best of… Elections’, ‘Man With a Plan’ and ‘Kamasutra’. 

Practices

Man With a Plan

“A goal without a plan is just a wish.” - Antoin de Saint-Exupery. Prowareness employees share at least one charateristic: ambition. Becoming the best is the common denominator. The specific subject area is free of choice, as long it’s related to the services Prowareness offers. During the yearly company-wide kick-off, everyone creates a new (wo)man with a plan. This is a large poster with 5 topics: goals at home, goals at work, emotional goals, physical goals and your personal mission statement. Afterwards these personal growth plans are shared at Prowareness HQ. All the pillars and walls of the office are decorated with pictures of employees and their growth plans. During our weekly meetup on Tuesday everyone can spend some time on updating their plan. This ensures the personal goals stay on top of mind and actually get realized.

Best of … Elections

At the beginning of the year, Prowareness organizes a 2-day event called ‘The Yearly’. On the first day our customers are invited to jointly listen to inspirational speakers and collaboratively create plans for the upcoming year. Part of the second day are the ‘best of … elections’. The categories are best trainer, recruiter, consultant, sales, support, energy and craziness and integrity. For every category the best colleague is chosen. The 7 winners earn a trip (including some pocket money) to a cool destination. In 2015 the destination was Milan, this year it will be London!

‘Grow or Go’

‘Grow or Go’ shouldn’t be confused with ‘Up or Out’. Making an upwards career isn’t mandatory. The only expectation we have is that everyone is continuously trying to grow as a person. For example, we seek personal insight by increasing our self-awareness. We make fresh connections by building mental agility. We bring out the best in others by improving our people agility. We promote new possibilities by increasing our change agility. We make things happen by building results agility. By improving our personal agility we simultaneously increase the agility of Prowareness as a whole. These types of agility are inspired by the book ‘Becoming an Agile Leader’ by J. Evelyn Orr.

Kamasutra

If there is one practice that captivates the mind most it’s definitely the Kamasutra practice. Especially the related book in our bookshelf raises curiosity. But actually, the underlying thought isn’t that exciting. It’s about creating a win-win situation between Prowareness and the customer. For example, while working for the customer, you create and provide a new workshop. The customer is satisfied with the result and you are happy as well because the workshop can also be provided at other customers. And best of all, you got paid while setting it up! A win-win situation, something a good consultant should always aim for.

Conclusion

Prowareness is an environment full with energetic, passionate and ambitious people. To canalise this passion and ambition, practices like ‘Man With a Plan’ proved to be useful. It supports everyone with setting goals and living up to them. With the ‘Best of … Elections’ we show appreciation to each other and celebrate achievements and personal growth. This creates an atmosphere where everyone is invited to pursue their seemingly impossible dreams and continuously develop themselves. Who doesn’t want to be part of such a community?