In this video I talk about evolving our company values with changes to our business. 

In this video I discuss defining and using values at Reforge. 

With this video note I talk about how values should evolve over time. 

In this video I talk about creating values for our evolving company. 

In this video I discuss the 'why' section of understanding the importance of delivering value to customers. 

With this video I talk about 'what' specifically we're going to do to deliver on this value. 

In this video I talk about how attacking those most common misinterpretations and misuses, then calling them out. 

In this video I talk about connecting values to action. 

In this video I talk through adding adding anti-patterns section to your company values. 

In this video I discuss maintaining the connection between values. 

In this video I talk more about a value I have become a very strong believer in. 

In this video I talk about evolving behaviors and rewards in our organization. 

In this video I discuss embracing opinionated values and trade-offs. 

Brian Balfour

With this artifact I demonstrate how and why we created company values at Reforge. 

Companies define and use their values in a lot of different ways. There is no one right way. A few things about our values:

They are defined to be opinionated and not appeal to whole world on purpose. 

We can’t be everything to everyone. Their distinctness is meant to be used as a bond and a filter.

All values come with tradeoffs. We are acknowledging and accepting a set of tradeoffs.

Values shouldn’t change often, but they aren’t set in stone. 

 as our organization, business, and environment evolve.

These values aren’t what we are today, they are what we aspire to be and we need to work towards them.

How we operate, solve problems and make decisions.

How we evaluate and reward teams and individuals.

Looking at the work and input we did on this a year ago.

Thinking about the things that I hold deep beliefs in and founded Reforge around.

Talking to and observing others in the org that I think are aspirational models for all of us.

Feedback and input from a variety of people across the organization.

Over time we’ll evolve these values with additional feedback, examples, and data.

Delivering value to customers is all that matters.

Our customer’s success is Reforge’s success. Reforge’s success is your success. When they win, we win, and when we win, you win. Delivering value to customers is all that matters.

We don’t stop at satisfying customers, we help them build successful careers and companies. We look for meaningful problems to solve, not nice-to-haves. We maximize time delivering ideas vs discussing them. Talking to customers regularly is the rule, not the exception for every role.

We build everything the customer says or verify every decision with the customer. We build strong customer intuition by delivering value, validating, and improving from there.

Being an asshole is ok. To consistently deliver value long-term, both customer success and positive colleague relationships are crucial.

Ways We Might Put This Value Into Practice

Hire new team members based on their history and ability to deliver customer value (portfolios, simulations, etc) not based on their credentials (past company, title, school, etc).

Do bi-weekly showcases where everyone shows what they’ve shipped and the impact to customers kept in an internal public portfolio of work.

Spending more time on internal processes vs shipping to customers.

Not being able to describe how your role and work impact the customer.

Improvement works like compound interest. If we improve something by .1% per week, in 10 years it won’t even be twice as good. If 1%, it will be 176x better. 2%, 29,654x better. 5%, 104 billion times better. We compound value to customers (

We ship quickly to learn from real customers and improve quickly. We aren’t afraid to change plans when new information arises. We give candid and timely feedback in an effort to improve. We move forward with 80% confidence, and don’t wait for complete certainty.

We don’t care about quality. We are committing to quality through speed of improvement. Customers should guide our POV on quality, not internal opinions.

We work only on incremental optimizations. We take ambitious swings with an iterative approach. We define the ideal end state, then maximize our pace of improvement towards it.

We reward quantity/activity on its own. Quantity without improvement for the customer is just as bad as moving slowly.

We sprint non stop. We maximize improvement, continuously, over long periods of time.

We don’t expect to reach broad management and cross-functional consensus on what to do. Teams are evaluated on the customer value they deliver, the speed it’s delivered, and the pace of improvement.

Use drafts or prototypes of the work to align and make decisions, not meetings or docs talking about the work.

Managers should focus on improving their team’s decision-making more than they focus on making sure they agree with every decision.

Re-litigating a decision without new information.

Being overly concerned about ownership to the point it slows you getting the job done.

Seeking layers of approval (unless it is a high risk, one way door decision).

Small teams form deeper connections, make faster decisions, need fewer meetings, and have more fun. From that, trust, collaboration, feedback, and accountability flow. When this happens, we show up as our best selves. Small teams do bigger things.

Conversely, the larger the team the more coordination, process, alignment, meetings, budget reviews, planning, etc creep in. While these things are sometimes necessary, it is time that we aren’t delivering value to customers (see value #1).

We organize into small, discrete, often cross-functional teams that have clear ownership, purpose and autonomy. We start initiatives with the smallest set of people needed. We only add people when absolutely necessary.

We will never grow the team. Instead, we prioritize lean growth, adding members only when essential. Our goal is to foster a collective of tight-knit teams united by a common mission and set of values (Navy Seals, not Army Infantry Brigade).

We start new initiatives with the smallest set of people needed to make progress.

To get additional resources demonstrate potential first. “I did X and it got Y result. We can increase Y if we had Z more resources.” Not, “We should spin up a team to do X.”

To keep teams small, we hire for versatile, independent, experienced individual contributors and create growth and compensation paths that are greater for strategic IC’s than managers. We maintain a low ratio of pure managers to IC’s.

Hiring and building teams of specialized, bespoke roles.

Caring about how large of a team you manage.

Consistent meetings with more than 5 people.

When we think like an underdog, we remain vigilant against complacency. We deliver the unexpected vs expected. We become resilient vs brittle in the face of change. We consistently deliver value to our customers (see value #1).

Underdogs are passionate about what they do. Tenacious in their approach. Optimistic in spite of long odds. Resilient to deviations. Catalysts of change.

We have a culture of aggression. Thinking like an underdog is about approaching our challenges with braveness, creativity, and resilience.

We operate in constant fear. Thinking like an underdog isn’t about surviving, it is about how to thrive in a constantly changing environment.

We hire people who are passionate about their discipline. Have shown tenacity in their problem-solving. Have had to overcome change and long odds.

We reward finding resourceful ways to deliver value to customers that they aren’t expecting.

We expect and embrace that our roles, teams, orgs, and projects to change and evolve.

A “not my role” or “this isn’t what I was hired for” attitude.

Consistent complacency, apathy and indifference to your work and discipline.

Every day there will be problems. Some big, others small. Sometimes in waves, sometimes slowly. But they will never end. The more successful we are, the bigger our problems will be. How we react to those problems is up to us. To achieve our goals each individual must be a problem solving machine. As we solve problems, we will ship more value to customers (see value #1).

We see problems as opportunities. We solve them by running towards them, not away. We strive for the truth and face the facts. We seek diverse perspectives. We examine failures, we don’t celebrate them. We confront what didn’t work and use it as fuel to move forward. We share knowledge openly, we don’t hoard it. We do all of this directly (no sugar coating) even when it is uncomfortable.

Reforge Company Values

Reforge Company Values

Overview

What are operating values?

How will we use these values?

Sign up to see more