Culture is a Team Sport

“What did you learn at school today?” I asked my 2nd grade daughter.  She’s learning about economics, you know, basics like supply and demand, pricing, etc.  So, I asked her what “interdependency” meant, and she said, “When everyone works together to get a job done.”   I immediately thought of our culture at Malbek.

None of us exist in isolation – we live in a world of interdependence.  Everything requires a team effort, yet sometimes we only see the finished product. For example, you buy a house, but hardly give a thought to the person who carefully aligned the roof trusses or plumbed in the hot water tank.  What about the engineer that designed the bridge we drove over on the way home?  In your organization, just how many co-workers are helping you accomplish your goals, seemingly behind the scenes? Sales depends on engineering, marketing on sales, and engineering on executive vision.  Fact is, each of us rely on every other person in our organization, no matter how small or large.

But it doesn’t stop there.  We are all part of organizations that exist primarily for one purpose, and that is to bring a solution or service to yet another person or company, helping them with their missions in work and in life.  We’re all connected.  We all continuously help others “get their job done.”  Here at Malbek, I’ve seen us come together at a moment’s notice to help our customers accomplish something that no one thought was possible – delivering a critical business feature, meeting a deadline, and even solving a problem that was perhaps unrelated to our solution. That’s unity to achieve resolution, and that’s our culture: “Whatever it takes” to make our customers successful.

At Malbek, interdependence exists precisely in my daughter’s definition.  All of us are focused on helping each other with no barriers to role or responsibility. Why?  Because, we know if we get “us” right, we’ll get “you” right.  Our job, and our purpose, is to create value for our customers.  We really do work tirelessly until that value is realized, and that includes working tirelessly for each other.  Malbek’s company culture truly is a team sport.