Let’s face it - whether it’s a team of 3 or a nation of a billion, culture exists in every community. It is our choice of either letting an unconscious culture crop up like weeds or consciously creating a culture we truly love.
And we chose the latter - we made it our baby so much, that we decided to give it a name - YaWiO.
Wondering why we call our culture YaWiO?
YaWiO is the convergence of three words that form the foundation of our culture and reflects who we are.
900 InMobians and the thinkers and doers of the world came together to witness YaWiO – What a celebration guys - mind-blowing! Everyone in the room was resonating Imagination, Oneness and Action – the true meaning of the culture, the true meaning of YaWiO – to Dream Big | Come Together Passionately | Take Ownership.
It seemed to me that it is history in making. As we at InMobi took a huge step of open sourcing our culture YaWiO and sharing our learnings with other companies to help reduce their learning curve as they build their culture and in that process of sharing, we truly believe to learn from each other.
As Henry Ford said, coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success. This is just the stepping stone to something so HUGE that the world will acknowledge it. It is the foundation of taking our nation to a level, where new companies would come together to create a culture so great that talent across geographies would be crazy to be a part of it.
Why it worked at InMobi?
No matter what asset we have, it the undercurrent of culture that defines success and while we took a few detours on our way, we finally reached the spark. How? We imagined, we came together and we took action.
How we imagined?
We brainstormed with small groups, interviewed with people, had tons of conversations and so much more because we believe in co-creation instead of a top down approach. We did all this just in the quest to find that magic potion that should define us. And we found four key pillars:
What we did next was to come together and take action on our imagination?
We broke away from the traditional ways of managing people as we do not believe in it - we believe in setting them free to bring out the best within them.
What worked for us?
- Don’t manage: Just focus on growing people. We threw out Performance Management System, Employee Rating, Bell Curve & Bonus relationship. We stopped ranking and rating people and started paying 100% bonus. We do not have CCTV cameras and access card swiping machines. We enjoy freedom responsibly.
- 1% vs. 99% - We do not make policies basis 1% people not taking right decisions and hence penalizing 99% others. Our Travel Policy says - travel if it were your own money, Reimbursement policy has no pre and post approvals. As I said earlier, we believe in enjoying freedom with responsibility.
- Don't recruit people: They are not commodities.We have eliminated agencies and let InMobians refer future InMobians. It makes it fun to work with people we know and knits the family closer.
- Beyond employee and work: Build lasting relationships. InMobi family is not just 900 but >3000 (the family of InMobians). We bring our pet to office, make our parents visit office and meet people, bring our kids to office - any day without asking for any permission. We also just introduced flexi six months maternity policy to encourage and enable women to continue to work and follow their passion even after delivery.
- Foster holistic learning environment. We have a dedicated learning wallet for every employee at their own disposal. They learn what they what to and when they want to. This way they do not feel obliged to take a training, instead they look forward to grow and enhance their skills.And so much more !!!
So come be a part of our culture YaWiO as we are open sourcing our codex.
Let’s YaWiO!