Protecting the Inbox We only have one out of our 13 core values at Return Path that’s closely related to the content of our business. But as with the other values, it says a lot about who we are and how we approach the work that we do. That value is: We believe inboxes should only contain messages that are relevant, trusted, and safe We occupy a pretty unique space in the email universe – we serve senders and receiving networks, but aren’t directly in the mail stream and therefore don’t directly touch end users. So much of our business, from our Certification or whitelisting business, to our new Domain Assurance anti-spoofing/anti-phishing business, revolves around building trust in our company…
Category
Culture
More Than 1/3 of Your Life
More Than 1/3 of Your Life When I was a kid, so my parents tell me, I used to watch a lot of TV. For some reason, all those episodes of Gilligan’s Island and Dallas still have a place in my brain, right next to lyrics from 70s and 80s songs and movies. I also tend to remember TV commercials, which are even more useless (not that JR Ewing or Ferris Beuller had all that many valuable life lessons to impart). Anyway, I remember some commercial for some local mattress company which started out with the booming voiceover, “You spend 1/3 of your life in bed — why not enjoy that time and be as comfortable as you can be?”…
Beyond Policy
Beyond Policy Policies are an important part of managing employees. Similarly, contracts are an important part of running the commercial side of the business. But it’s impossible to legislate every potential down-the-road situation ahead of time. That’s why one of the 13 core values at Return Path is We believe in doing the right thing I’ll admit that more than most of our values, this one sounds like Motherhood and Apple pie. Who doesn’t want to do the right thing? The reason this value is an important part of our culture is that when we are in a tough situation, we stop and ask ourselves the most basic, yet thought provoking question — what’s the right thing to do here?…
Challenging Authority
Challenging Authority My dad told me a joke once about a kid who as a teenager thought his father was the dumbest person he’d ever met. But then, as the punchline goes, “By the time I’d graduated college, it was amazing how much the old man had learned.” The older we get as humans, the more we realize how little we know — and how fallible we are. One of our 13 core values at Return Path gets right to the heart of this one: We challenge complacency, mediocrity, and decisions that don’t make sense I will note up front that this particular value statement is probably not as widely practiced as most of the others I’m writing about in…
Why We Occasionally Celebrate International Talk Like a Pirate Day
Why We Occasionally Celebrate International Talk Like a Pirate Day No kidding – next Monday is September 19, and that is, among other things, International Talk Like a Pirate Day. We’ve done a variety of things to celebrate it over the years, not the least of which was a series of appropriately-themed singing telegrams we sent to interrupt all-hands meetings. I can’t remember why we ever started this particular thing, but it’s one of many for us. Why do we care? Because We are serious and passionate about our job and positive and light-hearted about our day This is another one of Return Path’s philosophies I’m documenting in my series on our 13 core values. I’m not sure I’d describe our…
Book Short: Wellness Redefined
Book Short: Wellness Redefined Well Being: The 5 Essential Elements, by Tom Rath and Jim Harter from the Gallup organization, is a solid read and incredibly short. It’s one of those books that’s really a long article stretched and bound. But it goes beyond the basics of what I expected, which was something like “having healthy employees cuts down on absenteeism” and has a couple great elements of food for thought for leaders looking to build cutting edge and uber-productive organizations. It comes out of the same general body of research as four other very strong books I’ve written about over time — First, Break all the Rules, Now, Discover Your Strengths, 12: The Great Elements of Managing (book, review),…
A Community of Employees
A Community of Employees One of the most memorable moments in a valedictorian speech that I’ve heard or read was at my sister-in-law’s graduation from Northwestern about 10 years ago. The speaker’s closing line was something like “Most of all, when you go out into the world, remember to be kind to other people. It’s one of the best things you can do for the world.” It’s not as if people are generally trained or predisposed to be UNkind to each other. But respecting other people and being kind to them is sometimes elusive in our busy lives. I think one of the things that makes Return Path more of a community and less of just a “place of work”…
People First
People First I do not think it’s telling that my fourth post in this series of posts on Return Path’s core values (kickoff post, tag cloud) is something called People First. Ok, it probably should have been the first post in the series. To be fair, it is the first value on our list, but for whatever reason, the value about Ownership was top of mind when I decided to create this series. Anyway, at Return Path, We believe that people come first And we aren’t shy about saying it publicly, either. This came up in a lengthy interview I did with Inc. Magazine last year when we were profiled for winning an award as one of the top 20…
Keeping Commitments
Keeping Commitments Today’s post is another in the series about our 13 core values at Return Path, about making commitments. The language of our value specifically is: We believe in keeping the commitments we make, and we communicate obsessively when we can’t Making and keeping commitments is not a new value – it’s one of Covey’s core principles if nothing else. I’m sure it has deeper roots throughout the history of mankind. But for us, this is one of those things that is hard wired into the social contract of working here. The value is more complicated than some of the other ones we have, and although it is short, it has three components that worth breaking down: Making commitments: …
Solving Problems Together
Solving Problems Together Last week, I started a series of new posts about our core values (a new tag in the tag cloud for this series) at Return Path. Read the first one on Ownership here. Another one of our core values is around problem solving, and ownership is intrinsically related. We believe that all employees are responsible for owning solutions, not just surfacing problems. The second core value I’ll write about in this series is written specifically as: We solve problems together and always present problems with potential solutions or paths to solutions In terms of how this value manifests itself in our daily existence, for one thing, I see people working across teams and departments regularly, at their…
The Value of Ownership
The Value of Ownership We believe in ownership at Return Path. One of our 13 core values, as I noted in my prior post, which kicks off a series of 13 posts, is: We are all owners in the business and think of our employment at the company as a two-way street We give stock options to every employee, and we regularly give additional grants to employees as well, as their initial grants vest, as they get promoted into more senior roles, and as they earn them through outstanding performance. But beyond giving those grants out, we regularly remind people that they are part owners of the business, and we encourage them to act that way. Among other mechanisms for…