The OrganizedWisdom Culture and Our 10 Core Values

From time to time we like to share our approach to building OrganizedWisdom in hopes of spreading our ideas to other entrepreneurs and also to instigate new ideas to propel us forward. 

Publishing our ideas also helps us maintain an active dialog with those so instrumental in shaping them: our team, our investors and partners, our clients and most importantly the people who use our service everyday.

OrganizedWisdom has been growing rapidly over the past 24 months by virtually every metric we track. We believe the reason for our continued growth, and ultimately what will make us most successful in the long run, is the unique OrganizedWisdom Culture and The 10* Core Values we live by (*The 2009 Edition). 

We've built The OrganizedWisdom Culture and shaped our philosophy based on our own experience and years of working and growing with our team.  We've also been inspired by industry leaders we admire like Zappos and their WOW Philosophy, 37Signals and Getting Real, and Netflix's Culture of Freedom and Responsibility.

Over the past few years we've worked extremely hard to build a unique culture designed to foster rapid innovation, promote quality and credibility, and ultimately build a hugely successful business with the goal of helping millions of people get better health information.

Fundamental to our culture is what we call The $0 Cost Office Model and Going Green Virtually (read about it here and here) which enables us to hire the most exceptional talent available and provide the highest quality of life standards for our team members and their families.  Ultimately it is this team who works tirelessly everyday to build our new service designed to create a dramatically improved user experience so that people searching for health info feel like they have A Doctor in The Family.  Ultimately it is also this team that is building a unique approach to our client service so that every client we interact with says that OrganizedWisdom is the most exceptional team in online health.

So here are the 10 core values that shape our culture...

1. Our people are our most valuable asset and our most important investment:
   Over 90% of our budget is invested directly in our team! It is ultimately our team who drive innovation and create success.
   
   
2. We only hire A-team players who are the best at what they do:
   We care as much about passion and a positive attitude as we do specific skills and experience.  We strive for a family spirit to create a fertile environment for service, progress and growth.
   
   
3. We dream big:
   We believe (and have proven since inception) that any goal we set for the Company, we achieve. We set big goals and constantly ask how can we do better, how can we innovate, and how can we help more people?
   
   
4. We focus on effectiveness and results:
   We work with each team member to define clear and measurable goals every month and use weekly metric reviews to stay focused and keep on track.
   
   
5. We believe transparency and collaborative communication makes us more effective:
   We get more done when working together which is why we use group communication tools for nearly everything we do.
   
   
6. We stay solutions focused when innovating:
   The mindset is not why we can't do something, but how we can do something.
   
   
7. We don't write plans, we mock our ideas.
   On the fly prototyping enables us to innovate rapidly, save valuable time, and get new creations live early and often so we can get invaluable real world feedback.
   
   
8. We continually test, experiment and optimize:
   Our product and the service we are creating are never done.  We use data and real-world feedback and iterate producing major transformations of the week.
   
   
9. We thrive because of our $0 Cost Office Model:
   Our going green virtually approach helps us do more with less, create happier team members, and invest our time and capital more effectively to better serve our users and our clients.
   
   
10. We're passionate about an important mission -- to create the most useful search service in online health...We hope those around us are inspired by our energy and passion for the OrganizedWisdom Mission to help people.
    

Please share your own core values with us.  We're constantly seeking to learn new methods and models that will help us innovate, improve and ultimatley be more effective.