It goes without saying that the past twelve months have been exceptionally challenging. For the first time in our lives, we were faced with a global threat to our well-being, our lives were simultaneously disrupted, and businesses of all sizes had to ask themselves whether or not they were prepared to survive the COVID-19 pandemic.
Back in March 2020, we started developing our response to the pandemic with three simple steps:
- Try to stay healthy as long as possible.
- Make sure you are able to work from home.
- If you think you’re sick be proactive at protecting others.
At its core, what we tried to do to ensure that APM survived and thrived, was to protect each other and lean into our ability to learn quickly and adapt to the times. Over time, our protective measures expanded to wearing PPE, we vacated the office as much as possible, and we bypassed a lot of our sales processes (getting POs, for example) in the spirit of taking every opportunity to do work. We focused on understanding our customers’ needs and we were flexible to accommodate them. Internally, that meant rolling with the punches and taking pride in the small wins we, as a team, captured every day.
When I look back, I am very proud of how we handled the crisis. We could have crumbled and adopt a “wait and see” attitude, but instead, we embraced the challenge and went on the offensive. Most importantly, I saw an underlying set of values driving our successes as a team. These values have been here all along and represent “the APM way” of doing things when we are at our best. They are empathy, pride, and intellectual curiosity. The descriptions below are examples of how we bring these values to life every day. I am convinced that embracing every single one of these statements will guide us towards building an ever-stronger team and achieving long-term success regardless of the circumstances.
Empathy
- We seek to truly understand our customers’ needs to come up with the best way APM can help.
- We understand that each teammate contributes a unique set of skills, experiences, and perspectives. We respect those differences, and we use them to arrive at the best solution together.
- We care deeply about the safety of our team and customers.
Pride
- We embrace the challenge of becoming the best at what we do.
- We pride ourselves on creatively meeting our customers’ needs without ever compromising on quality and safety.
- We are thorough and precise.
- We are proud of the positive impact our work has on our environment.
Intellectual Curiosity
- We are genuinely interested in learning how the world works and how to make it better.
- We experiment relentlessly in our quest to be the best at what we do.
Do you have any examples of other ways these values show up in our work? Please share them in the comments!
Best,
Ricardo