Innowatts

EEC – Culture & Values Discussion

July 2020

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What do we want to discuss today?

1. Round table - what does EEC think about cultures, values, etc?
2. Why we need to better culture, values and have those lead us to our actions and results.
3. Examples of values and culture frameworks
4. Steps to defining what is the right culture
5. Next steps
6. Other immediate actionable items – i.e. can start with those on the existing list.

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What do you think of Culture and Values?

How would you describe Innowatts’ Culture?

What are the Values of Innowatts? Try to name three.

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What do you think of Culture and Values?

How would you describe the Culture of your ideal workplace?

What are the Values of your ideal workplace? Try to name three.

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What is Culture?

Culture
• “The way we do things around here” - Thomas Watson (IBM Chairman and CEO)
• The normative behaviour of people in social groupings
• Not defined by rule or procedures or policies.
• Managing Culture is about action not intention. It is about what you do not what you say. And
it is the work of all managers.

Three Important Skills in Creating Culture - Daniel Coyle:

• Build Safety
• Share Vulnerability
• Establish Purpose

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Culture Change Process

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Example of Values

• Opportunity
• Accountability
Culture • Integrity
• encourage independent decision-making by
employees
• share information openly, broadly, and
deliberately
• are extraordinarily candid with each other
• keep only our highly effective people Our 7 values are:
• avoid rules 1: Make Magic Happen
2: Be bold, yet humble
Values 3: Balance speed & precision
• Judgement 4: Learn to learn
• Communication 5: Make it simple
• Curiosity 6: Be transparent
• Courage 7: Expand your Horizons
• Passion
• Selflessness
• Innovation
• Inclusion
• Impact
• Integrity
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Sample Culture Framework – Vision, Pillars, Missions, Values

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Sample Culture Framework – Vision, Pillars, Missions, Values

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Steps to get there – what to watch out for?
• Buy in - starts with people buying into the vision/purpose
of the company.
• Who should be involved - people from various levels in
the business (not be created by the executives only or a
selected group behind closed doors)
• Walk the talk - executives and everyone need to live and
breath the vision, mission, and values
• Multiple business units - good to have the attached vision
for the whole business and then for each business unit to
develop their own that links to the overall one
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• Good Vision - vision is something to unite behind so it
should be inspirational (saying we will be the best is ok
but there are significantly better visions)
• Guiding principles - Mission and objective give guidance
to people so that we don’t need to put structure around
everything that people do and therefore become
autocratic and bureaucratic
• Rollout and culture change – much easier if there are
people who believe in it spread throughout the business
both horizontally and vertically. It does not need to be a
lot but there needs to be some coverage in most areas.
• Hiring - Involves hiring people with culture fit as a key
component
10
Steps to get there – takeaways

• Set up Sub-working groups

• Answer the questions of why and how

• Proposal to get aligned

• Questionnaire

• Timeline

• Road Map

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Other Immediate Actionable Suggestions

• Communicate purpose, updates and results of EEC to company – this 1) validates the existence of this
committee and 2) shows real actional outcomes to the company.
• External engagement – increase external presence, more frequent and insightful postings.
• Client sync up - Particularly for CS, regular sessions with clients on general topics, focusing on understanding
their latest business status, ideas, market trends etc.
• Engagement in charity/ volunteering – it is a bit difficult right now but possible. We can identity causes that
we want to support, meaningful in many ways. Plus connection outside of work, build good culture.
• Buddy/mentorship program especially for newcomers – informal and flexible. Better if cross-teams.
• Taco talks – they can be short, non-work related and on impactful, trending, insightful topics + time to
connect before.
• Informal “knowledge” transfer sessions – again for whoever wants to host, and can be related or unrelated to
our line of work, e.g. fun workshops, wellness, mindfulness, latest technology, market trends, other interests
etc.
• Encourage to give and receive feedback – outside of formal year-end rounds.
• Share company’s failures – we have had a lot of successes (new clients, recognitions etc.) which are shared
but could also be useful to share our failures (missed timelines, losing clients) plus lessons learnt.

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Other Immediate Actionable Suggestions

• Allow team members to take turns to lead meetings – pretty clear upside in development and self fulfilment.
• Monthly newsletters – not sure why it ended but those were good forum to provide global team updates, and
also other engaging things, recognize work anniversaries, etc.
• Set up an open “White Board” – allows anyone to jog down anything they want, a thought, a feeling, a news,
a problem, a question, an answer, polls etc. Can be work or non-work related. I envision this to be more
interesting to be a physical white-board / wall.
• Culture - Lastly, an open question to us all - what kind of company culture do we have and do we want at
Innowatts? The answer should be defined, consistent and known. For those interested -
https://hbr.org/2018/01/the-culture-factor
• We need to publish the notes of the meeting to email and Slack to make the meetings more real, as Bosco
says. To that end, unless anyone else would like to volunteer, I'll take in on myself to publish the meeting
notes to IWGlobal as a pseudo-news letter, as well as in Slack's #general channel.
• Allowing team members to lead EEC meetings also gives everyone a chance to "beach and moan". This is
relevant feedback. Rarely is pure positive feedback a reality. I think allowing everyone, or at least each team,
a turn at the helm will allow for more positive change to occur.
• Creed?

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