(Excerpted from my book Indie Games: From Dream to Delivery. Copyright © 2018 Don Daglow, All Rights Reserved.)
Accountability – When things go right we applaud the company, the team, the individual, and if there is a pattern of success or exceptional achievement there are positive consequences. When things go wrong we look to teach and correct what was done by the company, team or individual, and if there’s a negative pattern or exceptional bad judgment there are negative consequences.
Adaptive – Our world and our market change rapidly, and we change ourselves and what we do to adapt with it. (cf. Classic.)
Aggressiveness – This can take many forms: our sales team contacts lots of potential clients and makes lots of proposals; our pricing doesn’t match the competition, it crushes them; our ads are bold, proud and loud, etc.
Classic – In a world where “the fastest way” and “the cheapest way” have taken over, we create exceptional value for customers by doing it “the quality way.” (cf. Adaptive.)
Collaboration – We value people and teams working together to produce the best results. (cf. Competition.)
Commitment – We’re not doing one thing, then traipsing off to do something else. We’re committed to our product, to our customers and to our team.
Community – We are part of communities (neighborhood, industry groups, users, etc.) and derive benefits from them, so we seek to give back to those communities so we help them grow as well.
Competency – We only do things we believe we can do well.
Competition – We compete in everything we do to bring out the best in everyone and everything. Our internal teams and individuals compete with each other in order to better compete with outside rivals. (cf. Collaboration.)
Courage – We aren’t afraid to try things, even if they seem hard, risky or unpopular.
Data-Driven – We generate and gather data and then leverage the learning we gain from it.
Decisiveness – We investigate, discuss and evaluate complex issues, but we make fast decisions. If a decision turns out to be wrong, we replace with a better decision.
Discipline – Once decisions are made and instructions are given, everyone does what they’ve been told to do.
Diversity – We want to build a team that is made up of a wide range of kinds of people.
Earth-Friendly – We don’t harm the environment in any material way as we carry out our work.
Efficiency – We make the most out of every minute and every dollar, and we do it every time.
Empathy – We “walk in the shoes of the users” and focus on the quality of their experience, not on our own perspectives.
Equity – We treat all of our team members and everyone with whom we deal in a consistent and fair manner.
Experimentation – We value constantly and continually trying out new ideas.
Fair Trade – We pay our partners a fair amount in all transactions so that they can meet their basic economic needs, even if we could negotiate lower prices.
Faith – Our personal religious beliefs and values also govern our business (e.g. we don’t have anyone work on a Sabbath, even if the day falls in the middle of a major conference or trade show).
Fast Learning – Experiments may support our ideas or surprise us, but either way we learn fast from the results and continually use that learning to try new things.
Focus – Throughout the organization, we prioritize one clearly-defined goal at a time and do whatever it takes to achieve it.
Growth – In order to prosper, the business has to grow.
Honesty, Integrity, Truth – We don’t lie, we do what we say we’re going to do, and we say what we really think even if it’s unpopular. When we say something that turns out to be wrong we acknowledge and correct it.
Initiative – Our people come up with their own ideas and use their own best judgment. They don’t always wait for someone else to tell them what to do.
Innovation – We create new products or new ways to do things. (cf. Price Leaders.)
Internal Growth – Whenever possible, we look to promote people from within rather than bring in experienced people from outside the company.
Intuition – It’s hard to explain, but ideas just come to us. We vet them and then we implement the best ones. For us it’s a philosophy that works.
Investor Focused – We place a very high priority on creating value for investors.
Knowledge – We seek to learn from everything we do, so we’ll be ready to do even more ambitious things in the future.
Loyalty – We show loyalty to our customers, partners and team members, and to earn their loyalty in return.
Market-Driven – We see needs in the market and then we fill them. (cf. Passion-Driven.)
Passion-Driven – We envision products or services that we are passionate about bringing to life and that we believe will inspire passion in customers. Then we create and perfect them. (cf. Market-Driven.)
Persistence – We don’t give up just because something is difficult or discouraging when we first try to do it.
Personal Development – We support everyone on the team as they work to steadily improve on current skills and to acquire new ones. We try to be better at what we do every single day.
Philanthropy – We give money, time or both to causes and charities in which we believe.
Price Leaders – We produce the same products with equal or better quality than our competitors at lower prices. (cf. Innovation.)
Professionalism – We take our work seriously and we don’t mess around when it’s time to get things done.
Profitability – We’re here to make money. (cf. Revenue and Users.)
Quality – Every product we ship, every service we offer is of exceptional quality. If something doesn’t meet that goal we’ll either make improvements till it does or discontinue it.
Reliability – We keep our promises, whether they be about products, services, or how we work inside the company.
Respect – We’ll disagree with people all the time, both inside and outside the company, but we always treat everyone with respect.
Results Focused – Other things don’t matter if we don’t get the results we defined that we needed from the work we’ve done.
Revenue – We have to generate revenue. (cf. Profitability and Users.)
Scale – We don’t want a small customer base. We want our product or service to be used by millions of people or businesses.
Shipping – You haven’t achieved anything until you ship the first usable test version of your product or the first trial run of your service. We focus on shipping things, not just talking about them or agonizing over the details.
Transparency – We do our work “in the light of day” and don’t secretly do things that violate our values or that mislead communities, customers or team members.
Uniqueness – We’re not like everyone else. You see our product and you instantly know it’s ours. You look at our website or a video or a magazine ad and you’d know who it’s from even if our name weren’t on it.
Users – We’re out to build a large user base, which is critical to our product’s value. Facebook or LinkedIn wouldn’t be valuable if millions of people weren’t already using them. (cf. Profitability, Revenue.)