The real worth of having values comes through when everybody abides by them. When people feel inspired by and aligned with the company’s values, they simply work more effectively.

If you look at how companies are structured, you will find that most of them do not have a written set of values that they truly abide by. Most likely, management has hired an overpriced consultant to present their team with something that sounds logical and aspirational at best. The problem with a generic set of values is that no matter how hard you push them on your staff, they will never hit home. On the other hand, a set of values that the staff has personally had a part in writing and conceptualizing can slingshot your company to success.

At The Cecily Group, we have a unique, employee-created set of values to live by and to aid in solving problems that come up in our daily business. Whether it be failing with style, or being available for anybody, these are the cornerstones of our business – and are essential to our success as an awesome team. It is a huge time-saver for our founder. Our guidelines for employee decision-making are our values. Everyone must integrate them into their workflow. That way, almost no time is wasted in escalating problems on issues that could be solved with a little logical thought by our employees themselves.

The formation of our values began back in the infancy of our company. During the interview process, our founder, Nicholas Schwarz, asked himself which of the available candidates he would like to work with. He checked in with himself about whether the new people could fit in with his working style as well as that of the team. The result was a group of people aligned with the way he works, and ready to work with each other.

Immediately, the new team was given the task of creating our values. We have company values that live and breathe because we all wanted them, and wrote them together. When we started the value-finding process, our first results were good, but not quite enough. What made them so much better was when we asked ourselves, “How are we already working now?”

Once we had a little experience with each other, and incorporated our natural tendencies and operating styles into our values, they went from “just okay” – to superb. It is very clear in hindsight that if you want to write strong values, you first need to take time to work together and also to get to know each other on a deeper, more meaningful level. Making an effort to include the entire team in their formation created values for our company that have stood the test of time.

You may ask yourself, what are our values? Here’s the list:

I. We all take great care in being available for anyone.

We mean available in the sense of being present and open to help or encourage others.

II. Fully charged batteries included

“When we work, we do this with batteries included. And these batteries are always charged and ready to go further. We know how to charge our batteries and find motivation from ourselves.”

This one is a bit tricky. We have recently started a new social media initiative called Project Fully Loaded, intended to encourage everyone on the team to share their experiences of how to “recharge”. Each person on the team has his or her unique approach. We have a motivational channel on WhatsApp. We have taken part in 21-day meditation challenges and some of us took part in a fitness Bootcamp. Every person, no matter how self-aware, needs an occasional reminder to take care of themselves. It also helps us to build a deeper connection as a team.

III. We strive for humility in our work.

“Our achievements are always an achievement by the Awesome Team and not by an individual.”

There is no “most valuable player” here. We are all here for our unique abilities and focus on how we can add value to the company goals we intend to achieve. We are all focused on our moon shoot and we know that while we may celebrate some short-term goals and milestones, we are far from where we want to be. We can only reach our long-term goals by working together.

We work in our area of unique ability and we work with a passion for what we do.
It is hard not to be passionate about doing something that you are good at. We are all challenging ourselves and looking for new ways to be better. If it’s not a fit for us, we don’t do it.

IV. Does it look classy?

“If we cannot do it with class, then let’s leave it.”

Thanks to our designer, we have found our style. If you want something to last, you must first make it beautiful. Our visual story is just as important as our written one.

We provide an atmosphere where every member of our Awesome Team can grow both personally and professionally.
“Sometimes it will be tough, sometimes it will be a real challenge, but we will always do it together.”

We support each other regardless of the situation. When the pandemic hit us, suddenly everyone was at home – struggling to get the video chat session for their children’s school to work. There were some really hard questions we had to ask ourselves. Some of us dropped off to take care of family business and build new home routines. That was okay – once we all found our footing, we came back together, and it was business as usual.

V. We work in an upfront and forthright environment.

“We can say when something does not work as it should.”

“When you see something, say something,” is a challenge that we are continually working on. Every team faces the issue of how to give critical feedback. I think, generally, people are of a mind to keep everything nice and friendly and to hold any criticism back. We encourage team members to be upfront and to speak up when we see something that is not working as it should.

VI. We are curious and innovative.

“It’ll be up to you to bring in new ideas, which we can then develop further.”

Awesome ideas and “unicorns” as we call them are extremely important to our success. We have the freedom to “dream out loud,” so to speak, and add value to whatever processes or products we are developing. Being a part of the ground-floor development of a company is very exciting.

VII. Sometimes we fail.

“When we fail, we fail with so much style that we can learn from it and move on.”

This one harkens back to our “keep it classy” value. We may not always get it right, and when we don’t, we handle it in a classy way. We won’t get it right half the time– but with each step taken, we know that we are learning and growing.

VIII. Naturally, we don’t always get it right.

“But if that happens, everybody is expected to raise a hand so we can – together – improve our Awesome Team.”

We try to support each other before anything bad happens. Raising a hand doesn’t have to be after something has failed. If you are trying your best and still not succeeding, we have the team to lean on and learn from.

Summing It All Up:

You cannot start your first company with a pre-prepared or canned set of values. You must see how you instinctively work together. You can only do that if you employ people that you like and want to work with. In other words, you cannot have people working for you that are very good at their job, but you cannot personally stand to be around. You must find the right people based on likeability and capability, work together for some time, and then write the values together as a team. In addition, when choosing to employ people once the values have already been formulated, the core values of the person you pick to join the company need to match those of the company itself. If the values of the company jar against those of the individual, it’s not going to be a good fit.

There is a Japanese concept called Ikigai, that dates back to the Heian period (794 to 1185), which states that you need four things to find purpose and value in living. Like in Ikigai, we at The Cecily Group are constantly assessing whether the paths we are taking are those that will lead us not just to financial success, but happiness, and significant service to the world – achieved through harmony based on the choices we’ve made in the roles that are delegated to specific people. Our goals in using this approach are to find better employees, increase our retention rate, and reduce the costs of training. Essentially, we wish to “ride the learning curve” to the end – increasing efficiency by limiting churn. It’s a commitment that goes both ways; once we have decided on an employee, we are dedicated to their growth, and to integrating that growth into our successes.

The Story of the Cecily Group

During my interview, it was very clear from about the middle of the interview that the job I was applying for was not the best fit. Nick was able to see that I had likeability, enthusiasm, and a set of unique abilities that would add value to his team. Thus, my role was created in administration, and we decided to work together.

We started with a small core remote team of four people, and we all worked well together. We all had a set of unique abilities and they complimented each other perfectly. In the beginning, we only had a perceived set of unique abilities to plan everything with, but over a 6-9-month period of working together, it was clearer where we each personally added value to the group and which tasks were a good fit for each person. When you work in your area of unique ability, you are more and simply happier in your job. After about 12 months, we rewrote the values – and those are the values we still have today. They help us in a multitude of ways. Most importantly, they remind us of what we set out to do in the beginning.

We work primarily with these values, and take the time to look at them again each quarter. We ask ourselves as a group if we have abided by our values, and if we think something needs to change. This is the wish of our employees; it’s the most effective method to align employees’ decision-making processes to that of the company.

The Worst-case Scenario: Stale Values

We started with a small core remote team of four people, and we all worked well together. We all had a set of unique abilities and they complimented each other perfectly. In the beginning, we only had a perceived set of unique abilities to plan everything with, but over a 6-9-month period of working together, it was clearer where we each personally added value to the group and which tasks were a good fit for each person. When you work in your area of unique ability, you are more and simply happier in your job. After about 12 months, we rewrote the values – and those are the values we still have today. They help us in a multitude of ways. Most importantly, they remind us of what we set out to do in the beginning.

Living, Breathing Values

Our founder is utterly confident that the real worth of having values comes through when everybody abides by them. The values must live and breathe in the employees. When people feel inspired by and aligned with the company’s values, they simply work more effectively

The language you use as a team is also just as important as the values you choose to live by. We chose to rename our Human Resources “Culture and Abilities” because we felt that it best addressed what we were trying to achieve. The renaming expressed an intent to create the best company culture possible while focusing on our unique abilities. For us, it does not get better than that. When the company culture matches employees’ personalities, and HR sees that their abilities are put to the best use possible, it’s a win-win situation. We spend considerable time doing tasks like the activity inventory and communication builder, which are two tools we use to measure if the tasks that we are doing are a fit for our unique abilities. They’re also a resource for finding out how each person delivers and receives information. That way, we not only talk the talk of our values: we walk the walk.
Every quarterly meeting we also ask ourselves, “are we practicing what we preach?” Are we living and breathing our values? We want to make sure that for whatever projects we take on, everyone has the same common understanding of expectations. That is something that we have always achieved until now. When people come into our organization as new hires, they can see that because we have a flat hierarchy, the expectations are the same – regardless of the role you have. It does not matter if you are a manager or a cleaning person, you are part of our company and embody our values.
We all push each other to be better people. Not one of us will end up in a rut because it is not just like you are handed tasks, expected to finish them, and no one checks in with you. Even our boss lives and breathes our company values: I have never worked for a company where a boss was more generous with his time or more patient when things did not go right as is the case at The Cecily Group. I think that our values are the reason why this is so.
In the end, values are our main tool for solving problems and conflicts within the group. It takes the guessing out of it for new people. We tell them about our company culture and our working philosophy. Employees are trained right from the beginning to use our core knowledge to solve problems. Instead of guessing, or doing their own thing, employees have a guiding light.
It is Nick’s position ultimately to be responsible for the whole company. He leads the battle of following our values and developing strategies where we can get the most out of them. He can hire people to get new clients and serve those clients, but no one can replace him as a leader regarding our values. It is the personal responsibility of the owner of the company to live the values. That means: making sure that everyone working in the company is working in an environment that is true to the original ideas and values that everyone has signed up to do. There should not be a disconnect between what people mentally sign up for and what is being displayed in the company as the years go on.

In the end, values are our main tool for solving problems and conflicts within the group. It takes the guessing out of it for new people. We tell them about our company culture and our working philosophy. Employees are trained right from the beginning to use our core knowledge to solve problems. Instead of guessing, or doing their own thing, employees have a guiding light.

Updating Values and the Five C’s

How do you keep your values as accurate and timely as they need to be to guide the team? Our values press us to practice the five C’s. Curiosity, Commitment, Courage, Capability, and Confidence. Through the concept of the 5C’s, the team participates in a higher level of entrepreneurial discussions, where more ambitious projects are taken on within the group. This is fed by looking back at all the past achievements and thereby seeing that a better future can be created. Every 90 days we recommit, and the cycle begins again.

We all want to have the best working environment that we can have, and these are the key things that we must look at to achieve that. The true test will be later when we are 70 people instead of only 7 – to see if we can hold on to all of our ideas and expectations!

Products and Services

It is not just the employees and the internal branding that are important to maintain these values. Whatever your values are translate directly into the type of products and services you are producing. Do your products also follow the values? It comes down to customer service, sales, and how your people are marketing things. When you use the tools or services does the user experience the values in a similar way to when they interact with your employees? Is there something missing there? Whether it is a user experience or a conversation with one of your employees, make sure that your values shine through to your customers.

The Entrepreneurial Tool

Our Entrepreneurial Tool is a great way to get you rolling on your values journey. There are always going to be holes in your knowledge, as an entrepreneur starting, and what we offer is a guideline to fast-track anybody into the business of managing people. A lot of the time people who create things are dreamers who need time and space to reach the potential of their ideas and discoveries. They are maybe less good at dealing with people and bureaucratic requirements that you must follow when you take on employees. What we do is provide you with our entrepreneurial tool with all its functionalities to give you a jump-start on your entrepreneurial journey. We must provide value first before we can ask for value back. And that is just what we have set out to do.
The Cecily Group is here to guide professional, personal, and financial growth. When it comes to financial goals and working standards, we can help anybody, regardless of who they are or what they do, be more successful by assessing their Kolbe numbers and unique abilities and harnessing the thing that they excel at. We have proven that we can do it, so we now want to teach other people how to build successful teams that enjoy working with each other.
The Cecily Group is here to guide professional, personal, and financial growth. When it comes to financial goals and working standards, we can help anybody, regardless of who they are or what they do, be more successful by assessing their Kolbe numbers and unique abilities and harnessing the thing that they excel at. We have proven that we can do it, so we now want to teach other people how to build successful teams that enjoy working with each other.
If you would like to learn more about our Entrepreneurial Tool or if you would like assistance creating value for your team, please contact Sherry.

“For me, as a boss, it is a real time-saver to have values, because when questions come up, I can say, guys, have a look at the values. For 99% of cases, the values answer our guiding questions.”
― Nicholas Schwarz, Founder, The Cecily Group