We spent the majority of Q1 2022 discovering our “organizational identity” aka the vision, mission, and values of the organization. It was very important for me to nail this. I thought it was the right time because up until this point Optemization emerged “organically”. Meaning that I didn’t set out to create an agency. It just happened. I happened to have become obsessed with Notion, realized that Notion consulting is a thing, and then hired people to meet the demand. Yes, I knew that I wanted to take another shot at being an entrepreneur (my first startup failed in 2019) but I had no idea that I’d run an agency. So I felt that it was time to become more intentional about the what/why/how of the business.
After a lengthy and super thorough process (that I’ll document elsewhere one day) we landed on these answers.
- Our vision is to empower a million distributed teams to work better together.
- We’re on a mission to help distributed teams build systems that promote autonomy, trust, and collaboration.
- We do this by COASTing (values).Â
- ❤️ Working Conscientiously
- 🚪 Embracing Openness
- 🤖 Acting Autonomously
- 🗺️ Thinking in Systems
- đź’Ż Trusting and being Trustworthy
As 2022 winds down, I’m realizing that vision and mission are subject to change but I’m really happy about our shared values. I feel that learning, acknowledging, and consistently re-surfacing those really helped to forge belonging in our remote-first company.
We have two more team all-hands, and I think it’s important to use that time to reflect on how much we’ve progressed toward achieving our vision. We’ve definitely made progress but I have a feeling that the goalposts have been shifting, and causing some frustration and lack of clarity. It’s important to internalize that and take action.
