The Delta Awesome Way: Five Core Values That Shape Who We Are
When Hannah and I first articulated our values, we did it a little differently than most. We worked together for an entire year with multiple clients and then sat down one day to ask ourselves the questions, “Why do our clients love us, and what’s most important to us as a business now that we know what we’re doing?” Through that process, we came up with five key values statements (see below) that we live by. And when I say “live by,” I literally mean that not a week goes by where we don’t explicitly talk about at least one of our core values. They are the rules that we follow and the heart of what we do.
Delta Awesome Core Values
1. Our clients’ definitions of success come first.
When you start working with most consultants or advisors, they will usually begin by telling you all of the things that you “should” be doing. Founders are riddled with people’s opinions of how things should be done, what they should change, and what they need to do to be successful. We realized what was most important to us was helping our clients succeed on their own terms. So, when we first start working with a client, we always ask, “What is your definition of success?” As long as it’s not immoral, we’ll help you do it. This approach has become the bedrock of our values system — we help our clients get to exactly where they want to go, not where we think they should go. As a part of this, we have a commitment that we will never charge a company that is working with us anything that will materially hurt them. It’s the Delta Awesome way.
2. Mental health matters. Sleep is valuable. Laugh a lot.
From our time working with numerous Founders, and being ones ourselves, we are acutely aware of the fact that many Founders have scars from mental health issues. During that first year, we realized that we spent at least one-third of our time helping Founders through these mental health issues — the health of a Founder can be a point of failure for an entire company. Sleep and laughter are key to our health, and therefore should be part of our everyday. Mental health really matters, and nurturing and institutionalizing practices that promote mental health has become a cornerstone of our company’s work.
3. We work part-time with people who we kinda want to work full-time for.
After our first year, we realized the part of our secret sauce was just how much we love our clients — your success feels like our success and your failures feel like our failures. When we dove deeper into this, we realized that the clients that we take on are all people that we would work for full time — meaning they are great human beings leading incredible companies. Our shorthand for this around here is: no assholes.
4. Absolute, fanatical, obsession with getting a little bit better.
Our fanatical obsession with getting just a little bit better and helping our Founders do the same has become a core value that everything else stems from. It’s critical for us to have a growth mindset and to attempt to live wholeheartedly. We realized that so many advising and mentoring relationships don’t go anywhere because they are focused on having the Founder take huge leaps in terms of behavior change, which just isn’t sustainable. So our focus is helping everyone get just a little bit better, consistently.
5. Trustworthiness is the lifeblood of our culture.
Without a trusting relationship, we don’t get anywhere with our clients. Period.
We’d love to hear about your core values and how those have informed your decisions at your company.