As a business evolves, so can its values. A Q&A with Simon Reed, Chief Revenue Officer, multilocal

In today's rapidly changing business environment, strong values are essential. As businesses evolve, values may also need to be adapted to ensure they stay relevant.

We sat down with Simon Reed to discuss how multilocal has reassessed its core values in line with developments in its business.   

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You recently adopted a new set of values for the business. What prompted this change?

Over the last few years, the focus has been on building the business and creating the product. Now, as we transition to a new phase of growth with an expanded leadership team, it was a natural juncture to take a step back and review where the opportunities lie and where we want to take the business as we continue to scale. In doing so, we needed to re-evaluate our values to ensure they reflect who we are today. 

So in your opinion, what makes a good set of values?

They need to be real and embody what a business is. Good values should reflect who you are, how you operate, what you stand for and what your clients can expect from you.  

And in developing your values, you've embraced a new set. How did you arrive at what was important to you?

Last year if you'd asked the business what its values were, it would have been about trust, reliability, communication, attention to detail and teamwork. These have got us where we are now and are embedded in how we operate. They all still hold true, but we've evolved those, and our updated values are multilocal, progressive, dedicated, dynamic and together, which will take us to the next phase of our evolution. 

So why these? Well, multilocal is easy because it's what we are. We bring local expertise and insights into every market in which we operate, while being a global business with a presence in 15 counties (and counting) around the world.

Progressive was straightforward because we're about doing curation differently and fully. We're committed to moving things forward and making them work better for our clients, and this reflects our constant striving to achieve that.   

Dedicated highlights our desire always to do things well, which means going beyond the norm and putting your heart and soul into what you're focusing on. It reflects our employees today and sums up the calibre of all the teams working across the business to deliver real curation.

Dynamic builds on our progressive value and desire to build an exciting and vibrant business. Delivering dynamic work for our clients through our super-smart people is what gives us the edge.

Finally, together speaks to our belief that the success we have achieved and will continue to achieve is only possible through collaboration and cooperation.

In creating our values, we're lucky that we're still nimble enough to involve the wider company. We developed the updated values based on what we cared about and what mattered, then opened them up to the business to vote. The result is a set of values that have the buy-in of everyone across the organisation.

As a remote business, how will you ensure everyone lives your values? 

Well, it always starts with hiring the right people. As a business we spend a lot of time focused on ensuring we attract and recruit the right people, which is why we have now had a People and Talent Director for over a year. Of course, we want bright, intelligent, energetic people with a desire to get things done but fundamental to this is ensuring they're genuinely decent human beings, and it makes a huge difference to focus on that. 

Secondly, we must over-communicate because of the nature of being remote. We are committed to ensuring everyone is kept in the loop. There are many meetings where we all come together in separate work streams, and our annual conference also brings everyone together. While for many companies the focus would be work-based, because of who we are, it's more social. It's about strengthening those relationships and bonds, which are essential to how we operate together. 

Being remote makes us a truly global business. Teams don't interact within one region but are constantly communicating at a global level. Bringing our different cultures and eccentricities to the fore gives us an extra dimension and fosters an exciting dynamic that sets us apart. 

Most companies create their values once, and that's it. Will you revisit yours again? 

As an ever-evolving business, permanently iterating to be better than yesterday, we won't stop iterating and moving forward. I think our core values won't change for some time, but we wouldn't be doing right by the business or our people if we didn't continue to check our North Star, especially in our dynamic industry.

We're four years old now, and in four years, it may be different. Priorities change, but certainly, for the short and medium term, these values define who we are, what we believe in and what we value - and what our partners can expect when we collaborate together.