Dealing with rejection in business

Rejection is an experience that happens anytime and anywhere, even more so in the business and entrepreneurial space. It is a part of the journey that new and long-time entrepreneurs alike have to deal with every now and then. 

A transaction that never prospered, a possible partnership that didn’t come through, a loan that failed, a proposal that was not accepted, and so on and so forth. These are just some of the many scenarios where rejection happens in one’s entrepreneurial journey.

Getting a “no” may often be hurtful, but it doesn’t mean that it’s the end of the road. It is just a bump or a hurdle that one has to overcome to move forward and come out better and stronger. So, how do you move past rejection and make it work for you and your business?

Never take it personally

There are various reasons when one rejects your idea or proposal, but don’t deem it as something against you as a person. It could be that they are not amenable to your price points, they don’t see a fit with their business needs, or there’s just a different opportunity or option that they prefer to take. 

“Rejection is a reality in every business and it needs to be used to fine-tune aspects of your business or product offering without taking it personally,” Nitasha Badhwar, Co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Sunpower Renewables, remarked.

Similarly, David Fastuca, CMO and Co-Founder of Locomote, shared this insight. He said, “Being in marketing and sales for a good part of my career, I'll probably take the line of sales, such as being able to cold call and reach out to people. As a business owner and founder, for your first hundred customers, you're doing whatever you can to get them on board and you get rejected a lot. You're interrupting people's day and you don't know the right time to reach out to them, so the biggest sort of rejection is to have these people telling you to piss off, go away, and them being rude on the call. You really need to have a thick skin and understand that you should not take it personally.”

Be resilient

Take every rejection as a lesson that will only further improve yourself and your business. Many leaders would say that a failure only becomes a failure when one stops trying. And for every success, there are countless trial-and-error and rejections that happen along the way.

“The way I've dealt with it is in light of those ways of being really resilient,” David professed. “It's not about how many times you get knocked down, but it's how many times you get up. I try to instil this ethos into my children as well, wherein to expect failure and that it's going to happen, so anticipate it and agree with it with a smile and know that every ‘no’ gets you closer to a ‘yes’. If you don't hear back from someone, it's always a ‘yes’ until it's a ‘no’,” he explained.

So, keep trying. Keep approaching people. Keep on refining and upgrading your products and services. Never allow rejection to weigh you down.

Stay positive and find an opportunity from the experience

A rejection is oftentimes a detour into something even better and bigger. Find an opportunity in a rejection. Will it lead you to a new client? Will it give you more time to do other projects? Does it give you a new idea to work on?

For David, “it's just having that approach where even if someone gives me a ‘no’ on a call, I'll smile, I thank them and I even try and turn it into something like ‘hey, it may be not right for you, but can you recommend me to someone else you think this might be a right suit for them?’ So, even if I'm taking a negative sort of conversation, I try to flip that into a positive one.”

Use it as a way to improve and progress

When rejection happens, find out the “why” behind it. Knowing the reasons can help you develop yourself and your business by fixing things that are within your control and letting go of things you can’t.

Nitasha gave an example of how rejection has enabled them to refine and enhance their products. “In our organisation, we have tried to use it to deviate from the status quo and redefine the norm. After all, Einstein once said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. An example of this would be in the early years of the business where we started with a home power system with a PAYG business model.”

She continued, “We kept reorienting the model expecting better results. That didn’t do as well as we expected due to various reasons: lack of telecom infrastructure in remote places, affordability, and issues with collecting payments to name a few. However, in listening to the market, we evolved our product offering and our business model to redefine our product, thus, creating our independent solar power station. It functions independently, allowing a customer to choose what features to add. It is not restricted by telecom infrastructure and can scale up as much as the prosumer needs. Getting rejected helped us in developing a better product.”

Next time you get rejected, go back to the drawing board and rethink the best approach forward. Have you experienced rejection in your business? How did you handle it? Share with us your thoughts and learnings through the comments section below.

How Melbourne Business Owners find opportunities in difficult situations

“You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.” — Maya Angelou

Successful entrepreneurs get to where they are now because of their determination to reach their goals, which includes braving the odds and overcoming hurdles. The recent global scenarios in the past two to three years have been very challenging. Many business leaders have looked into finding opportunities under tough situations. But how do you do it?

Look at the present needs where you can provide a solution

Entrepreneurs have shared how their businesses fill a gap. Dion Castle, CEO of Struber, said, “With the fast-changing environment in society and the world, in general, it is easy to see that the culture, technology and customer experience in our industry were due for an upgrade.”

But when the conditions of a society change, the needs of society also change.  If there are difficult circumstances, how can your business help in this time of need? Are your products and services relevant in such circumstances? It is good to look into new problems that arise and find the areas where your business can offer a solution.

Be open to new creative ideas, innovate and pivot

Unexpected things happen, so when a crisis arises and you hit a wall, take advantage of this hiccup to go back to the drawing board and revisit your plans and current offerings. This is where innovation comes in. Brainstorm for new ideas that can help boost your enterprise and make it thrive when the going gets tough.

Nitasha Badhwar, Co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Sunpower Renewables, shared that “Innovation for us is more than just implementing new technology, solution, or process. It is our culture and one of our cornerstones – something that we come back to in good and bad times.”

Also, opportunities open up when you pivot. Arosh Fernando, Creative Director of WooHah Productions, once shared the changes they had to do within their business to keep them going during the lockdowns. “All these changes helped us, as we would have no income if it wasn’t for these pivot ideas. We have managed to claw up to 20-30% of our monthly revenue,” Arosh said.

Keep an eye on new markets

It is often said that “when one door closes, a window opens.” A crisis or a setback can be a turning point where new opportunities are formed. Look where the resources go. Observe the trends and be ready for new markets that will emerge.

According to Clayton Cross, Head of Strategy at Expia, “The pandemic has opened hundreds of opportunities. Most golden. Essentially new markets have been created, especially in the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) space, which we are targetting.”

Offer help and strengthen relationships

When problems and adversities arise, that is the best time for everyone to help each other and work together to overcome the challenges ahead. The pandemic has shown how important relationships are – within the family, among friends and even with people you meet through your business. 

Ben Beattie, Managing Director of True Blue Plumbing Australia, talked about his experience. “When they shut down construction in Victoria, we had 10 plumbers a day off work with only enough emergency work for 12 guys. This was the week the earthquake hit and thousands of insurance claims were lodged. We contacted our major clients and offered to assist them with virtually assessing all the damage from the site back to their head offices as they were swamped with work. We were able to keep 3 additional guys busy for the final week of lockdown reducing to major financial losses we were incurring.”

We never run out of opportunities. The important thing is to look out for it at all times or even create those opportunities when you can.

Data vs gut-feel in decision-making

When do you use data and when do you rely on instincts in making business decisions?

Decision-making is important in every business and organisation. It is crucial in finding short-term, medium-term and long-term solutions to problems or plans that need to materialise. 

There are different ways and factors in arriving at a certain decision. Some have to be done at a snap of a finger due to the need for urgency. Others have to be deliberated carefully by a team. Then, there’s this age-old question, “Should you use data or should you rely on your instincts or experience when making business decisions?”

Many entrepreneurs recognise the value of both in decision-making. One must be able to know how to weigh when one is more necessary than the other in a given situation. Relying only on one may put decision-makers at a disadvantage. It is helpful to look at data and listen to gut-feel and learn from experience when coming up with a plan or strategy to navigate through one’s decision-making process and arrive at a sound resolution. 

Data and gut feel go together

There are circumstances when data weigh heavier than gut and vice versa. But one has to consider both when arriving at a resolution. According to Renata Freund, Founder and Director at Honeycomb Strategy, “Data and intuition go hand-in-hand, both playing a role in business decision-making. Together they are the secret sauce that underpins great entrepreneurs. Data is your confidence. It is what allows you to make decisions with conviction, knowing they are grounded in truth. Instinct is your creativity. It is what allows you to experiment, to create the new and reimagine the old. When you pair that confidence and creativity together, that’s when the magic happens.”

This was echoed by Hayden Brass, Founder and Managing Director at Zea. He remarked, “They are both critical and both play an important part in my business. For marketing, a lot of instincts have played a part in coming up with unique concepts and ideas for campaigns, but often, this has to be backed up by relevant data. When it comes to reviewing the return on investment for a marketing campaign, it is crucial to look at the data and statistics to determine whether one’s gut instincts are accurate or not.”

He also added, “And when it comes to hiring staff, this is probably the most critical of them all. It is important to go through the relevant standard hiring processes to see if they are “on paper’ a good fit for the organisation. This is one of the most crucial steps in vetting candidates. But as it approaches the pointy end of the hiring process, the more I like to pay attention to my gut instincts as to whether I believe they are the right person for the role or not. By no means is this always accurate, but it is complementary to the data collected on the candidates and both play important roles in finding people that are a good fit for our organisation.”

Nitasha Badhwar, Co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Sunpower Renewables agreed that both go together. “I think both data and gut-feel go hand-in-hand, and you can’t necessarily isolate one from the other. Data prepares you (like a weather app) but your gut-feel defines your direction.”

She cited an example from her experience, “When we started working with lithium-ion batteries, the prices were exceptionally high. It was difficult to develop a commercially viable product without stripping features to a bare minimum. If we had just relied purely on data, we would have started many years down the line which wouldn’t have afforded us the time to experiment, develop and evolve a truly comprehensive product. At that time, it was just gut-feel to jump into product development, given the data we had in hand. Today, our product line has a range of products catering to customers’ every need including an Intelligent energy flow optimizer which turned the product from a regular generator to a smart generator. On the other hand, our gut-feel was to stick to b2b and not develop the online sales channels, but the pandemic and data proved us wrong, and we are now embarking upon developing this sales channel.”

A balanced approach can help

David Fastuca, CMO and Co-founder of Locomote, maintains a balanced approach when it comes to making decisions. “I relate this back to marketing because within the marketing world, there's often this fight between data-driven marketing in which you spend a dollar, you get X dollars back, and then there's the marketing that you can't attribute, which is like a brand.”

David further illustrated this by providing an example, “When someone sees a link to a post on LinkedIn, just because you might be getting low engagement or five likes and two comments, it doesn't mean that few people are viewing it. The ideal customer you're trying to get might have read it but just hasn't interacted with it. Then all of a sudden they come to your site and then they inquire about a demo. Where does that attribution go to? It's easy to say, ‘Okay, they clicked an ad and then they signed up, so let's throw more money on ads.’ But the truth could be is that they saw your post, they read your blog, they interacted with some other content on your website, or they heard you on the radio. Maybe, all of a sudden, they saw an ad as they were scrolling through Instagram and then decide to click it.”

“But what happens is that the CEO of the business or the CFO says, ‘That lead is attributed to this ad spend so let's put more money into that,’ when really you need to attribute that to beyond other channels. So, that's where the instincts and gap come into play. I try and have a balanced approach where 50% of my decisions are using data and 50% is based on my instincts and what I'm learning in the space. If things are improving, such as more conversions are happening on my website, then I will attribute a good percentage across both channels, the ones that you can really track because it's really analytical. But then, it's always important to be working on your brand and your awareness through channels that you don't spend on. So, while I do 50-50 decisions, I also split my budget differently across those channels. So, I do 70% of my budget on what I can track really tightly and closely, such as outbound meetings being booked and calling. Then, I reserve the remaining percentage to the brand, which is content and things that you can't track because as a business, you always need to be investing in your brand over the long term,” he explained.

Decision-making in business is crucial because it affects a lot of people, both in the internal and external environments, including the peripheries. It is important to take into consideration all the factors that may be necessary for arriving at a particular resolution. It’s always good to check the numbers and it also pays to listen to your instincts.

Managing conflicts within your business

Disagreements, miscommunications and misunderstandings are never absent in any organisation, even in business teams. There will always be varying opinions and work styles because each individual is different and you cannot always control how they respond to certain situations. But when all these arise into a conflict, how do you handle them so that the entire team is not affected and work will not be jeopardised?

Before a conflict can escalate into something uncontrollable, it is better to nip it in the bud, come up with a resolution and review ways on how you can avoid such situations in the future. These are some tips and insights on how you deal with conflicts and ease the tension within your team. The aim is that differences and problems will be resolved, build better working relationships and lessen similar instances going forward.

Have an open and honest dialogue

The first thing to do when there are misunderstandings and opposing sides on certain issues is to come together and have a dialogue between the parties involved. A mediator can help neutralise any agitation and encourage a calm and genuine discussion. It’s good to see each other’s side as to where they are coming from, where the gap happened and where both parties can be heading after the dialogue. 

“For us, open and honest conversation is the key to conflict resolution; overseen by a third party if it cannot be resolved between team members,” shares Nitasha Badhwar, Co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Sunpower Renewables.

Nitasha explains, “Company culture is very important in instilling a strong sense of ownership of a common goal within the team and our shared common objectives act as a strong unifying force. We do have a lot of passion and enthusiasm within the team, which sometimes leads to frayed nerves and strongly differing opinions. Ultimately, as team members with a common objective and compassion for the environment (being a renewable energy company with a focus on sustainability) and one another, it is easy to find our way back to a resolution. The understanding of each other’s roles and responsibilities from the ‘buddy days’ also creates a better understanding of each other’s perspectives while working towards resolving the conflict.”

Clarify intentions and interpretations

Conflicts sometimes happen due to communication errors. It could be that the message was not conveyed clearly, the message or the feedback was misunderstood, or there were gaps along the way, such as lack of information or delay in communication. People may perceive things at one angle only, and thus, often arrive at a different conclusion, which may raise antagonism or discord. This is often a challenge nowadays, especially with the lack of face-to-face communication among colleagues and co-workers.

John Bevitt, Managing Director at Honeycomb Strategy, acknowledges this as a concern to having effective team communication. “I would say that the majority of ‘conflicts’ that happen within the team occur because of a miscommunication or misunderstanding – which has only been enhanced during COVID-19 and lockdowns when everyone’s working remotely and predominantly communicating through email and Slack.”

So, how do they address such concerns? Here’s what John imparts. “With 93% of communication being non-verbal, you miss all the cues that help to understand someone’s intentions when you communicate through text. So the first thing we do now whenever we feel there’s a risk of a misunderstanding is jump on a Zoom or phone call to discuss. Once something has been discussed, having the other person playback their interpretation of what’s been covered and clearly communicate next steps and actions help further minimise the chances of miscommunication and make sure that the team is in alignment.”

Create a culture of care and compassion

There’s a saying that “prevention is better than cure”, and it’s the same with conflict. It’s better to mitigate things and prevent them from escalating into a full-blown dispute. This is what Karl Simity, Managing Director of Canopy, tries to achieve within his team by having a corporate culture where members extend kindness and understanding to one another.

He illustrates, “Our focus is on making sure that it never gets to ‘Conflict’. I believe that a major contributor to this is having the value of first-class communications embedded within our culture. First-class communications to us are anticipating concerns and communicating any problems before they become an issue. We pride ourselves on always being clear and honest in the way we communicate with one another. In being authentic with our communication, we avoid any conflict and challenges are dealt with head-on and resolved from a place of care and compassion.”

How do you handle conflict in your workplace? Share with us your tips and experiences.

The importance of innovation in business

Competition is getting fiercer, technology is advancing faster, and market preferences are leaning towards newer products and services. For enterprises to have a continuous upward curve in their performance and remain relevant to the changing times, they need to look for ways to constantly innovate themselves and consistently improve their business.

Entrepreneurs see the importance of innovation to keep their businesses going. They’re always on the lookout for ideas that will improve their product offerings, better their services, widen their reach and be ahead of other players in the industry.

Here are a few examples of how entrepreneurs implement novel ideas in their businesses and how such ideas impact their organisations.

Online Marketplace and Customer Education Sessions

“We have recently launched a number of innovations, one of the standouts would be our new online Marketplace. We understand that our partners prefer to engage with us in various methods,” said Nick Clift, Co-founder at Otto and Founder of DWM Solutions. 

“Through feedback from our partners, we identified that there was a great opportunity to create a Marketplace where they could have a customised portal specific to their businesses that would provide standardised solutions which ensure they are always procuring items aligned to their business requirements,” he added.

As a company that is humanising technology, Nick and his team makes sure that they are able to help their clients with all the technical things that help their business grow. “The second (innovation) is our regular Customer Education Sessions where our team run a 45-min session for clients on various subject, e.g., Cyber Security best practices, data management, Office 365 tips and tricks. These sessions add value to our clients and the feedback has been very positive,” he explained.

Creative Leadership Team and Research & Development

Innovation is what drives the business of Nitasha Badhwar, Founder and CEO of Immersify and Co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Sunpower Renewables. “Being heavily R&D-driven, innovation is naturally a core business value for us and a continuous reality. Innovation for us is more than just implementing new technology, solution, or process. It is our culture and one of our cornerstones – something that we come back to in good and bad times,” she remarked.

“We have learnt that a creative leadership team tends to be the ultimate driving force of innovation within an organisation, and we are lucky to have one. Our core team realises that with innovation there is no place for complacency. Therefore, we had to set up an innovation-friendly environment with systems and processes that support the initiative, creativity and R&D. One of the best things we did was to appoint a Product Manager to coordinate between different teams and prepare a business case to prioritise and justify adoption and creation of certain innovations over others, all measurable through keys metrics like ROI,” Nitasha expounded.

She added, “This helped us realise that we need to implement new technologies for faster and smoother product development resulting in the recent purchase of a new 3D printer that has helped improve R&D timelines by over 30%.”

Apart from this, Nitasha and her team continue to do hands-on research to know how else they can innovate their products and services. According to her, “Another key practice that we follow regularly is providing an immersive on the ground experience in different countries to our staff where they learn how to implement in real-time prudent and creative strategies to problem solve and overcome stumbling blocks. This is further strengthened by coming back to the R&D facilities, using state of the art equipment and working with other innovative minds to create a long term, paradigm-shifting solution. This two-step immersive training has created many a brainchild in our company, including our Cleo solar generator.”

Furthermore, Nitasha shared, “This model is famously termed as ‘Jugaad’ (Hindi term roughly translates as overcoming harsh constraints by improvising an effective solution using limited resources), a concept taught at Harvard Business School and has been a great learning experience for all of us.”

Micro innovations and experimenting and piloting new ways

John Bevitt, Managing Director at Honeycomb Strategy, admitted that “We’re big fans of ‘micro innovations’ or the little things that can help to make our jobs easier or add more value to the clients.” 

True enough, innovations do not necessarily have to be big as they can also be done in small actions but can result in a huge impact on one’s business. John shared, “In the book Atomic Habits by James Clear, he talks about how a performance coach for the British cycling team used a strategy called the “aggregation of marginal gains” to turn the team around and win the Tour de France, essentially by making a 1% margin for improvement in everything they did that added up to remarkable improvement.”

With this, what John does in his business is that “We encourage something similar, always looking for opportunities for improvement. Every team WIP starts with a short ‘tips and tricks’ session where the team can share shortcuts and hacks that they’ve found to be really useful. We’ve actually built this philosophy into our systems and processes as well – we’ve defined our processes as the ‘current best way we think we can do something.’ This gives the team permission to experiment and pilot new ways of doing things, and if it’s better, we change the process.”

Innovation: a road to the future

Most of what we have and use today are products of innovation, and they can change 5 or more years down the road. This shows that we are constantly developing and always finding opportunities for improvement. It is a path towards a more progressive future, not only for your business but also for the communities and societies you serve. Take a deep look into your business and see the areas where you can innovate, introduce new ideas, and become a changemaker.

The value of training in organisational development

How do you nurture your organisation’s human resources? Every member of your team is valuable on how to bring your business forward and achieve its goals. But as you take in new challenges, aim for greater heights and expand your horizons, how do you equip your people to ensure that you can all move towards the same direction and at the same speed?

When you want to grow your company and develop your organization, it is also necessary that you upskill the people within your team so that they’d be able to perform better and increase their productivity. What kind of training do you provide to your team that contribute to your business growth? Entrepreneurs share their experience on how they value training and how this has benefited their people and their organisation.

Areas where they can excel

Having some expertise in a particular skill, field or area is beneficial to individual team members as well as to the entire team because it facilitates growth in your organisation and establishes authority within your industry. Honing your people to be great at something can boost their morale as well as your customers’ confidence in your business.

Understanding the benefit of this to his business, Karl Simity, Managing Director of Canopy, supports the growth of his staff by equipping them through proper training. “Training for our team is a key focus, both in-house and external. If our team isn’t growing, the business won’t either. We encourage and coach our staff to look for areas where they want to excel in or areas where they could improve and then we build specific training plans for them,” he stated.

“Right now, we are running an executive training with our leadership team. Our design team is doing further technical training and our consultants are doing some external sales training. An investment in our team is an investment in our future,” Karl added. 

Learning resource and follow-up sessions

Building a learning resource for your team can be a huge help in ensuring continuous growth and development within your organisation. This is what Nick Clift, Co-founder at Otto and Founder of DWM Solutions, had in mind when they established the Otto Academy.

According to Nick, they have “Leadership Training, Personal Coaching, Individual development plans for all staff.  We have recently launched our online Otto Academy, this is a great learning resource that enables our staff to develop both role-specific skills and various other business/soft skills.”

But it doesn’t stop there. As in most learning processes, having follow-throughs are essential to ensure that there is regular progress and growth. “We run monthly and quarterly team meetings, where from time to time, we bring a Subject Matter Expert to run a session for the team. This often leads to follow-up sessions to hone a particular skill or technical knowledge,” Nick explained.

Team development plans

“Personal growth and development is a massive focus at Honeycomb and we begin building team development plans as soon as someone joins the team,” John Bevitt, Managing Director at Honeycomb Strategy, shared.

It is often advantageous to create learning opportunities for your staff and team development plans early on. Sometimes, learning opportunities don’t always come knocking at your doorstep, so it is better to proactively search for them and then work on plans that will ensure the growth and development of your team. 

John expounded on this, “Rather than just looking at training that helps employees to perform better in their role, we look at learning opportunities that help make all of us (including leadership) become better, more authentic and well-rounded humans. We’ve learned from experience that you do your best work when you’re being your most authentic self. This makes working on Dev Plans really interesting and really diverse – sure, we definitely have on-the-job training and such, but I’ve also got team members who have added ‘learning to weld’ or ‘get my pilot’s licence’ to their dev plans.”

Learning can be done not just on skills development but also in honing the mindset of individuals. John further explained, “As researchers and consultants who need to understand behavioural psychology and consumer behaviour as part of our role, a big element of our team development plans is also around understanding our own psychology, why we respond on how we do, and how our underlying beliefs, values and motivations contributes to this. This also helps to build empathy and emotional intelligence, which makes it easier to understand consumer behaviour, but also connect with clients. We often bring in subject matter experts to help with this and even had half our team attend a virtual Tony Robbins conference recently!”

Cross-education

Having additional knowledge outside of one’s field of expertise can also be helpful to your organisation. It widens your staff’s set skills and enables them to support each other and work better as a team.

Nitasha Badhwar, Founder and CEO of Immersify and Co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Sunpower Renewables, illustrated how they do this in their business. “Our endeavour is to upskill our team members regularly. We have multiple internal departments, and for them to work better as a team, we found that it is important, every so often, for our staff to spend time in different departments to get a better understanding of other areas of the business. This cross-education has been crucial to our success, so far. We have implemented buddy days where they shadow a team member in a different department to learn about their job.”

This provides better coordination among departments and individuals. She added, “Learning and understanding each other’s roles and responsibilities, daily pressures, and deliverables creates a healthy and respectful working environment. In turn, this has created a much better workflow and has deepened the bonding between interdepartmental team members. This has the added benefit of making social and family days a lot more interactive and fun.”

Education and growth do not stop when we step out of the confines of the classroom. Learning continues in workplaces and it is necessary to develop your organisation and your business. There is a proverb that says “a chain is only as strong as its weakest link”, which is why it is critical to look after your people and ensure that they not only grasp the tasks or work assigned to them but also master what they do, be the best at it and expand their knowledge and set skills.

Corporate values and nurturing them in your business

Corporate values are important in every organisation because they provide a strong foundation for decision-making, team building, customer relations and driving your business forward. It is your company’s compass that directs you which way to go and the backbone on how to run your business successfully.

Every organisation has their respective corporate values, depending on the preference of the owners or board of directors or the purpose of the business for operating. Nurturing your corporate values strengthens your team and enables you to achieve your mission and goals. Here are some corporate values that entrepreneurs have in their businesses and how they ensure that these values are upheld in their organisations.

Integrity and accountability

Integrity is defined as “the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles; moral uprightness,” while accountability is “the fact or condition of being accountable; responsibility.”

For Nitasha Badhwar, Founder and CEO of Immersify and Co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Sunpower Renewables, “Integrity and accountability are the most important values for us. In an organisation that values innovation, having integrity in what you believe in, what can be seen through to completion, and where time and resources need to be prioritised, is a crucial success factor.”

These two values are also often found in other organisations as they build trust within the team and from customers and third-party partners. Nitasha added, “We strongly believe that integrity in the workplace promotes an open and positive working environment that helps in developing happy, resilient, and successful teams with a strong moral, ethical and fair code of conduct.”

Diversity

John Bevitt, Managing Director at Honeycomb Strategy, revealed one of their core values that resonate well with their team. “Of our three core values, I think one of the most powerful ones is ‘Celebrate our Superpowers’. I love this one as it helps to celebrate our diversity – no matter the role or level of seniority, everyone has a ‘superpower’ that helps make them unique from everyone else. It’s the one thing that, if focused on, trained and nurtured, makes everything else easier or unnecessary,” he stated.

It’s not a common corporate value, but it is something that can stick to everyone’s mind. John further explained, “Every team member has an idea of what their superpower is and we create a development plan homing in on it and using it to help achieve their personal objectives, share learnings with the team and create an environment focused on strengths, not on weaknesses. Having clarity on these superpowers and knowing how these can be combined across the team creates a multiplier effect and is what has helped to take our business to the next level.”

Drive for results

With the end of sight, Canopy Managing Director Karl Simity shared that “Canopy was founded with the vision to create inspiring workplaces that encourage and enrich the lives of workplace inhabitants to build and grow successful organisations.”

Corporate values are often anchored on the vision of the business and its owner. A corporate value aims to help achieve this vision. Karl cited an example, “One of our values is to ‘Drive for outcomes’, and this value is something I see all our employees live by in their day-to-day activities. What helps us create these inspiring workplaces is the drive our people have to make it happen, to always push for success, and their persistence over resistance to solve problems.”

People first

Businesses are made for people, with the aim of providing solutions to concerns and challenges affecting our society. Corporate values are also people-centric because they are to be lived out by people for the people that the business serves, whether they are internal or external stakeholders.

This is why for Nick Clift, Co-founder at Otto and Founder of DWM Solutions, people are significant pillars of their corporate values. He expounded, “At Otto, our key corporate value would have to be People First. We are redefining the industry and Humanising Technology. Otto, as a brand, represents the humans behind the technology — the human hands that make the tech work. Essentially, we are a human-led, tech company, so I guess you could say that technically, we are anti-tech.”

If you look through other companies, businesses and organisations, you will find varying corporate values, yet these values define who they are as an institution. Values put a soul to your brand, especially on how you and your people act and conduct business accordingly.

What are your corporate values and why have you chosen them as your values? How do you ensure that your people live up to them? We’d like to hear your thoughts.