Values & Principles

---

Values

Give First and Set Expectations

• We believe that helping others without expectation of help in return ultimately raises the tide for everyone on a local and global scale. 
• Adam Grant’s book Give and Take encapsulates and describes this value well: 
• “...most people operate as either takers, matchers, or givers. Whereas takers strive to get as much as possible from others and matchers aim to trade evenly, givers are the rare breed of people who contribute to others without expecting anything in return.”
• “Using his own pioneering research as Wharton's top-rated professor, Adam Grant shows that these styles have a surprising impact on success. Although some givers get exploited and burn out, the rest achieve extraordinary results across a wide range of industries.”

• At Prota, we actively protect our people from being exploited and burning out. We do this by espousing “give first” across the organization, setting clear roles/expectations in legal docs, and celebrating work/life balance. 
• We believe that setting extremely clear expectations in advance of any scope/statement of work on a project is essential to success. 
• Examples of how we do these at Prota
• Anyone can share and get feedback on a project idea during our weekly meetings. 
• We freely share contacts and make connections that we believe are valuable without expectation of any sort of referral fee/commission (unless, of course, it is someone’s job to do so). 
• We review and measure ourselves internally by our ability to “over-deliver” for the founders and teammates that we work with.  
• Leads of projects send each worker clear expectations for their work in advance of a project / phase kicking off.

Ideals and Limits

• We build what we believe in. 
• We address problems wholeheartedly and bring our best selves to projects. 
• We work with optimism, empathy, and steadfast conviction.
• We acknowledge our limits so that we can overcome them. 
• We take responsibility for our skills and our minds.
• We push ourselves to become better people. 
• We keep learning.
• We are curious. 
• Examples: 
• Everyone at Prota is encouraged and empowered to surface new ideas for rapid validation and investment of human and/or financial capital.
• We understand that we are capable of quickly learning new skills to maximize value for our founders/clients/teammates, yet we know our strengths and weaknesses to work sustainably and appropriately. 

Stepping Back & Standing Up

• We listen. 
• We get outside of our echo chamber. 
• We bring different perspectives together. 
• We create a safe, open-minded environment for honest feedback and dialogue. 
• We have hearts. 
• We voice our ideas and ideals. 
• We share our perspectives and knowledge, not to satisfy our egos but to serve the people using our creations.
• Examples
• At meetings, the practice of both “strong opinions, loosely held” and drawing out diverse perspectives are regular occurrences. 
• A relentless focus on the founders/clients we work with, and their customers/users, often bring us back to a place of letting go of our strong opinions and letting data speak for itself.
• We talk often about breaking out of our bubbles/perspectives/echo-chambers, with an understanding that they exist even if we aren’t aware of them.  

Collective Good & Individual Autonomy

• Our words, actions, and creations support a world that’s free of racism, sexism, ageism, and other "isms" that detract from the flourishing of the greater good. 
• We uphold autonomy. 
• We empower each other to work in our own unique ways. 
• We treat each other not as “resources”, but as real people.
• Examples: 
• Healthy conflict is a regular occurrence among passionate people (of which we have many). Rather than shy away from conflict, we actively encourage addressing issues and coming to resolutions quickly. 
• Rather than adopt a 3rd-party DE&I policy, we’ve written (and continue to update) our own collectively here and are holding each other accountable to it.
• Even before COVID-19 hit our world, a majority of our team worked from home and we encouraged schedule autonomy to maximize time with family and friends. 

We value these things because human flourishing begins at home. When we work well and serve people, so do our creations.  

Principles

Fundamentally, we both individually and corporately strive to find the intersection between what we love, what we’re good at, what we can get paid for, and what the world needs: 

Source: Toronto Star, diagram by Mark Winn, modified by Perry Azevedo

The following are guiding principles that, drawing from our values above, inform our day-to-day and week-to-week decisions: 

• We strive to align passion, experience, and maximal flow states to optimize time for ourselves and our teams. 
• Especially for makers/builders/creators, getting into a state of flow often is critical.  
• See Paul Graham's essay: Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule.
• Invite a diversity of thought, experience, and skill sets onto our teams.
• This is critical to serve a wide variety of markets around the world and build healthy, sustainable businesses.
• Recognize and remove biases that perpetuate inequality.
• For example, racism, sexism, ageism, ableism, classism, and other "isms" that detract from the flourishing of all humans.

• We encourage remote work. 
• As we mentioned above, this has been a constant principle for us even before COVID-19 hit. This allows us to maximize time and flow states for our thinkers and creators. 
• When possible, we provide multiple opportunities throughout the year to meet, play, and/or work together as a team in real life.
• Broaden the opportunity for underrepresented founders of diverse backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives to build new products/services and attract customers.
• We don’t hold a meeting if written communication will suffice. 
• As a distributed organization, written communication skills are essential. 
• We move as much tactical/transactional conversation as possible to async communication.
• If we must have meetings, we strive to have the fewest number - and the shortest duration - possible. 
• We move sensitive conversation to video chat or in-person (especially conversation that may hurt feelings and/or "trigger" people).
• The guiding principle here is that if a communication will likely trigger someone’s amygdala (i.e. emotions of anger, fear, sadness, and/or aggression), then move that conversation to in-person, video, or phone (in that order of priority). 
• We always work to increase our level of honesty, empathy, and compassion. 
• We “over-deliver”.
• We do what it takes to get the job done. 
• We always strive toward excellence in our work and the work of our team.
• We increase the degree of excellence produced from each of our projects as we grow.
• This increase is noticeable by our colleagues and highlighted in reviews.