I just finished reading Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion and Purpose by Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.  If you aren’t aware, Zappos prides itself on its brand culture pipeline, and to sum it all up, all the people that work at Zappos WANT to be there and generally enjoy their job on a daily basis.  This has led Zappos to be a highly successful corporation, so much so that they have recently “married” Amazon with a dowry of about $1.2 billion.  As the proud owner of a start-up company, I like to read about things like this, to try to learn from other people’s mistakes and hear about the lessons they’ve learned along the way.  Hsieh’s book really got me thinking about core values and what our mission truly is.  I’ve always known that core values were essential to a company’s character and brand culture and that it was important to have a mission, but that was about it.  I’m thinking that perhaps I got it a bit wrong.  So over a frittata and a large cappuccino at The Vendome (vendomecafe.com – definitely worth a visit if you live in Calgary), I drafted a new mission, and tweaked our core values.

Old mission and core values: to provide clients with archaeological consulting services that centre around our core concepts: respect, safety, efficiency, open communication and teamwork, creating satisfaction for all those involved in the process… establishing strong, lasting relationships by exceeding client expectations, promoting both cultural preservation, as well as future development.

New mission: to help people understand, appreciate and plan ahead for heritage resources.

Change to core values: delete safety and respect.  Safety goes without saying – always be safe!  Respect must be earned – it isn’t automatic.  Add growth – it’s important to grow as people, w hich helps us to grow as a company.  Add humility – without it, you can’t grow.

Haven’t changed the website yet to reflect this… I think it can get even better.  Input?

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