Why updating our virtues will help us grow together

If you’re familiar with the idea of virtues over values, for creating a company culture that manifests its success through action, not just beliefs, you’ll know that virtues have to be meaningful and easy to understand in order for a company to succeed on its vision.

Poorly implemented virtues or values that employees don’t relate to or understand, or worse yet that leaders don’t fundamentally live, will at best cause confusion, and at worst alienate people. If you have a virtue stuck on the office walls that suggests collaboration and the CEO promotes fight-to-the-death individualism then employees won’t believe the message and will become cynical. If they are really going to have any effect, everyone needs to know what they’re talking about and what they are trying to accomplish.

Here at Growth Kitchen, we don’t need our virtues on a wall or a coffee mug; it’s in the behaviour of everyone. We work very closely with each other to meet our objectives and we hold ourselves to high standards. But it’s our actions that come from those beliefs that create the habits that will inform our success. We reinforce our virtues with action and those actions are rewarded with vouchers and public recognition. This is why it’s so important to have the right virtues and we wanted to make sure ours were working for our business.

Why now?

As a business, we have grown 10x in size over the last 12 months and we wanted to make sure our virtues reflected where we are as a company today and also how we work day in and day out, now and in the future.

Today, we’re launching our new virtues. These reflect input from everyone in the business, not only our aspirational values that align with our strategy — what resonates most with our people is so important in order for us to be able to practice what we preach. But more than that, we want virtues to reflect who we are and who we could be, rather than having them imposed on our people.

Following many working sessions and some incredible ideas and input from the team we are proud to announce our new virtues:

Customer obsessed

We create an experience that our restaurant partners and end customers can count on. We exist because of them. Being customer-first is our number one priority and impacts every decision we make.

Think big

We champion innovation that pushes the boundaries and creates new things that will make a 10x difference.

Courageous about change

We are growing something that is creating a world that does not yet exist. We are pioneers, exploring the unknown every day. Priorities shift and we maintain our grit so that we can win.

Make it happen

We are doers. We don’t just come up with concepts; we turn them into reality and we always have the mentality to take ownership and get the job done.

Never not my job

As a growing, ambitious company, we need to all work towards the same goal, and we all chip in sharing the load and working together.

Be your authentic self

We think creating an environment where people feel comfortable being themselves will allow them to be their best, bring out diverse perspectives and build the best products.

How we live our virtues

A great company culture will help us achieve our goals and fulfill our vision to revolutionise the way the world eats — enabling people to eat well in minutes by bringing affordable, restaurant-quality food to their doorstep. But culture is often experienced by the behaviour we reveal while no one is watching; it’s how we make people feel about the company, what we’re like to do business with, and what we’re like to work for as a company.

This is why we hold a monthly event called ‘Chef Patron’ where we nominate each other against our core virtues and we make it mandatory for people to nominate someone for each virtue. This exercise gives a moment for pause and reflection on how we are all living our virtues so that not only do we have the opportunity to show gratitude for one another, but the virtues become second nature in everything we do. We don’t just believe in ideas, we also live by them, together and as a team and that keeps us all excited about what we’re trying to achieve.

If you’re interested in learning more about our story and would like to join the team, check out our careers page or contact us at talent@growthkitchen.co.