89 - Social Architecture - (Our) Values - Delight
Value 1/5 at Mayday
I’m writing about social architecture: the why, the components and the actions. I’ve covered Mission, Vision and Values at the top level as components. Now to get into our Values at Mayday. The first is Delight.
This is the first value because it shapes what we aim for. To plan back from wow rather than bottom up from enough, in our internal and external activities. To strive for delight. To look for opportunities to wow. Delight is both cause and effect. Effect because it is immensely fulfilling to have elicited delight in other people through one’s work. Cause because in striving for delight, one is more likely to do great work.
There are four sub points we use in explaining delight as a value:
Random acts of joy - looking for and seizing opportunities for this. E.g. a message to a team member you have little day to day contact with to tell them how much you appreciated their contribution on something;
11* customer experience - planning back from open minded first principles in what this could look like. At every turn, thinking how could we deliver (more) benefit to our customers. E.g. one of our customers was putting in place a new transfer pricing policy, an area adjacent to what we do at Mayday. I’m not an expert in it, but I have more experience than they do. We had a 20 minute call to share my insights. I love that they think about us this way;
The pragmatic pursuit of perfection - perfection can be a dangerous word to let near your values. It can be conflated for perfectionism - that there is no room for mistakes. That’s absolutely not it for us - hence the pragmatic pursuit. But we will not do our best work, or bring about the maximum possible delight, unless we plan back from perfection as a never-achievable north star. E.g. in a new product release thinking what the perfect feature would be. Paring it back in scope to what we can deliver brilliantly. Testing it thoroughly. But recognising there is only so much we can do in a vacuum. And putting it live, ready to rapid react on feedback from customers to address the inevitable gaps;
Leaving things better than we found them - whether this be noticing typos, identifying and relaying edge case bugs, sharing a useful resource, making a relevant introduction from one’s network; if we all have this approach then it can only compound to an amazing end result.