How Defining Our Core Values Sparked Growth for Kicksaw

In April of 2021, Kicksaw was on a tear. We had roughly 25 employees (all remote), which was up from 10 the previous year. Up to this point, company culture was mostly based on the personalities of Kenny and me, the two founders. One or both of us were on each and every call to keep our fingers on the pulse of the company. Not just the product we were delivering to customers, but also the sentiment of the team day-to-day. Like all entrepreneurs, we struggled to let go and trust that the team could operate without us.

At around this time we had hired a director of People Ops, and she recommended that we work to define our core values. My gut told me this was a waste of time — I had seen core values in previous organizations, but they always felt like just a thing to hang on the wall. Did anyone even care about core values? I knew that Enron had a core value of “integrity,” which wasn’t able to prevent a scandal, so I figured, “What’s the point?”

But I decided to ignore my gut this time, which ended up being 100% the right move.

How did Kicksaw go about defining our core values?

First, we had to start with “Why?” Why were we creating core values? How would they add value? We wanted to create a set of simple values to guide the team so that they could make decisions without fear that Kenny or I would question them afterward. What sorts of messages did we want the team to keep in their mind when dealing with a frustrated customer, or a teammate who was struggling at home? 

The first step we took was to create a committee of Kicksaw team members who would be responsible for choosing our core values. We picked folks who were catalysts of Kicksaw culture and had seen the company grow and change.

I met with the group to discuss the assignment, and we spoke at length about what Kicksaw represented, as well as what drove them personally. I had assumed that phrases I used daily, such as, "Crawl, Walk, Run," or, "Slow is smooth, smooth is fast," would be what resonated with them, but they focused on higher and wider topics.

They appreciated the culture we had created, that everyone at Kicksaw was so collaborative and supportive, and how open and direct Kenny and I were with the team. They loved that Kicksaw wasn't like any other company they'd ever worked at, and they expressed how much they appreciated their relationships with clients, as well as the impact they were making day in and day out on our clients' behalf.

But there is more to a set of core values than warm and fuzzy feelings — the challenge was to take these feelings our committee members had and define them in terms that were simple, unique, and, ideally, timeless. Easier said than done.

After listening to what the committee had to say, I wrote down a dozen core values. The team then challenged me to whittle that down to four. Picking four felt like picking my favorite child. But in the end, the four we landed on felt perfect, and I’ve only grown closer to them since.

BE YOU

We’re all different people. We come from different backgrounds, have different experiences, and have all worked in different industries. Kenny’s Canadian, I’m from a small country town in Oregon. We have people from the east coast, the west, and so many places in between. Prior to initiating our annual company retreats, few of us had ever met in person. Probably most importantly, we proudly do things differently than any other firm out there. I love this core value because it really represents how I feel about Kicksaw — we’re different, and we’re not afraid to say it.

Those differences, however, make us stronger. When building out the team, I didn’t want to hire a bunch of Kennys and Kyles. The people we brought on made us stronger because they were different from us founders. They brought things to the table that Kenny and I never could. I wanted the team to really lean into the fact that we as a company, and them as individuals, are unique.

Simple ways in which this manifests daily at Kicksaw are:

• We don’t do fixed-bid projects
• We don’t track utilization as a core component to our success
• We give benefits, like profit sharing, that other companies wouldn’t consider
• We’re 100% remote, and always will be

Any business book you’ll ever read will tell you that we’re doing it wrong. I say that’s bullshit. We’re doing things right because we’re not trying to be like other companies. Most companies look to others to decide what traits to emulate, but we think about this differently. Rather than sticking to the (broken, in our opinion) status quo, we need to be setting the example for others to follow.

From the way we price to the way we run projects, we run things fundamentally differently than Deloitte, Accenture, or Slalom. We don’t want to be like them. We’re trying to be Kicksaw, and because of the incredible outcomes our differences have brought us, we think everyone will eventually want to be like us.

OWN IT

When we began hiring for Kicksaw, I was heavily influenced by the book Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink. It’s a fantastic book that summarizes the mentality of people serving in special operations. I loved the mindset that, as leaders, we have to own all of the outcomes of the business. I wanted the team to feel that sense of ownership, and pride, in the projects they ran, because Kenny and I couldn’t be on every call anymore.

I wanted the team to show up each day and feel like their projects were their babies, and be able to trust that they’d do whatever it takes to make those projects successful.

I wanted them to feel a sense of ownership of Kicksaw that would help align us if we get off the rails. Further, I wanted people to take initiative and not rely on a “manager” or “leader” to come make decisions for them. As a result, we’ve got individuals taking charge in ways we never envisioned, working to make Kicksaw stronger. 

For these and so many other reasons, “Own It” was a bit of a no-brainer choice for one of our core values.

To emphasize the Own It core value, in addition to company profit sharing, we recently rolled out an Employee Liquidity Pool so that, in the event Kicksaw is ever acquired or goes public, each and every employee stands to gain. 

WORK TOGETHER

This is an easy one. I love to tell team members that, “No one person has a monopoly on knowledge about Salesforce.” We all have areas of strength, and areas of weakness. I don’t care how strong of a consultant you are, or if you just earned your first Salesforce certification yesterday —  you bring something to the table that others do not. And we all have blind spots. Whether it’s CPQ, Apex, RevOps, or something else, no individual can know everything.

So we have to help each other out.

One thing I think gives Kicksaw a big advantage is that, in many cases, Salesforce professionals at other organizations are ignored. Most companies essentially lock us away in a broom closet where no one will notice us. Because of this, we SFDC experts crave others like us. We love running into people who also like to nerd out on flows or hacks to make the systems we manage run better.

We also love to help each other out.

At Kicksaw, we’ve corralled a large contingent of these people and have set the conditions so that they can, and should, support each other. What we see as a result is people willing to go out of their way to help one another. Partially because solving problems is core to who we are as people, but also because we know what it’s like to be stuck. We know how frustrating it can be when no one understands what you do, or why you’re doing it, and how appreciative we all are to have that crucial support.

So we work together. And because of this, we have a culture that is second to none.

KEEP IT SIMPLE

Ahh, my favorite core value. Keep it simple! It’s so easy!

Except, as Salesforce nerds, it’s easy to get out over our skis and overthink solutions. At the end of the day, our clients don’t care about Salesforce. I always tell new hires that, “Our clients don’t care about a drill, they just want a hole in the wall.” And I fundamentally believe it. We, of course, love Salesforce because we’ve staked our careers there. Our customers, on the other hand, just want to get back to selling, or building products, or whatever it is that they’re passionate about. Salesforce is a necessary tool to get them where they want to be, but more than anything, they don’t want to have to think about it.

So we need to build simple, elegant solutions that require as little maintenance as possible. And our customers love it when we do. There are opportunities to build complex things, but if we can’t do the basics well, we might as well not even try.

This core value also permeates every facet of our business — not just delivery. From how we put together the equity pool based on tenure, to how we run our company retreats, to profit sharing and role rubrics. It’s not rocket science. We intentionally engineered them to be as simple as possible. My guiding principle when I make a decision is that if I can’t explain it to my grandparent, I’ve probably made it too complex.

Same goes for all of the things we do at Kicksaw.

What has been the impact, and why are they an advantage for us?

Three situations come to mind:

First off, earlier this year, we had a situation where a group of team members wrote an open letter letting us know that something in the company felt wrong. They went deep, outlining how they saw us not living up to the standards they (and we as founders) held for Kicksaw. Because they felt a sense of ownership in the business, they didn’t hold back. They highlighted each of our core values throughout the letter, which made a huge impact on how we received it. We were eventually able to work through those differences and come out stronger on the other end.

At first, I was shocked to hear that we weren’t living up to our values. On the other hand, I was relieved to have proof that we had a team in place who internalized and expressed our values so well. This gave me the confidence that the team is now running the company, in many ways, better than Kenny and I are. And we can sleep well at night knowing that they’ll surface up the problems we don’t see.

Secondly, from time to time, I pull up a list of recently recorded calls (shoutout to Chorus) and sit like a fly on the wall, listening to how our team interacts with our clients and how our clients interact with us. On every single call, I hear at least one, and occasionally all four, core values. It fills my heart with pride to hear a new team member mention, “I think we could keep this simple here and…” or, “let’s work together to…”

Thirdly, each quarter, we use our core values as a mechanism to nominate the people who embody the Kicksaw spirit, then vote for and crown four team members as the best examples of their respective core value for that quarter. We call these awards our “North Star Awards.” 

These awards are a huge hit, not only because our teammates love to celebrate the folks who embody Kicksaw, but because the winners are all nominated by their peers — the folks who truly know what’s going on behind the scenes. People are smart, and can tell when someone stands out. I love seeing the creative nominations people give for our top performers. As a final celebration each year, we take all of the quarterly Core Value Award Winners and select one employee as our North Star Winner.

When we first started the process of defining core values, I never could have imagined they’d become as central to Kicksaw as they are today. But I’m very glad we went through that process of defining them, and even more glad that our People Ops director didn’t let me pick twelve.