At Inscribe, we believe values are fundamental to company culture; not only do they provide the foundational building blocks for a company’s identity, but they also enable us to cultivate and nurture a robust, positive company culture.

If we step into the same room (or virtual room, these days), values enable us to come in with a shared understanding and have common ground with each other. We’re able to have more effective collaboration and meaningful conversations.

The application of this goes beyond our working relationships; on an individual level, values guide our actions and decisions. They influence our priorities and approach to creating strong customer relationships, innovating on our product, growing our internal team, and so much more.

Values keep us aligned and focused on our goals. 

But just as a company's strategy and culture evolves over time, so should its values.

The art and science of capturing a company’s DNA 

I knew it was time to revisit the values we implemented a few years ago when we started to observe that they didn’t reflect our modus operandi (or, “mode of operation”) today. 

My goal was for us to not just accurately reflect the culture of our co-founders, Ronan and Conor, but also the DNA of Inscribe. We wanted to double down on our strengths and codify the ways of working that have always made us successful — instead of using values to enact behavior change or list the “ingredients” typically associated with success.

Company values often stem from the principles and working styles of the founders. So to uncover Inscribe’s DNA, I started there. I sat down with Ronan and Conor on a weekly basis to just talk about values: what behaviors have led to success at Inscribe, what working styles they really noticed and appreciated, what lasting culture we aspired to create, and so on. 

We spent three months reflecting together before codifying the themes and values. And funnily enough, the new values we defined were almost a blend of the various value iterations that have existed throughout the lifetime of Inscribe. That gave us confidence that we had uncovered a value set that would endure. 

Values we cherish (and look for in future Inscribers) 

Here are the company values we landed on and recently rolled out to our team — as well as some examples of them in action captured via shoutouts in our #words-of-praise channel on Slack. 

Know your customer

In our industry, Know Your Customer (KYC) refers to a set of guidelines that financial institutions and businesses follow to verify the identity, suitability, and risks of a current or potential customer to prevent fraud, money laundering, and other financial crimes. So this value is a play on this term used in the industry we’re serving. 

For us, our customers are our north stars. They are the people we work tirelessly for, so we aim to deeply understand them and build personal, respectful relationships. This enables us to anticipate their pain points and address these with thoughtful solutions. 

Nail the details

The little things matter. Details serve as the cornerstone of excellence. It shows that we care about something. For our work, internal and external, we hold ourselves to a very high standard to get things right, whether it’s the quality of code we ship, design of a slide deck, or a customer relationship. 

Be grounded 

On any given day, week, month, or year, a lot of success will happen, and a fair share of setbacks will occur. We approach every day and each situation with low egos and clear minds to make well-balanced decisions and real connections with each other. 

More than just “words on a wall”

At Inscribe, we want our company values to be more than just “words on a wall” that we set and forget about. We’re already using these values to make decisions, asking questions like … 

• Does this new product or process reflect our commitment to quality and excellence? 
• Will this account-based go-to-market model help prioritize a great customer experience? 
• Did we remain balanced when developing our quarterly OKRs?  

Internally so far, we’ve also held small group discussions to understand the team’s interpretation of each value and examples they’ve seen. We connect each internal piece of feedback (public and private) to our values and created icons to engage on Slack, celebrating behaviors and actions that align with our values.

I also personally wanted to develop a core value set that potential Inscribers can use to self-select in and out of whether they want to be at Inscribe. My intent is to facilitate a culture where we have a clear way of working and future team members share these values too. 

And if we did this right, our co-founders Ronan and Conor will also be able to lead by example because these values are core to them too. 

Want to learn more about our mission, vision, and company values at Inscribe? Check out our About Us and Careers pages!