Anyone who has ever tried to educate themselves into theories of organizational culture has most likely encountered Edgar Schein’s notions. To boil it down: culture is what works. It is not what is said, but what results it produces.

If an outsider would look into an organization, one would see the artefacts of the culture. That what is visible. What is the behavior one can detect. How those visible artefacts come to be is based on values: the reasons and rationalizations of why the members behave that way.

When the values, which the results and the artefacts are based on, are put into words, it exposes the underlying assumptions. In order for the values to be shared they need to be expressed first. And again, wording is not enough. They need to be reflected in results.

For any company it would be irresponsible for the management to just say that “this is our culture” and be done with it. It’s good if that can be stated, but unless it results in behavior it’s self-delusional.

So, we took a shot and tried to give wording to our shared values based on individual assumptions. That was a very interesting and intense exercise. Naturally, there were some individual differences in emphasis, but all in all it was relatively easy to find common ground on what Apex values are.

Trust

Trust needs to be redeemed constantly both externally and internally. Brutal honesty and openness feed trust. That requires not only expertise, but also courage, resilience and responsibility. And not only on individual level. Things are done together, between people. We respect everyone and value what each brings to the table. Regardless of whether it is a colleague, customer or other member of the team.   

Expertise

We bring value to our customers with our expertise. Curiosity about customers’ reality in the encompassing digital world together with professional development and growth lead to vision and view to solve customers’ issues. Innovation is not just coming up with new things, but also how to apply solutions accordingly. Interest fosters enthusiasm. Even passion.

Usefulness

Generating immediate impact to customers builds trust. If we are not useful we shouldn’t be in the room. Generating results to our customers is our raison d’être. Customer targets and KPIs are our targets and KPIs.   

If generating the wording of our values wasn’t too difficult, now comes the hard part. We need to see, whether those are values reflected in our behavior and results.

So far, so good.