Shinae digs into our first value, Be the Change You Seek, by exploring what it means to work at a startup, and asking her coworkers why they think this value is or isn’t ReadMe’s most important. Tune in to hear the mixed bag of responses she got.
https://www.buzzsprout.com/1942051/10097299
Shinae digs into our first value, Be the Change You Seek, by exploring what it means to work at a startup, and asking her coworkers why they think this value is or isn’t ReadMe’s most important. Tune in to hear the mixed bag of responses she got.
https://www.buzzsprout.com/1942051/10097299
From ReadMe its values. I'm Shinae. Lee, a recruiter here at ReadMe. And in this six part investigative podcast, I'm going to explore the company to figure out which readme value is the most important. Today, we're investigating Be the change you seek. Our CEO and founder Gregory Koberger came up with all six values for the company years ago, he founded read me back in 2015, and came up with the whole idea for the product and what the company culture would become.
Gregory Koberger:For me, it's really important, people don't just do what their bosses tell them wherever you, me, I want everyone to feel engaged, and like they can help make me a better place.
Shinae Lee:We'll get back to Greg a little bit later. But first, to give you an idea of where I'm starting, as some of my co workers if Be the change you seek is ReadMe's most important value, it was a mixed bag of responses.
Mary:Personally, I think so in the two years
Pat Pow-anpongkul:I think it's really the second most important value behind
Benak:I think. I think so possibly. Yeah, I think it might be.
Shinae Lee:So is it? Or is it not? That's what we're here to find out. For the last year, I've spent every working day every minute looking deep into company culture, and trying to figure out which of our values makes us the company we are, makes us the people we are. I've had to ask my co workers not just about their day to day work lives, but also about why they do what they do, about what they did their first week on the job a time when they told their managers something needed to be changed. Why? How did it go? What was the reaction from customers? And I've never even done a podcast before. Recently, I started thinking about what kind of person would want to work at a startup? When do you need to succeed in this environment? Well, for starters, there's probably not a lot of people working there already, which means everyone's gonna have to do a little more than their job title, and go at a pretty fast pace. And I realized that's really hard. Even for me putting myself out there to do this podcast. I started as the office manager at ReadMe, spearheading company culture, which means I had to talk to the people who work here a lot about how they're doing. I've talked to people who've done technically two jobs at once, are completely reimagined their entire job. Despite this, though, the consensus was, they would never exchange it for the alternative, which I guess would be working within the strict confines of a job title. Here's benek, an account executive at readme, who started as a sales development rep.
Benak:If you want to see some kind of change, you should try to go get it yourself. And that's something that I think is really important to me, it's kind of something that I've lived my life by.
Shinae Lee:He completely changed the way he was doing cold outreach, something not a lot of people enjoy being on the receiving end up. I mean, I can't even count the amount of times I've ignored sales emails. But now anytime you get a cold outreach email from readme, it's got a loom recording of what your API Doc's complete with your logo would look like in readme,
Benak:I wanted cold outreach to be something more than what it normally has been, we sell a really cool product. And a lot of companies sell really, really cool products. And in that same vein, I want the people that are reading the emails to get as much out of it, as I would buy, maybe you're getting on a call with me. So I want them to basically have an amazing experience seeing our product right off the bat. And the way to do that is by showing them the product with their logo with their colors. And that's what this video and the loom videos kind of did for them.
Shinae Lee:And this brings me to the importance of our first value. It seems to be central to the growth of a startup and the happiness of its employees. I talked to pat or head of readme business operations to hear how this value has impacted his work.
Pat Pow-anpongkul:And when I joined, the one thing that became evidently clear was that we needed to put more effort behind the hiring process. How would we hire more people faster, that really aligned with the values of readme? So while it was not my job, I decided to be the change you seek by solving this really important issue because at readme people is the most important thing that we can focus around.
Shinae Lee:Since Pat joined we've close to double the size As of our team, now, here's Shea and account Exec. He and our other AE Kirby were the first hires under our sales team.
Shea:So when I started, I felt like, we are so small, and there really aren't a lot of process in place. And so Dave sort of gave us a mandate from the beginning, that if something needs to be better, if you need something done, if you need to improve kind of the process, it's on you. Dave, by the way, is our head of sales. So I think early on, we both really grasp on to that. And it was built into how we approach the day to day job. So creating our own outreach routine, really building the blocks there of how we use the internal tools that we have, how we make outreach better how we make being the face of readme and very real sense to companies and prospects that have never heard of us or never kind of built that first impression. It was on us to make sure it was done right.
Shinae Lee:From talking to che benek. And Pat, I could tell there's something to be said about Be the change you seek right off the bat. They created processes and push to better things and directly lead to grow that read me. But others told me it's not about pushing for growth. It's about creating fulfilment in the work you do. Amy, a product experience manager told me that's why she's a fan of the value.
Amy:Weight, my experience working with everyone at ReadMe me, I think that has been a huge motivational factor in making things happen. And I think it's just really exciting to see all the different changes that people come up with, like as we brought on more people, just like what they brought to the table. And I think it's cool that they like everyone has so much creative freedom.
Shinae Lee:And what Amy says here is really in line with what Greg told me about the origin of all six values. He told me he wanted anyone to be able to come to work at read me and feel right. Like their work makes sense. And finally, that loops us back round to Greg. No matter who else I asked, he's the one who knows the intent behind each value. So I asked him Hey, Greg, how's it going?
Gregory Koberger:Hey, should I not bad at all?
Shinae Lee:Greg and I have been talking on and off about company culture for about a year now. And here, I'll play you what he told me about our values.
Gregory Koberger:I wanted to find values that I knew were achievable, and that I knew I'd never go back on in a few months and be like, Ah, I was misguided there. So we came up with six of them. And they're combination of you know, I think what the product, I think, but each other, they're all kind of rooted in the same concept, which is curiosity,
Shinae Lee:Greg always tells us that curiosity is the most important thing to him in hiring. So it makes sense that he would structure the company's six values around the idea,
Gregory Koberger:find that curiosity tends to breed a certain type of empathy, empathy for co workers, for customers, or problems in general. And if you're curious about why someone is doing something, you're way more likely to try to understand and want to help rather than be dismissive of it. So all six values are kind of tangentially rooted in curiosity and empathy. I wanted values that would help people think about curiosity in different ways from two perspectives. And the values need to be solid enough that people could remember them and talk about them, but also loose enough that they could be interpreted in new in different ways.
Shinae Lee:So from hearing this, it's pretty clear to me that Greg didn't come up with the values with the goal of dictating how people would come to work every me. So naturally, he didn't think one would ever need to be named the most important. But what I've come across time and time again, is that one needs to be how can people prioritize their work or feel sound and what they're doing if they don't know which of their company's values is most important? Some employees I talked to like Amy, for instance, believe Be the change you seek is our most important value. Others like Kirby or other account executive weren't so sure.
Kirby:I think the values as a whole are all super important in their own ways. And Be the change you see contributes as much to what we stand for as a product and stand for as a company in comparison to the other values that we embody. So for me personally, I don't think I could choose a particular value and say this one is the most important.
Shinae Lee:It's how I feel a lot of the time. We can't pick one value to be the most important than what are we as a company. I just can't get my head around it.