Core Values

In my last post, I wrote about the RateAcuity team and how we are unique.  In this post, I am going to discuss our core values and how they help guide us each day.  Core values is a phrase we hear of a lot.  According to an article by Patrick Lencioni published in the Harvard Business Review, (put title in italics and add a comma) “Core values are the deeply ingrained principles that guide all of a company’s actions”.  https://hbr.org/2002/07/make-your-values-mean-something  I like this way of explaining core values and hope that for most it is true, but fear that it is not.  Too often core values are written, perhaps shared at new employee orientation or a yearly team meeting, and then ignored.  Here at RateAcuity, we live by our core values every day.

Our core values are:

  • Pride in high quality results
  • Positive attitude in all we do
  • Plan, then take action
  • Trust between company, co-workers & customers

Sure, it is easy to say that we follow these on a regular basis, and unless you are part of our team, I may not be able to convince you that these are phrases we try to live by.  But here are some brief examples of how we apply these values to make my point).

As I discussed in my previous post, we here at RateAcuity are data geeks.  We produce data for our customers every single day.  And one of the biggest motivators to keep us doing that day in and day out is the pride we take in knowing we are providing the highest quality data possible for our customers.  Our core values apply to all the divisions of KFR Services (our parent company), not just RateAcuity.  KFR’s telecom data division has been so successful at instilling pride in the quality of their work that they have been able to deliver data that is over 99.8% accurate and has not had a customer reported error in almost two years.

We strive to have a positive attitude every single day.  And we almost always succeed.  Notice I said almost.  A while back we noticed some team members in a different division the company were not having a positive attitude.  And we called them out on it.  Together we developed a positivity challenge for all of us to “catch” each other doing or saying something positive over a period of a few months, with a reward lunch at the end if we successfully completed the challenge.  It worked – we won the challenge we set for ourselves, our teammates now have an adjusted attitude and smiles on their faces, and we all got a delicious lunch!

Plan, then act is a value that is fundamental to producing high quality data, and a basic tool that we as data geeks appreciate every day.  Providing high quality data to our customers is useless unless we can do it repeatedly.   So, planning each task, and writing that plan down in a document we call an “action plan” (catchy, right?) so that it is repeatable is key to what we do.  We could not be who we are and do what we do without embracing this value.

Finally, trust may be the most important of our values, and the hardest to prove.  Merriam- defines trust as “assured reliability on the character, ability, strength, or truth of someone or something”.  So, the company needs to be able to trust its team members’ ability to perform their duties.  Team members always need to trust the company to provide them with the truth.  Customers must trust in the company’s ability to provide a product that is correct and at a fair price.  These are just a few examples of trust between company, co-workers and customers.  There are many, many more. 

We at KFR Services believe in the value of trust to such a degree that we declined to continue doing business with a customer.  When a customer demonstrates to us that it lacks trust in our ability to provide them with a high-quality product, we would prefer to remove ourselves from that situation rather than continue in a trustless relationship.  Some would question a decision to forego the revenue this customer could provide.  But we would rather pass on the revenue and adhere to our values.

Who else out there has a set of core values that drives the everyday activities of the business?  Please share them – we love positive examples of how your values provide regular guidance on the operation of your business!

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