Our injunctions

Values are a great set of principles to guide both individuals and organizations as a whole. That said, sometimes it's way more practical to just get a list of things you should avoid doing. 😃

Here are some Tandem dealbreakers that directly contradict our core values.

Duplicating work

We pride ourselves on being efficient, communicating well with one another, documenting common procedures, processes and tools as well as building on previous works instead of reinventing the wheel.

There is no good excuse (although if you've got one we'd love to hear it!) for duplicating work. Not only does duplicating work unncessarily waste time, it also can increase cognitive overhead and confusion when you end up with two competing ways to do one thing.

To that end you should always make an effort to do a quick scan of this documentation, the Tandem GitHub org, relevant previous project repos, third-party open source projects like modules, plugins, start states, seeds, etc. to make sure you're working on something new and fresh.

Not hitting targets

Fundamentally Tandem is a business and as such it requires the ole cash-money to take care of its people and to build for the future. Tandem is also our most important product and we all need to be making it better all the time.

This requires that everyone, more-often-than-not, does both the revenue generating and business building activities expected of them. This is to say if we all don't do our jobs, we fail.

Marooning useful things

We've invested a good amount of time in this documentation, our business improvement process and generally trying to tie different parts of the business together. So, it's a huge loss when someone spends tons of time making something awesome but then leaves it stranded on an island unbeknownst to everyone else.

If you make something useful try to tie it back into the business's goals and objectives. This could mean generalizing it for use in other projects or writing a great blog post that hits a key persona. If you aren't sure how it can be used open up a discussion and let your team help you figure it out.

Don't be bashful and don't let your accomplishments die alone!

Adding uneeded complexity

Because Tandem is focused on both agency work and product development it's super important to stay quick, lean, and efficient. One way we do this is by focusing time on a small set of strategic assets that produce gains for both the agency and its products.

Howevever, in order to keep doing that we need to be careful we don't add additional complexity to the organization without a pretty good reason. Every additional programming language, project management tool, meeting, etc. adds overhead to everything else we do. That overhead can multiply quickly and have paralyzing effects on our organization's goals. Let's keep it simple!

This is, of course, not to say that we cannot or should not explore new things. It is to say we should try to satisfy new goals and objectives by doubling down on key, strategic, and long term parts of the business by improving or extending them to solve our problems instead of adding lots of new stuff.

Being an asshole

Tandem encourages an open, speak-your-mind culture grounded in mutual respect and understanding. However, we are all human. Sometimes passions run high or we have bad days. This means that its only a matter of time before someone crosses the line and says something stupid.

When this happens we all need to act like adults. Acting like an adult means making up, trying to understand where the other person is coming from, and then both apologizing and accepting that apology.