Culture at IDfy

The last few months have been hectic and exciting as well.  We have scaled up significantly and there is a lot going on at IDfy.  We grew from about 12 people in April 2015 to 140 people now.  Thats just crazy growth.

I have spent 4 years building this business and the one thing that keeps me going is the culture at IDfy.  With the growth in the number of people, I have thought hard on what it means to be a part of the IDfy journey.  I wanted to codify that before we get any bigger, its going to be very hard for us to maintain the culture if we don't articulate it now.

This weekend was spent just thinking about exactly what it means to be IDfy, and something that resonates with everyone.  And these words cannot and should not be abstract and intangible.  Wanted to stay away from using words such as integrity, honestly caring etc.  These I believe are intangible, and I would not be able to rally a whole organisation  with these words.  Which company ever says that they don't want to have high integrity in their employees?

So here is what I came up with, based on exactly the culture at IDfy.

1) Communicate- Communication is not just about telling people what you want or what you are doing, but also ensuring that the other person understands what you mean.  Here is something I told my peeps :)

"I want inter team communication to happen, that means people from any team should be able to walk up to their peers else where to ask for help or find out whats happening.   This is the only way that we can improve processes and systems.  And more importantly this is how work is going to be FUN.  And Guys fun is a lot more important that anything else.  Communication also means that you take the time to ensure that people understand what you expect of them"

2) Own - Own is about ensuring that you take ownership for your deliverables - i.e. until its done its your responsibility.  And my peeps got a mail from me about this :)

"if you have told someone that you are going to finish something at a certain time, its your responsibility to finish it or at least inform as to why it won't get done.  Its not acceptable to leave your peers hanging.  And definitely not appropriate to say that person X didn't do his job therefore I was not able to.  Essentially what this means is that each and every one of us is responsible and accountable to each other, if there are roadblocks etc, escalate or ask for help from others."

3) Step up - Stepping up is about taking ownership and helping out on things that you are not directly responsible for.  This is basically about taking initiative.

"This essentially means, if you see something breaking and you know what needs to be done to fix it - help out.  This means regardless of whether its your responsibility take on more.  We are all struggling and need help, take and ask for help."

4)  Have Fun - Well let me just copy what I told my guys:

"Guys I don't want to work for a company where we are too serious.  I have given you all guns to shoot people with, I don't see enough people getting shot at.  Each and everyone of you is responsible for making this place fun :)"

This got me thinking about whether I embody these principles, and the answer was a resounding NO.  Its honestly not right for me to expect everyone to live by these core cultural tenets when I myself don't follow them.  Many a times I have communicated poorly, Took no ownership - but heck I am a fun guy so fun was never a problem ;)

So who actually stood out amongst the crowd as the torch bearers for this? When I asked the team about this, everyone talked about 2 guys, Akash and Rakesh (Aka Mama).  These two have taken complete ownership for their work, stepped up and helped out people, Took time to explain until people understood.  Most importantly they did this better than even the senior management.  

Kudos to these two, we have decided to send them on a all expense paid vacation for being so Awesome.  So proud of these two young men.