Evolving studio values
Most people, in most industries, have worked somewhere with pleasing, probably quite bland 'values' displayed in the recruitment material, posters on the wall, buzzwords in the marketing. No one really uses them, no one really cares.
Even if the company values are put together with feedback from the whole team, genuinely reflect the real values of the studio, and are used in practice not just in theory, they might have changed. I argue, in fact, that studio values should change just like teams do: Studio values should change and here's why.
- Values were written for a specific moment and that moment has passed.
- A five-person team does not behave like a twenty-person team and a twenty-person team definitely does not behave like a hundred-person organisation.
- Values should reflect the reality of how decisions are made, how trade-offs are handled, and what is prioritised when things are difficult.
- There are usually clear signals that it’s time to revisit values.
- Values only matter if they are used in practice, in hiring, in feedback, and in everyday decisions.
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