Our Vision: Progressive steps towards becoming a new world company
By this time, reading this short article, I assume you know our company, VI Research, where we operate and what we do. However, do you really know us? Do you know the softer side of the company construct and what we stand for and what we aspire to? As a young man, I was exposed to the Johari Window concept by a friend. It is a framework created by two psychologists to better understand and manage our self-relationship and relationships with each other. It argues that the more you know yourself and the more you allow others to know about you, the better the relationship (that is, opening the Johari Window). From the MD’s Desk is Kumen Chetty’s brainchild and is an attempt to allow us to open that window on VI Research: to allow you to see more about us. It is an attempt to showcase the softer side of the company and to leave the strategy and commercials behind for a while. Kumen suggested that we share something about the company, monthly and that we thereby open the VI Research Johari window to those who are curious to know us better and ultimately foster even greater relationships. Accordingly, this is the first of these monthly short articles.
“From the MD’s Desk” is NOT about the MD, or his personal brand or a brag session. It is about the company we love to work for and the values that drive us. Therefore, the vision of “From the MD’s Desk” is to communicate the actualization of the values we aspire for in VI Research. Actualization in this context means how we make these values real, tangible, and part of our day-to-day operations. Our monthly posts will therefore circulate around practical ways in which we live our professional lives. In this way it will become an exposition of the value-centered company clients are dealing with.
To begin with, I, therefore, want to start opening the window to our DNA. I want to talk about or vision and purpose and values. Our slogan “Let our work and actions benefit humanity” as well as the five values that guide us, is a collective of our personal aspirations and values. That is what makes us cohesive and is part of what makes us get up in the morning to do our job. Our values revolve around passion: Passion for people; passion for integrity; passion for robust science, quality and innovation; and passion for a sustainable future through a new world company.
Allow me to focus on the last one today, namely our passion for a sustainable future through a new world company. Over the years we have been grappling with what a new world company looks like; how do we move towards that envisioned future; how do we balance these aspirations with commercial realities, and in these deliberations, we came up with a rough framework of what a new world company looks like.
The first pillar of this framework is that an employee (we prefer team member) should be viewed as a total being. Team members are partly employees, but as much; they have families, friends, social structures, challenges and life as it happens. As a new world company, we aspire to view team members as such, a complete ecosystem of which work is only one part.
The second pillar revolves around the work environment and how we might create the best, most conducive work environment, and obviously, working from home seemed to be the optimal work environment for the team. When Covid reared its head in 2020, we were already far along this road and had discussions of how to operationalize this. We now have a flexible hybrid model working from home, but access to office space as and when needed or preferred by team members.
The third pillar revolved around shared values. We believe that a new world company will be driven more by purpose than profit. We believe that to have a shared purpose, we need to ensure that we share the same core values. Therefore, in recruiting talent, the number one criterium will be to assess the value system of new candidates.
The fourth pillar is the active endorsement and adoption of the digital transformation that is happening now and is bound to escalate as we move deeper and deeper in the 4th Industrial revolution. This principle goes hand in hand with a new world company and we, therefore, need to be at the forefront of digital innovation and creativity, both internally and for our clients. A new world company needs to disrupt the status quo.
Let me end off with a quote by Gandhi:
“Your beliefs become your thoughts,
Your thoughts become your words,
Your words become your actions,
Your actions become your habits,
Your habits become your values,
Your values become your destiny.”
Article written by Dr Tienie Stander
