We are an innovation agency where values are the foundation of the organization. At Innovatika, we don’t like micromanagement. We rely on everyone’s self-reliance, and we believe that with it we can achieve better results than if we wait for approval for our every move. However, in order to make the right decisions, we need a compass. Our values are just that compass – guidelines that help us in our daily activities. This approach allows us to take care of our customers’ customer experience at every stage of cooperation. This article begins a series on our 4 values: Never Stop Learning, Be Future Makers, Always Stay Human, Get Things Done.
In an article about building innovation in an agency, we lifted a peek from our process of establishing shared corporate values. In this article, we also share our experience from the process of implementing them. Values are our DNA, which we defined together with all employees in a workshop. It’s a picture of how we want to work and what attitudes we want to see in ourselves, as well as in others. Every Innovatika employee contributed to what values we have adopted, what they are about and what they sound like. Why did we invite everyone to this exercise? Because it’s a component of diversity and inclusiveness that we value. Each of us has some experience behind us, a specific perspective on a particular aspect – at Innovatika we want to listen to all voices. That’s why it’s worthwhile for the values to be a set accepted by all employees – those with long tenure and those still inexperienced, those hired long ago and recently, those who work directly with the customer, as well as those in the backoffice.
Through the workshop format, we were able to learn about the individual values of each team member, and thus integrate more and learn which values are valuable to the team and which others do not share. Collaboration and inclusion of stakeholders in the creation of solutions is an important part of our everyday life and at the same time one of the pillars of the design thinking methodology. At the workshop, we played with associations, bit into the core of values as such, and arranged it all into slogans that actually describe what we are and how we work. We created not only 4 phrases, but also their descriptions and behavioral indicators, so that we could speak the same language and understand each value in the same way. Just what to do so that the process of creating values doesn’t stop at the stage of writing them out on posters that we hang up in the office? Effective implementation is an essential piece of the whole puzzle.
The fact that we are an innovation agency means to us that we bring new solutions to our clients every day, but also in our own work. That’s why one of our values is Never Stop Learning. This value defines our attitude towards change, development and knowledge acquisition. In today’s dynamic business environment, one of the key elements of success is the willingness to constantly develop and learn. Awareness of one’s strengths and areas for development is the first step on the road to continuous improvement. As a team, we realize that our knowledge has its limits, but it is our willingness to learn and acquire new skills that allows us to continuously grow. We discover areas where we can be better and actively work on them, because we know that this is the key to achieving a higher level of efficiency and professionalism. How do we know in which area we should develop? Through feedback, which is firmly rooted in our organizational culture. Mutual feedback between employees is important to us, not only on the manager-team member line. We discuss current threads on a daily basis, and once a year we conduct 360* feedback – also based on our four values. These activities are elements of our development process, which is closely linked to our strategy and corporate goals (we wrote about how to implement strategy in our past article).
Our development process is cycles, the axis of which is the quarterly achievement of individual goals. We make sure that the goals we set for ourselves are not only in line with Innovatika’s goals, but also with our ambitions and development needs. This allows us to try something that’s new to us and put ourselves into a role that’s a little different from the one we perform on a daily basis.
Now that we know our areas for development, it’s time to act! Cyclical training and workshops for the whole team is already our tradition. We learn new tools and methods not only in directional areas, but also in soft areas, such as managing ourselves in time or giving and receiving feedback. Each employee can suggest a training topic, and the final selection is made by a company-wide vote. We also have extra time for one-on-one training for everyone at Innovatika – we know how important it is to be able to learn at work time, so that we don’t have to set aside private time after work or on weekends for courses. With the new competencies we gain, our role in the organization can evolve – we keep track of this progress, and our compensation system is based on clear paths we follow.
Our thirst for knowledge drives us to delve into the ins and outs of our clients’ industries. Understanding their challenges and unique situations allows us to create customized innovations and do so at the highest level. Continuous acquisition of knowledge also makes us anticipate changes in the market and respond quickly to new challenges. What is an innovation today may be a standard tomorrow, so it is important for us to stay abreast of trends and keep our eyes open to the changes happening around us. Keeping track of what’s new in our fields is our daily ritual, and sharing what we’ve found is always appreciated.
An important aspect in our process of continuous learning and improvement are the lessons learned that we conduct after each project. Thanks to them we know what works well in our work, but most importantly we learn what we can do to make it work even better. We take care of this both in our work with each other and in the customer experience during cooperation. After each project, we ask clients for feedback, which is of great importance to us and which we translate into further cooperation with that client, but we also learn lessons for working with other clients.
We are eager to share the knowledge we have gained both inside and outside the team. We don’t keep our knowledge locked up, because we know how important it is to circulate it in different configurations. We create an atmosphere of openness, where every team member can share their experiences, ideas and knowledge. Learning together makes us more creative and effective as a team. We do this not only at joint ideation workshops, which we organize periodically, but also on a daily basis, taking care of the right traffic on channels dedicated to knowledge acquisition. Our daily work also never takes place in solitude – of course, self-work takes place, but we never run projects, even the smallest ones, alone. Our constant in every manufacturing process is the joint generation of ideas, the submission of intermediates for evaluation, the giving and receiving of feedback, the consultation of individual work results, the second eye-check and the joint final touches of the whole. This constant collaboration requires each team member to be very open to feedback, suggestions for changes, comments and new ideas. This is all encapsulated in the very value of Never Stop Learning.
At Innovatice, Never Stop Learning is not just a phrase. It’s a daily practice that drives us to continuously improve. Our willingness to learn and share knowledge is not only key to our own success, but also to the success of our customers. We believe that knowledge is a key driver of innovation and progress. In our next article, we will share our second value and ways to implement it. If the process of establishing value before you or simply the area of Employee Empowerment is close to your heart, take a look at this page where we describe what we can do for you or contact us.
Do you like how we approach work and share similar values to ours? See who we are currently looking for here.
