To help you enjoy your experience with Atono, we have listed a few considerations and expectations to help you acclimate and to keep ourselves honest. Additional information on our Principles covering how we act, treat others, and make decisions are discussed here.

Expectations for how we work include the following:

• The things we value more than money include time, honesty, integrity, and trust
• We work in teams, therefore we help one another
• We exercise self-discipline and candor
• You are responsible for your growth and development (and there is little comfort in the growth zone)

Time

If you work at Atono, you’ll hear me mention time a lot. It's our most precious resource, and while we can make more money, we can't make more time. 

In my experience, time at work is often wasted due to ego, lack of discipline, or ignorance. Examples include attending meetings to be seen, wasting time in ceremonies, gossiping, polishing work beyond its value, and so on. Who cares? My family, my dogs, me, and I hope you.

If we assume our workload is 40+ hours per week, then any time wasted must come from personal time. Less time taking care of you or your family. Wasting time is a high crime! 

Ok, a little dramatic there. How about this – waste not, want not.

For additional thoughts on meetings and time, read more here.

Teams

Remember group projects in school where you did the work and everyone else got the grade? A team is not a group. A team is a group of people who perform interdependent tasks to accomplish a common objective.

This definition suggests we need the following ingredients:

1. A group of people
2. People who perform
3. Interdependent tasks
4. A common objective

We know we need more to be a great team, so below are some helpful hints you may consider working on to help your team be great:

• Build Trust: Always do what you say. Never leave a team member exposed
• Communicate with empathy: Thoughtfully communicate (face to face, G-meet or Slack)
• Serve others: Look for opportunities to help, coach, mentor or lighten other’s load
• Be humble: If you put the team’s success first, you will do just fine
• Work hard: You can be humble and still have an excellent work ethic. Be the person your team members want to partner with
• Be disciplined: Learn to carry yourself professionally, be on time and deliver on time

If you first work on yourself, to be the best team member you can, you’ll find you blame less, you appreciate more and your team performs better overall.

Self-discipline

We value the ability of each person to control their feelings and improve their weaknesses. We value self-discipline. The concept often gets a bad rap since discipline can have a negative connotation. But, we know that our teams, families, customers, and investors rely on us to execute successfully.

To become the most widely used platform to plan, build, run, and support software we will need to execute better than our competition who have more money, more people and a headstart. The only viable approach is for each member of Atono to take personal responsibility to learn, improve, grow, and apply resources (time, effort) thoughtfully.

Candor

To grow into our best professional selves often we need feedback on our performance, progress, ideas, and thoughts. We practice respectful candor to help our team grow. Respectful candor is where we care more about the other person than our own ego and we’re willing to speak directly rather than the comfort of staying silent.

Growth

Why is growth uncomfortable? Our muscles grow only after being broken down. We grow more from failure than we do from success. Discomfort is the catalyst for growth. It makes us yearn for something more and forces us to change and adapt.

Your professional growth is your responsibility. Since you are responsible, you’ll need to build your growth plan, execute it, and seek feedback on your progress. We will provide the tools, opportunities, feedback, support, and care to assist you.

We want Atono to be the best place you’ve ever worked. For that to be the case, each of us must contribute sincerely.  If it’s just a job, it will be just a job. If you work too much, you’ll resent the job. Finding that happy medium is key to contributing to our mutual success.