Entrepreneurship - The value of values

BANGALORE, INDIA: The shortest path to success is never a straight line. This is especially true in the tech business markets, where customers and technologies change faster than anyone can spell the words long-term planning. While strategy and tactics have to keep pace with rapid internal and external changes, what remains constant and guides the behavior of a company or an entrepreneur are the values they operate by.

Achieving objectives:

When we were a smaller company, I used to feel that values were fuzzy, intangible concepts that mattered less than, say, achieving the business milestones. However as we grew, I came to realize that the only way of achieving other objectives, such as the business milestones, were by following a certain set of values.

At the early stages of growth, everyone knows everyone and everything in the company, which makes it easy to keep things consistent. However, with growth comes distance and anonymity in the organization, so the only way to ensure consistency is through clearly-defined values.

Promoting values

Let me explain with specific examples.

One of the values that is dear to us is innovation. To us, innovation means constantly thinking of new ways of doing something. It is not just in terms of the products we make, but also in terms of how we support it, or sell it, or promote it, or track our progress. Although our company has had a near-death experience, yet innovation helped us fight our way through it and survive.

When our first product didn't take off, we experimented with a couple others and one of them achieved substantial traction. We pioneered the worlds largest mobile community (used by 50 mn users) and a powerful marketing platform for businesses (used by 25,000 businesses). When our direct sales approach didn't work well initially, we innovated and built out a large, nationwide indirect sales channel.

When we didn't have advertising resources, we developed the viral features of our product that drove it to over 50 mn users. When our support team was overwhelmed with repeat queries, we built self-help tools for customers to diagnose and fix their own issues. To us, innovation is essential not just for growth, but even for survival.

Another value that means a lot to us is entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship means being able to take risk, dealing with uncertainty, making decisions with incomplete information, and being resourceful. It sounds nice, but is hard to implement. It requires both the ability to march forward before all information becomes available, as well as, sometimes, the ability to withdraw when the new information negates that course of action.

It also means letting employees take a chance on new scenarios, and not penalizing or second-guessing them when it doesn't work out. Even as new processes and structures are introduced in a growing company, there should always be a room for resourceful and creative problem-solving. In the tech space, the risk of doing nothing at all is often greater than that of doing something.

The third value we live by is customer focus. We make the customers point of view central to everything we do. We always ask ourselves how is what we do benefiting the customer.

Clearly, every business is good to its customers, at least before the sale is closed, else it won't be in business very long. However, to us, being customer-centric also means admitting fault when were wrong, making amends wherever possible, refusing a sale if we don't think we can deliver, and always focusing on the relationship, not just the transaction.

Few companies are willing to admit fault, and even fewer will make amends, so customers really appreciate a simple sorry, combined with a make-good that reflects a genuine desire to prevent recurrence of such issues.

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Things often go wrong and customers may sometimes be unhappy with us, but even in such situations, we strive to convert an adversity into an opportunity. The natural instinct of individuals, and companies, is to hide when things are bad and customers are angry (eg, how many times has your flight been delayed accompanied by a clear and correct explanation?). We believe in doing the counter-intuitive, but highly effective, activity of being proactive in our communications, especially when problems arise.

Customers may be unhappy, but will respect us for handling the situation correctly. Were by no means perfect and have a long way to go; however our customers do tell us that all else being the same, they prefer to work with us over others.

Another value we live by is to create a healthy work environment. Healthy, to us, means an apolitical, meritocratic, productive, engaging, and empowering work environment. Human organizations inevitably become political, however the more the conversations are focused on issues, not personalities, the more apolitical and meritocratic it will be. Just as new parents are taught to tell their kids bad job instead of bad kid, in apolitical business environments it is better to criticize the errant behavior rather than the person.

Criticizing the person makes them defensive and resistant to change; criticizing the behavior implies faith in the person that they can do better. Empowering employees sounds nice, but is tough in practice. It means that you have to get buy-in from your colleagues, rather than throwing authority around; it means enduring tough probing questions during team meetings and addressing them candidly and openly.

New employees join the company and often say yes sir to anything they are asked to do. I like to emphasize to them that we want a no sir culture, ie, I want all employees to do what they think is right rather than what their manager asked them to do. I can't claim that we were close to our goal, but I do know we were doing something right when employees that have left us for other companies often come back after they realize the difference in the work environment.

Defined by values

In growing companies, values come to define you, your company, and your culture. It will define how you recruit and manage people. It will dictate who you keep and let go. It will determine which companies and products survive and which ones die.

So find the values that reflect you and your start-up. And live by those values, even when not doing so would be easier. Suffice to say that in a tech start-up, and perhaps any kind of business, the only things of value you have are the values you have.

Beerud Sheth is the CEO of SMS Gupshup