Kindness as rocketfuel
Do you know what your company values are? Most people don't know. Or they can name one. Usually if I ask someone, they say things like "errrr.... equality..?....teamwork...?". You can immediately see the problem. These things are motherhood and apple pie - no one disagrees with them, but they're just so bland that they don't get you very far. They're perfectly good values or qualities, but so what? What changes as a result? How do they drive your behaviour as a leader or manager, or impact on the customer experience?
At my company, Think Productive, we have five values that we celebrate and hold dear. Our values are:
Psychology Before Technology
Practical and Playful
Human, Not Superhero
We Walk Our Talk
Trust and Kindness are our Rocketfuel
The last one stands out for me as being the most important one. "Trust and kindness are our rocketfuel". When we added this to our list of values, it was designed to do two things. First, it captured the sense of open, co-operative and creative community that we'd built the business around. It felt like we already worked in a high-trust way that focussed on being good fellow-humans to each other, so not capturing this 'officially' somewhere in our values, would be missing something. Second, it's designed to be a signifier for anyone looking to work with us that this is central to how we work. It helps us attract the people that will buy into that kind of approach, and hopefully it repels a few people who just wouldn't be the right fit for us.
As a statement, it drives everything we do. It's not just a hippy-dippy Brighton thing, either. Our experience is that kindness really does work as the rocketfuel. Kindness drives trust. Trust removes uncertainty and friction. That in turn creates a rich environment for getting stuff done, taking risks and getting help when you're stuck.
This week on my podcast I had Tameika Isaac Devine as my guest. She was the first black female elected to her city's council in Columbia, South Carolina. She was a community leader at the time of the Charleston church shootings a few years ago. She's led her community through several other major historical events: the removal of the confederate flag, major floods and of course more recently the Trump era and Black Lives Matter.
What struck me through our conversation was her commitment to staying measured, thoughtful and kind. After the racist shootings in her local church, she made a point not only to console the victims' families, but to knock on the door of the parents of the shooter, who were also her constituents. Hate, fear and revenge are always compelling and powerful emotions. But Tameika was able to recognise - even in such a highly charged moment - that you can't defeat hate or fear with anything other than love, curiosity and kindness. I hope you'll give the episode a listen, and subscribe if you've not done so already.
So this week, I invite you to focus on this simple question: