Refreshing Classkick’s Values
Teachers often let students help create classroom rules, values, and expectations. Doing so promotes buy-in and fosters a climate of trust, belonging, and ownership. When Cailie Ryan, VP of Operations, realized it was time to update Classkick’s core values, she used her classroom experience to create a similar process. VP of Marketing Michael Rutkowski interviewed her to learn more.
How did you know it was time to reevaluate — and then update — Classkick’s values?
Culture has always been a grounding point for Andrew (Classkick’s CEO) and me. We both deeply believe that culture happens whether it’s intentionally created or not. Culture shows up in systems, processes, human interactions, etc. So we’ve always had this shared belief that we have to intentionally build the culture we want — especially as we are growing so rapidly.
We started with core values because they are directly tied to culture. We want core values to be the foundation for performance evaluation and feedback here at Classkick. We also want people to think about core values in terms of how we do life here.
One of the first things we do to onboard new employees is talk to them about our mission, vision, and values. When we had probably 15 or 20 employees, Andrew and I paused and said to each other, “Who wrote these values, and what do they actually mean?” It turns out the original core values were written more than five years ago by a totally different team than we have today. For example, the team that originally wrote our core values was 100% men, and our current demographics didn’t really match theirs. So with those two factors in mind, we decided to reevaluate our core values.
There are a lot of ways to create company values: a CEO decision, a leadership team exercise, an employee committee, or a democratic process. How did you decide which approach was right for Classkick?
I strongly believe we need to hear all the voices at the table when we’re establishing something this foundational. Sure, I could have taken my own perspective as a white, heterosexual female and listed out my core values for the company, but then we would have missed out on the unique experiences of our employees from different backgrounds. Likewise with only hearing the voices of people in leadership positions rather than the majority of the people here. Those options just don’t align with the culture we want to build here.
Because we want to create a culture that values the perspectives of all our employees, we went with a very democratic process in developing our core values. We included everyone in the conversations at almost all stages of the process. There were moments when I reached out to individuals or allowed for smaller spaces so I could gather specific feedback or elevate certain voices. But aside from that, we invited everyone to help support the whole process.
I know it’s only recently wrapped up, but can you walk us through the actual process a little bit? What steps did you follow?
I’m laughing because it took way longer than I thought it would. It was one of those quarter OKRs that ended up taking two quarters, and I’m glad it did. I’m glad we didn’t rush through it and that we took our time with it and built it out in an intentional way.
The very first step was just getting a bunch of people in the room to discuss culture and value in an optional brainstorming session. We essentially did a mini SWOT analysis, if you will. I created space for our team to question whether this was something important to them and something they wanted to be part of. We asked a lot of questions in those sessions:
- What happens when we intentionally build our culture? What happens when we don’t?
- Should we stop and think about our core values?
- Is having explicit core values important? Why or why not?
- Is aligning actions and behavior to those core values important? Why or why not?
- What are the benefits and consequences of doing or not doing these things?
Our employees responded with a pretty resounding, “Yes, we want to intentionally build culture, we care about people here, and we want to build it out more explicitly.” So the next step was creating a space where people could dream and jot down what a strong culture would look like at Classkick. That was intentionally a super open-ended task. The questions in this step were designed to get the creative juices flowing:
- What do we care about?
- How do we define culture?
- What is our current culture?
- What is our “pie in the sky” culture?
We did that multiple times, and I’m proud to say more than 90% of our team showed up at all those initial sessions and were super engaged. We actually used Classkick; we were all anonymous in the app, jotting down ideas and commenting on each other’s. Some people shared more verbally, some more written.
What happened in those sessions was really cool. As I was facilitating, people were naturally starting to group and theme things out in the Classkick assignment. They were starting to draw parallels and connections to say, “This seems like a bigger theme of X,” or, “This seems like a bigger theme of Y.” It felt like that space was starting to reflect the core values we cared about, which was an awesome experience to zoom out and be a fly on the wall for.
From there, we began to home in on those themes. Based on those initial conversations, I created a Classkick assignment where I put all those themes into buckets. I started with three main topics: something about caring about humans and people, something about continuous learning, and something about working toward justice. Once again, I asked people to elaborate more on those themes — what they would look like, what other words come to mind, and so on. During multiple sessions, we let people refine these ideas.
After we finished those big group sessions, I started meeting with smaller groups. I wanted to get more specific input on what actions and behaviors might look like. For example, this bigger theme of “work toward justice,” what does that actually mean? How would an employee show they are working toward justice? Some of these conversations were hand-picked. I wanted to make sure I had voices represented from all the different teams and backgrounds. Other times, I allowed people to reach out to me to set up individual or team time to talk about these new values.
For the next step, Andrew and I took that document and started wordsmithing the core values into the first iteration of what we have now. Then we asked several other team members, starting with the leadership team, to verify them:
- Are these the values and behaviors that you expect from your direct reports?
- Will these values and behaviors help employees be successful here?
- Will these values and behaviors help us keep growing this company?
Although we were initially meeting with the leadership team for this step, all of this was still completely transparent. We used both Classkick and Notion to let team members see what was going on whenever they wanted. Documenting transparently helped keep the door open, even when we were meeting individually or in small groups. I did keep things anonymous when appropriate, such as if someone confided about a marginalized experience. But for the most part, everyone could always read and comment on the document.
Once the leadership team finished tweaking the draft, we repeated the same process with the rest of our employees. We asked them essentially the same questions we’d asked leadership, and we used their answers to refine the document. When everyone had had a chance to discuss them, we gave people time to sit with these values.
Finally, once everyone had had a chance to reflect on the new values and do any final wordsmithing, we launched a survey asking, “Do you want to move forward with these values?” There was a yes or no question plus a space for comments or questions. More than 85% of employees voted, and 92% said yes. And that was how we adopted our new core values.
What was the best part of this process?
It was great having a team of people who deeply care about each other and want to set each other up for success. I loved seeing the engagement that happens when you provide multiple forums for people to share. I think it was cool to see how engaged the whole team was; the output we got was truly a team effort. Yes, I was a facilitator, but I don’t feel like these values are necessarily only my core values. I feel like these are core values that truly stemmed from a whole-team effort across multiple lines and factions of the company.
How do you feel these new values show up at Classkick?
I think they show up in a variety of ways. I think they show up in how we make business decisions and set strategies. I think they show up in how people communicate and collaborate, especially being a remote company. We mostly use Slack, so the values show up in how we support and encourage one another by sharing our work, being transparent, and giving and soliciting feedback. I think all of that very much aligns to our “stay curious” value. Sure, you might be the owner of something, but we also deeply believe in using tools like Slack to put your work out there and get feedback on it.
I think one of the ways these values also show up is in holding managers and team members accountable. It’s great to have conversations grounded in shared language. We have something tangible people can point to and say, “Hey, here’s an expectation we have at Classkick, so this is what I want us to dive into and reflect on today.” Having explicit core values helps us create the caring, inclusive culture we all want.
When you look back on this whole process, is there anything you would have done differently?
I think I would have proactively planned out the timeline instead of flying by the seat of my pants. I did plan out what I wanted the process to be, but I wasn’t as concerned with deadlines and the overall timeline. I think I could have found the right balance by creating flexible deadlines. I think that would have made people think about the final product like, “Wow, we did this awesome thing in a reasonable amount of time.” As it was, I think it felt like a long process by the end. Finding the balance between deadlines and flexibility is one area where I’m still growing and learning as a leader, so it was helpful to get that feedback.
What advice would you give to another leader who’s starting the process of developing organizational values?
Include everyone. I know it’s scary to think about including 20 or 40 or even more people on a call, but it really helped generate a sense of belonging. It made people feel valued and cared for. It helped us identify our shared values and priorities and grounding principles.
At the end of the day, including everyone really helped with alignment and adoption. People really bought into these values because they had written them, so they recognized their own voices in the creation or refinement of the values. The alignment piece is one of the coolest things that came out of this experience.
Is there anything interesting we didn’t talk about that you’d like to share?
I think it’s interesting that this also came from Andrew, our CEO. At a time when we were experiencing hyper growth, when we were trying to grow and establish ourselves as a company, we paused and made space for this process. I think it says a lot about Andrew as a leader and about the things we truly care about here. I don’t think all start-ups focus on core values at the beginning, so I’m really proud that we did. We spent time thinking about intentionally building culture early on, and I believe it will be a solid foundation for everything else.
Classkick is proud to serve students and teachers around the world. To learn more about how our values-driven technology can create more efficient, collaborative classrooms, please visit classkick.com.
