This episode takes a turn when Greg decides to change our value Polish the Product into a brand new value: Make the Compass Spin.
https://www.buzzsprout.com/1942051/10097334
This episode takes a turn when Greg decides to change our value Polish the Product into a brand new value: Make the Compass Spin.
https://www.buzzsprout.com/1942051/10097334
Previously on values.
Gregory Koberger:I think if you want anything to end up in the product, it has come from the people and the people have to kind of like feel that day to day as well.
Emily:Keeping things whimsical and fun helps us laugh about things together. And it makes me feel like more than just work.
Mary:We got picked up. John Denver's tour bus From ReadMe it's Values. I'm Shinae Lee. ReadMe has six values. And in this six part investigative podcast, we're going to explore the company to figure out which readme value is the most important. Today I'm taking a look at polish the product. But first, I have a quick spoiler alert. In this episode, Greg will change the name of polish the product, and I'll be telling you the story of how it became our newest value make the compass spin. I started my journey by speaking to Greg who was ecstatic about Polish the product. He said it's one of his favorites and thought the Polish we put everywhere and our product sets us apart and shows that we care.
Gregory Koberger:I want to make sure that we're always going the extra mile to make it feel really good and polished and smooth. There's a lot of reasons for it. One is it just feels nice. Of course, one of the like bigger reasons is we're trying to get people to change how they do things a little bit, we think about documentation differently than most other companies do. Most of the people do and when things aren't polished, you never know if you're doing things right or not. When things are polished, it just feels more like what we're doing and then we thought about it and everything's intention
Mary:Greg's description makes the value seem worthy of the top spot, most important value. But when I spoke with Tony, our head of design, and Jesse, our support team lead, I had second thoughts. Somehow Greg's passion for Polish the product didn't seem to be resonating with many others. I told Greg about the lack of enthusiasm I got from Jesse and Tony and he seemed to seriously consider it. Then one day, about a month later, Greg pulled me aside and said he thought he should change the value. Not to something completely different, but reframe it to something everyone would relate to and be excited about. That seemed a little drastic to me at first. But then I thought some more about how I don't even relate to polish the product. I work on the people team. And I've never worked closely enough with the product to be able to polish it. I told Greg he's probably right and waited to see what he do. Greg discussed the chain with everyone at an off site. He said polish the product and feel right to him. Even though it was one of the values he cared the most about, and wanting to make sure everyone would be excited about it. The new value would be called make the compass spin, which essentially means to put extra effort into making something shine, even when it's not necessary, because it shows you care and can make a huge difference and product. The name of the video was inspired by a video Tom Scott did about a British show called It'll be all right on the night. And it's extremely detailed title sequences. The most intricate one depicted a mountain a transition a magic theme, and the show's title sitting on a table next to a compass. When the magic beam had the table. The when Russell believes a map unfolded and the compass spun out. It was pretty magical but even more magical after Scott discussed the amount of effort it took to put the sequence together. He said,
Tom Scott:See the compass up at the top, it swings wildly. When the laser hits it looks like it's affected by it. completely unnecessary. No one would have noticed if that compass stayed still, it's not like the audience would have gone. Oh, well, that's wrong. I thought compasses reacted to nearby magical laser beams. But still they bothered to make that happen. I learned that sometimes it's worth doing things for your craft just because you can that sometimes it's worth going above and beyond and sweating the small stuff because someone else will notice what you've done. That title sequence is the sort of thing that inspired me. It taught me the why you don't have to strive for absolute perfection. Sometimes it's worth take a little bit of time and effort to make something you're really proud of
Mary:Greg's presentation of the video and renaming worked. I caught up with Tony and Jesse again, this time about the new value, and they showed miles more enthusiasm. Jessie listed off tons of examples on how he and his team embody the new value on support, by creating gloom videos to explain things to customers, accompanying their messages with gifts, and making sure to get back to them about fixed features. Even months later, he even told me about how his children's dentist and bodies make the compas spin by making balloon animals for everyone after an appointment. He doesn't need to but the extra effort has earned him an office covered and thank you notes and drawings, in addition to all these examples, asked Jesse what the difference was between this value and its predecessor polished the product.
Jesse:When you say polish product, you're going across all sorts of like, all sorts of details and all sorts of like, support guidelines, so to speak, you're basically checking everything off the list, you know, this, this thing makes a good support team, this thing makes a good support team. But the spin the compass is that extra little like cherry on top that's gonna make it, you know, wow, customers be like, Oh, wow, you know, they even have this cool video, or hey, you know, they sent me a funny gift. You know, after everything was solved, you know,
Mary:Tony had another example of how the new value was different.
Tony:We were kind of already always striving to make the company spin. I think we just called it the wrong thing. polished product just didn't feel right. It kind of has an implication because when you have to go back and polish something, it implies that the polishes kind of like an afterthought. And that's not what I tried to do it read me at least. And I don't think anyone else does. We were kind of wanting to like spin right off the box when you get
Mary:this value has a lot going on for it now. But Surprise, surprise, I'm still left with no evidence on whether it's the most important. Make the compass spin and how it applies to the whole company is the cherry on top and something we can put into everything we do. I read me no longer an afterthought. Greg could talk for hours about little details and things we do to go above and beyond that readme. But even he went in tell me it's our most important value. This is
Gregory Koberger:one of the most important ones to kind of give people a glimpse into how we think about things, just these like little big details, that kind of our artifacts that show that we really care. So I don't know if it's the best or my favorite, but it's definitely I've been thinking about the most recently and I'm really excited that we found a good way to kind of frame it that people can remember and and that also includes everyone
Mary:I'm excited to but I find this a bit concerning Why spend so much effort changing a value when it's not going to be the most important afterward. Next time on values