I got an email tonight from a team mate traveling in Korea. He is there to
do some customer training for our representatives there as well as to suss out
some new business. Among the routine administrivia of the message, he mentioned
that the hotel our rep put him in was too expensive, and that he was moving to
a less expensive one.
There is not a lot of news (or blog) worthy information in this mail, except that is shows something about the culture we try to build at SABIA.
First, he is in Korea of his own accord. He had an opportunity to find a cheap flight to Seoul during a break from visiting customers in Beijing and spend 3 days there doing training and working relationships with our reps there. Though he works for me, I found out about it after arrangements were made through some routine communication. We do not have a travel authorization policy. Second, we do not have a policy that specifies what sort of hotel employees can use. We have zero travel forms, beyond an expense report used to document expenses for reimbursement.
What we do have is a set of shared values. One of them are that we value service to our customers and reps, and we do everything humanly possible to give them the best service we can. We are also very responsible with the company's money, treating it as our own.
There are nothing inherently wrong with policies and procedures. There are some areas of the business like manufacturing processes, where they are critical. SABIA has these where appropriate. What we do not try to do is to try to use policies and procedures to legislate company values.
Shared values, with training and talent, allow for employees to make the right decision without lots of expensive paperwork to slow down our response to our customers. it allows us to move faster that our competitors and provide a better solution for our customers
Insuring that employees share our values is critical to SABIA's success. We have shown over years that values trump policy every time
There is not a lot of news (or blog) worthy information in this mail, except that is shows something about the culture we try to build at SABIA.
First, he is in Korea of his own accord. He had an opportunity to find a cheap flight to Seoul during a break from visiting customers in Beijing and spend 3 days there doing training and working relationships with our reps there. Though he works for me, I found out about it after arrangements were made through some routine communication. We do not have a travel authorization policy. Second, we do not have a policy that specifies what sort of hotel employees can use. We have zero travel forms, beyond an expense report used to document expenses for reimbursement.
What we do have is a set of shared values. One of them are that we value service to our customers and reps, and we do everything humanly possible to give them the best service we can. We are also very responsible with the company's money, treating it as our own.
There are nothing inherently wrong with policies and procedures. There are some areas of the business like manufacturing processes, where they are critical. SABIA has these where appropriate. What we do not try to do is to try to use policies and procedures to legislate company values.
Shared values, with training and talent, allow for employees to make the right decision without lots of expensive paperwork to slow down our response to our customers. it allows us to move faster that our competitors and provide a better solution for our customers
Insuring that employees share our values is critical to SABIA's success. We have shown over years that values trump policy every time
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