Can we build a people-first culture with all this?
As we always say, a people-first culture is ALSO a business-oriented culture. One doesn't exclude the other, but needs the other.
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Some surprising words here include:
- Love: not as in "romantic love", but love as in coming from a place where you genuinely care for the people and the organization. Love to act kindly, compassionately and generously to think about humans before processes. That kind of love
- Mistakes: a people-first culture tolerates and embraces reasonable and honest mistakes. In a people-first culture people are not punished or retaliated against for taking well thought-through risks or running thoughtful experiments that end in mistakes. A people-first culture embraces this mindset and creates more awesomeness from it, rather than "forcing" creativity out of people. Mistakes are embraced and learned from!
- Natural: refers to things happening organically and sometimes informally. In a people-first culture everyone cares for each other, leaders care for their people, and people care for the organization not because it is forced upon them to do so, but because it happens naturally and organically in them. Imagine how beautiful a culture in which people help each other out not because "collaboration" is skill rated in performance, but rather because people genuinely want to see each other succeed! That's natural in a people-first culture.
- Questioning: a people-first culture embraces curiosity (questioning) as one of the most fundamental and beloved values. What is a people-first culture, anyway? It is one where humans can be humans. And what are humans if not intrinsic curious beings looking for relevant information?
- Xenial (a funny sounding word, isn't it?): it is a culture that is welcoming of all.
- Yielding: it is not paradoxical to say that a people-first culture is also an organization-first culture. The truth is that you can't care for the people without caring for the organization, and you can't care for the organization without caring for the people. They are two sides of the same coin. Yielding is about producing results for both. You will want to make sure that your organization is sustainable in the long run for it to continue caring for the people. To do that, you will have to care for the people who are the ones making the organization sustainable and profitable or impactful. That's yielding. Business success and people success are inextricable from each other.
- Zealous: an organization with a culture in which people are on fire to care for and help each other succeed because it is the right thing to do for the humans and the business. It is doing things with energy and enthusiasm not because it is a corporate mandate, but because you are inclined to do so in people-first culture.
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What words would you use to substitute the ones we chose in order to represent the corresponding alphabet letter?