Living our values is always easier said than done. We are thankful our Director of Marketing Operations & Analytics, Jami Bond, initiated a relationship with Johnson County Community College and brought in William Mitchell to help us live the “P” in TROPIC (Personal Growth) by putting on a Microsoft Excel course for our staff. Excel has been a common topic in the office when discussing areas for professional person growth. The level of proficiency amongst our team when we started was varied, but when we finished everyone felt refreshed and more knowledgeable than when they started.
The uptick in productivity and clarification in communication caused by this class were immediately visible. Members of our team began coming to whole-staff meetings with clear data composition and conclusions that were not only easier for them to compile but also easier for the rest of the room to absorb. Other members began organizing their budgets and plotting out complicated spends, like 72 individual YouTube campaigns with breaks and varying daily budgets, with, “exponentially greater ease.”
Not everyone has the same personal growth goals. Some team members are focused on understanding new eLearning authoring software, others are focused on developing Chat Bots, and some want to get their 5K time to under 28 minutes. But, when communal goals arise, we are glad to have a team that is focused on creating opportunities for one another and meeting the challenge head on.
If you are interested in providing similar opportunities to your team in the Kansas City area, reach out to Jake Akehurst at jakehurs@jccc.edu.
Culture is not something that just happens on its own in an organization. LinkedIn cofounder, Reid Hoffman, defines the beginning and ending stages of a growing company as the “family” and “nation” stage, respectively. There are many changes and improvements that are implemented to progress through these stages, one of which is building an infrastructure of values that each citizen feels compelled to guard, that drives culture. Creating this infrastructure at Goodcents was a long, focused effort. The values we ultimately defined for ourselves were a product of the pre-existing closeness of our team, the aspirations we have for ourselves as an organization and our personal growth growing forward. Our company values have been arranged in the easy to understand acronym TROPIC and are outlined below.
GOODCENTS VALUES: TROPIC
Trust: We can be confident that we have each other’s best interests at heart. There is no sense of judgement, we back up and support one another.
Respect: Every person on our team plays an integral and valuable role. We embrace our differences and approach our successes as well as our mistakes with understanding and support.
Openness: We seek first to understand, allowing others to be heard without judgement. We have candid and honest discussions to foster strong relationships and creative solutions.
Personal Growth: We challenge ourselves and one another to grow daily. Continued education is celebrated at Goodcents. We understand the immense value of progress and balance in our everyday lives as we work forward to accomplish our common goal.
Integrity: We maintain the highest standards of professional behavior and ethics. We are dependable, take ownership of our responsibilities and are accountable for the results.
Collaboration: We are empowered to ask for help and intentionally pursue cross-functionality understanding that others have experiences and knowledge that we do not. “That’s not my job,” is not in our vernacular. Instead, our approach is, “how can I help?”
We have resolved ourselves to actively calling out these values and making them more than just a poster on the wall. At the beginning of each team meeting we start by reading these values in their entirety and recognizing team members for the values they have exemplified while executing their jobs. The examples are always a fun insight for us. We get to hear about triumphs, tribulations, and turning points in the professional and personal lives of one another, and that disclosure makes us a closer, better functioning team.
As we position ourselves for growth, having a clearly defined direction and guardrails are imperative to keeping us focused on our goals while still supporting the personal and professional aspirations of our Goodcents team members. Our family has become a nation, and it was largely thanks to intentional activity driven by TROPIC, a promise to hold ourselves and one another accountable. We are excited to share that promise with you all.
