In Pursuit of Awesome: Our Company Values

Heads up: things are about to get wild and crazy at ImageX. Ok, not really, but new things are happening. We’ve done a lot of navel-gazing over the past few months, thinking about who we are as a company and – more importantly – who we want to be. And, lint aside, we’ve resurfaced with a fresh new appreciation of our strengths and a passion to be even better.

It goes without saying that every company – and every individual – has their own set of values and aspirations, and ours is far from a one-size-fits-all solution (we think that would be incredibly boring …). But in this age of transparency we thought we would save you the trouble of Googling us and cut right to the chase: this is who we are, what we aspire to and what we are ultimately all about.

1. Positive attitudes

No one wants to be around a negative person, no matter how talented he or she is. Perpetual negativity spreads in a company faster than cooties at a Van Halen concert. Instead we want to be all about the silver lining, even if we have to work really, really hard to see it! We want to view problems as opportunities to work together towards joint solutions. Life is short (and careers are even shorter) and attitude is everything – so let’s all be happy, shall we?

2. Clear communication

The key to communication, whether it’s via Skype or carrier pigeon, is understanding. And the key to understanding? Listening. Our goal is to listen before we talk at every level of our business and interpersonal communications. Listening to our clients and really understanding their business objectives will lead to smoother processes, saved time & effort and happier people all around. When the situation is reversed – when our clients are listening to us – we need to park the jargon, make the complex simple, and speak in a way they can understand. While we think that everyone should speak Drupalese, we know we’ll have to wait for another reality for that to happen.

3. People before profits

Much to our shareholders’ chagrin, our bottom line is that people come before profits. (Good thing we don’t really have shareholders.) We’re not interested in stepping on others on our way up the ladder of success. We believe that our business should be built on relationships of integrity. We’ve all been the little guy (ok, we’re still the little guy), and we refuse to compromise or take short cuts at the expense of others in order to get ahead.

4. Doing more with less

In our own business and even in our personal lives, we’re always looking for creative ways to make our dollars stretch. Likewise, we want to treat each client’s business or establishment as if it were our own. Ideally this would translate into everyone being Mac-users, Canucks fans and Drupal enthusiasts … but we’ll settle for carefully considering how we can best spend the money our clients have entrusted to us. We are constantly putting our processes and systems under rigorous scrutiny to find ways to do things more efficiently and effectively. It comes down to delivering the highest quality for the best value.

5. Exceptional service

We wanna be web superheroes! (At least in the eyes of our clients). A “good job” simply isn’t good enough. To achieve web superhero status we need to have a long-term commitment to exceptional service. That means we see interactions with our clients not as interruptions to our work but as opportunities to go the extra mile in deepening our relationships, meeting needs or delivering sound advice.

6. Balancing work and play

I guess we missed the memo that says life is all about work. We believe we are better people – and better developers, designers and solution architects – when work is just a part of a well-rounded life that includes leisure, friendship and family. Burnout is no one’s friend! We encourage our team members to keep to a 40-hour workweek, even if this means occasionally turning down projects with unreasonable deadlines. We also value team building and a relaxed, fun atmosphere in the office, because we want ImageX to be a place our team members look forward to coming to every day.

7. Humility

While we want a reputation for excellence, we don’t want a reputation for arrogance. In our minds, excellence and pretense don’t mix. We want to be known as a firm that is realistic, honest, authentic and values-based. And we think people – and clients – will be attracted to that. But if we’re wrong, let us know and we’ll send you a list of reasons why we think we’re the best.

8. Passion to learn and grow

One of the most important things we can do as a company and as individuals is to never stop learning. We want to push ourselves and each other to be reading more, learning more and growing more. Our industry changes so fast we’re considering whiplash insurance. If we want to always be offering the best service and products to our customers, we need to be constantly changing too. We need to be able to read the trends and adapt quickly. To do this, we place a high value on professional development, innovation and thinking outside the box.

9. Giving back

One of the (many) great things about working with the open source community is that there is always the chance to give back and invest in the lives and businesses of others. After all, our company benefits from the work of others in the Drupal community (thank you!). They say a rising tide floats all boats, and we want to be part of that rising tide by giving back whatever we can – things like source code, blog posts, presentations, and other contributions that may not always directly benefit our company but contribute to healthy growth all around.

10. People of our word

We take pride in our work and in the commitments we make to our clients, vendors and fellow team members. Of course, we’d like to be able to guarantee that our deadlines and estimates are 100% accurate every single time, and that’s definitely a goal we are working towards (It’s really what’s expected of web superheroes). But the sad truth is that we’re human – and imperfect. However, what we can guarantee is that if there’s a problem, we’ll do everything in our power to fix it, because we are proud of our work and we value our clients more than our egos.

So there you have it – the inner workings of ImageX Media. We’re always trying to be better – better people, better team members, and a better company. We may not always live up to these values, but they are what we aspire to and are constantly working towards.