At Sharethrough, we believe in creating a unique brand and identity to guide us on our journey both as employees and as a company. What enables us to find unity, engagement and brand identity? Our values. Values help us bring our vision to life, enable us to build a strong company culture and help us come together as a tightly knit team.
When Sharethrough and District M merged in 2021, over 100 employees and team members came together, old and new faces alike. Values became an important element in crafting and creating an identity for the new, post-merger Sharethrough. For Ken Poon, VP of Technology at Sharethrough, it was important to “define the new values to represent what is core at Sharethrough. Our values go beyond simple words and phrases, becoming real-life concepts”. Not only is it important for current Sharethroughers, but future ones as well. According to Team Stage 46% of job seekers quote company culture as being a major factor in their search. Here is a deeper look at how Sharethrough selected its five core values, and what they look like in the real world.
The Process: How We Selected Our Values
Early on, we decided the best way to determine our company values was to consult with those who represent Sharethrough every single day: our Sharethroughers. Above all, it was important to us that our company values did not come solely from managers and human resources, but from all Sharethrough employees alike.
Step 1: Employee Workshops
To kick off the process, we organized workshops with 60% of our workforce. Each workshop included 8 to 10 employees across all departments, locations and levels of seniority. This allowed us to have an accurate representation sample of our population. The goal of these workshops were to identify the themes and values that make up a successful organization.
Step 2: Forming a Values Committee
We formed a New Value Committee survey and asked the members to answer the following questions: Who are we? What drives us? What do we want our company to be known for? Which values will distinguish us from our competitors? What behaviors will the company value over making a quick buck? What behaviors are acceptable? Which ones are not? Why did people join our team? Why do others leave? From this list we were able to move on to step three, and extract the most prominent themes.
Step 3: Extracting Themes From Our Workshops and Surveys
Once we had our list of prominent themes, we reviewed each of them while asking ourselves three major questions: “Is this core to Sharethrough?”, “Is it relatable peer-to-peer?”, and “Is it what we aspire to be?”
Step 4: Suggesting New Company Values
With our drafted list of company values, we identified our most popular and prominent values in draft form before taking it in for review.
Step 5: Evaluating and Challenging Our Chosen Company Values
We had to be sure that our new values accurately represented Sharethrough post-merger. Our revision process involved asking questions such as: “What does it look like in action?”, “How will we evaluate adherence to it?”, “How will it change our relationships or our interactions?”
What came out of this process was our five core values that make up who we are at Sharethrough.
Ownership: Taking Charge
Taking charge and owning our goals is an important part of what we do as a company, building trust and support with fellow employees. At Sharethrough, we prioritize taking ownership and responsibility for our goals and decisions. We have a willingness to adapt and grow professionally and personally to accomplish ambitious goals that individuals and teams are accountable for. As a value, ownership combats against negative emotions, and keeps us pushing progress forward.
In the real world, ownership can be seen as making decisions and committing to them, addressing obstacles and identifying problems as they occur, doing away with blame, openly communicating opinions, setting high goals for yourself, remaining unafraid of taking risks and giving every moment your best shot.
Stronger Together: We Over Me
It is by working together and being courageous that we dare to imagine what the advertising landscape of tomorrow will be like – and make sure we lead it, together. What does Stronger Together look like in the real world? It means for Sharethrough employees to approach problems with a “we over me” mentality, putting our heads together and doing what’s right for the team rather than choosing individual gains. We support each other and thrive with the people around us, celebrating individual and team successes.
Some examples of what the Stronger Together value might look like in an employee include: communicating openly, effectively, and frequently with your team, actively contributing and acting as a team player, giving credit where it is due, strengthening relationships with fellow employees, and contributing positively to a psychologically safe environment.
Curiosity: Understanding Why
“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing” - Albert Einstein.
Everyone’s work has a purpose. We ask our employees to always understand the “why” behind your work. We optimize for speed of learning, shortening the path from conviction to action.
At Sharethrough, we want our employees to constantly be asking questions, questioning the status quo, even when they might be uncomfortable doing so. 1:1 meetings are a great example of a time when Sharethrough employees are given the opportunity to become quizzical, and fill in any gaps in their knowledge and work. Foreign and new tasks are often given out to employees, even if they have no prior exposure to them. Embracing discomfort, and finding confidence in trying and achieving new feats is an important part of our Curiosity value.
Caring: Helping Each Other
Creating a positive work environment and building strong relationships is core to us at Sharethrough. We believe in creating a safe space to share your opinions and ideas freely and encouraging open discussion while demonstrating respect for others. A company is nothing without care and dedication to its employees.
At Sharethrough, we are always committed to being there for our customers, employees, partners, and fellow ad-tech industry members. What does it mean to embody the Caring value at Sharethrough? Acting with integrity and remaining aware of your actions. Delivering high quality work both for your colleagues and clients. Valuing diversity, equity, inclusion. Acknowledging and accepting differing views and experiences. Taking care of yourself. Looking after your physical and mental health. Remaining willing to apologize for missteps, and forgiving others for making mistakes.
Resilience: Failing is Essential
We’ve all heard the saying that failing is essential to teaching us resilience; it strengthens us and allows us to experiment and innovate to bring us to our next big success. We learn quickly, welcoming change and biasing towards action, always remaining eager to see what’s next.
Sharethrough employees are entrusted with lots of responsibility and encouraged to try new things. Failing is all part of the job, and it’s what pushes us to advance further in our careers than we would have if we had remained cozy and contemplative. What does it look like to be resilient? You are agile and open to change. You adapt quickly as priorities change. You strive in a fast paced environment. You manage stress effectively, work well under pressure, and are not afraid to ask for help.
Do Sharethrough’s values resonate with you? Are you interested in learning more about our company culture, or curious about our open job opportunities? Make sure to reach out to us, we’d love to hear from you.
At Sharethrough, we believe in creating a unique brand and identity to guide us on our journey both as employees and as a company. What enables us to find unity, engagement and brand identity? Our values. Values help us bring our vision to life, enable us to build a strong company culture and help us come together as a tightly knit team.
When Sharethrough and District M merged in 2021, over 100 employees and team members came together, old and new faces alike. Values became an important element in crafting and creating an identity for the new, post-merger Sharethrough. For Ken Poon, VP of Technology at Sharethrough, it was important to “define the new values to represent what is core at Sharethrough. Our values go beyond simple words and phrases, becoming real-life concepts”. Not only is it important for current Sharethroughers, but future ones as well. According to Team Stage 46% of job seekers quote company culture as being a major factor in their search. Here is a deeper look at how Sharethrough selected its five core values, and what they look like in the real world.
The Process: How We Selected Our Values
Early on, we decided the best way to determine our company values was to consult with those who represent Sharethrough every single day: our Sharethroughers. Above all, it was important to us that our company values did not come solely from managers and human resources, but from all Sharethrough employees alike.
Step 1: Employee Workshops
To kick off the process, we organized workshops with 60% of our workforce. Each workshop included 8 to 10 employees across all departments, locations and levels of seniority. This allowed us to have an accurate representation sample of our population. The goal of these workshops were to identify the themes and values that make up a successful organization.
Step 2: Forming a Values Committee
We formed a New Value Committee survey and asked the members to answer the following questions: Who are we? What drives us? What do we want our company to be known for? Which values will distinguish us from our competitors? What behaviors will the company value over making a quick buck? What behaviors are acceptable? Which ones are not? Why did people join our team? Why do others leave? From this list we were able to move on to step three, and extract the most prominent themes.
Step 3: Extracting Themes From Our Workshops and Surveys
Once we had our list of prominent themes, we reviewed each of them while asking ourselves three major questions: “Is this core to Sharethrough?”, “Is it relatable peer-to-peer?”, and “Is it what we aspire to be?”
Step 4: Suggesting New Company Values
With our drafted list of company values, we identified our most popular and prominent values in draft form before taking it in for review.
Step 5: Evaluating and Challenging Our Chosen Company Values
We had to be sure that our new values accurately represented Sharethrough post-merger. Our revision process involved asking questions such as: “What does it look like in action?”, “How will we evaluate adherence to it?”, “How will it change our relationships or our interactions?”
What came out of this process was our five core values that make up who we are at Sharethrough.
Ownership: Taking Charge
Taking charge and owning our goals is an important part of what we do as a company, building trust and support with fellow employees. At Sharethrough, we prioritize taking ownership and responsibility for our goals and decisions. We have a willingness to adapt and grow professionally and personally to accomplish ambitious goals that individuals and teams are accountable for. As a value, ownership combats against negative emotions, and keeps us pushing progress forward.
In the real world, ownership can be seen as making decisions and committing to them, addressing obstacles and identifying problems as they occur, doing away with blame, openly communicating opinions, setting high goals for yourself, remaining unafraid of taking risks and giving every moment your best shot.
Stronger Together: We Over Me
It is by working together and being courageous that we dare to imagine what the advertising landscape of tomorrow will be like – and make sure we lead it, together. What does Stronger Together look like in the real world? It means for Sharethrough employees to approach problems with a “we over me” mentality, putting our heads together and doing what’s right for the team rather than choosing individual gains. We support each other and thrive with the people around us, celebrating individual and team successes.
Some examples of what the Stronger Together value might look like in an employee include: communicating openly, effectively, and frequently with your team, actively contributing and acting as a team player, giving credit where it is due, strengthening relationships with fellow employees, and contributing positively to a psychologically safe environment.
Curiosity: Understanding Why
“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing” - Albert Einstein.
Everyone’s work has a purpose. We ask our employees to always understand the “why” behind your work. We optimize for speed of learning, shortening the path from conviction to action.
At Sharethrough, we want our employees to constantly be asking questions, questioning the status quo, even when they might be uncomfortable doing so. 1:1 meetings are a great example of a time when Sharethrough employees are given the opportunity to become quizzical, and fill in any gaps in their knowledge and work. Foreign and new tasks are often given out to employees, even if they have no prior exposure to them. Embracing discomfort, and finding confidence in trying and achieving new feats is an important part of our Curiosity value.
Caring: Helping Each Other
Creating a positive work environment and building strong relationships is core to us at Sharethrough. We believe in creating a safe space to share your opinions and ideas freely and encouraging open discussion while demonstrating respect for others. A company is nothing without care and dedication to its employees.
At Sharethrough, we are always committed to being there for our customers, employees, partners, and fellow ad-tech industry members. What does it mean to embody the Caring value at Sharethrough? Acting with integrity and remaining aware of your actions. Delivering high quality work both for your colleagues and clients. Valuing diversity, equity, inclusion. Acknowledging and accepting differing views and experiences. Taking care of yourself. Looking after your physical and mental health. Remaining willing to apologize for missteps, and forgiving others for making mistakes.
Resilience: Failing is Essential
We’ve all heard the saying that failing is essential to teaching us resilience; it strengthens us and allows us to experiment and innovate to bring us to our next big success. We learn quickly, welcoming change and biasing towards action, always remaining eager to see what’s next.
Sharethrough employees are entrusted with lots of responsibility and encouraged to try new things. Failing is all part of the job, and it’s what pushes us to advance further in our careers than we would have if we had remained cozy and contemplative. What does it look like to be resilient? You are agile and open to change. You adapt quickly as priorities change. You strive in a fast paced environment. You manage stress effectively, work well under pressure, and are not afraid to ask for help.
Do Sharethrough’s values resonate with you? Are you interested in learning more about our company culture, or curious about our open job opportunities? Make sure to reach out to us, we’d love to hear from you.
Behind Headlines: 180 Seconds in Ad Tech is a short 3-minute podcast exploring the news in the digital advertising industry. Ad tech is a fast-growing industry with many updates happening daily. As it can be hard for most to keep up with the latest news, the Sharethrough team wanted to create an audio series compiling notable mentions each week.
At Sharethrough, we believe in creating a unique brand and identity to guide us on our journey both as employees and as a company. What enables us to find unity, engagement and brand identity? Our values. Values help us bring our vision to life, enable us to build a strong company culture and help us come together as a tightly knit team.
When Sharethrough and District M merged in 2021, over 100 employees and team members came together, old and new faces alike. Values became an important element in crafting and creating an identity for the new, post-merger Sharethrough. For Ken Poon, VP of Technology at Sharethrough, it was important to “define the new values to represent what is core at Sharethrough. Our values go beyond simple words and phrases, becoming real-life concepts”. Not only is it important for current Sharethroughers, but future ones as well. According to Team Stage 46% of job seekers quote company culture as being a major factor in their search. Here is a deeper look at how Sharethrough selected its five core values, and what they look like in the real world.
The Process: How We Selected Our Values
Early on, we decided the best way to determine our company values was to consult with those who represent Sharethrough every single day: our Sharethroughers. Above all, it was important to us that our company values did not come solely from managers and human resources, but from all Sharethrough employees alike.
Step 1: Employee Workshops
To kick off the process, we organized workshops with 60% of our workforce. Each workshop included 8 to 10 employees across all departments, locations and levels of seniority. This allowed us to have an accurate representation sample of our population. The goal of these workshops were to identify the themes and values that make up a successful organization.
Step 2: Forming a Values Committee
We formed a New Value Committee survey and asked the members to answer the following questions: Who are we? What drives us? What do we want our company to be known for? Which values will distinguish us from our competitors? What behaviors will the company value over making a quick buck? What behaviors are acceptable? Which ones are not? Why did people join our team? Why do others leave? From this list we were able to move on to step three, and extract the most prominent themes.
Step 3: Extracting Themes From Our Workshops and Surveys
Once we had our list of prominent themes, we reviewed each of them while asking ourselves three major questions: “Is this core to Sharethrough?”, “Is it relatable peer-to-peer?”, and “Is it what we aspire to be?”
Step 4: Suggesting New Company Values
With our drafted list of company values, we identified our most popular and prominent values in draft form before taking it in for review.
Step 5: Evaluating and Challenging Our Chosen Company Values
We had to be sure that our new values accurately represented Sharethrough post-merger. Our revision process involved asking questions such as: “What does it look like in action?”, “How will we evaluate adherence to it?”, “How will it change our relationships or our interactions?”
What came out of this process was our five core values that make up who we are at Sharethrough.
Ownership: Taking Charge
Taking charge and owning our goals is an important part of what we do as a company, building trust and support with fellow employees. At Sharethrough, we prioritize taking ownership and responsibility for our goals and decisions. We have a willingness to adapt and grow professionally and personally to accomplish ambitious goals that individuals and teams are accountable for. As a value, ownership combats against negative emotions, and keeps us pushing progress forward.
In the real world, ownership can be seen as making decisions and committing to them, addressing obstacles and identifying problems as they occur, doing away with blame, openly communicating opinions, setting high goals for yourself, remaining unafraid of taking risks and giving every moment your best shot.
Stronger Together: We Over Me
It is by working together and being courageous that we dare to imagine what the advertising landscape of tomorrow will be like – and make sure we lead it, together. What does Stronger Together look like in the real world? It means for Sharethrough employees to approach problems with a “we over me” mentality, putting our heads together and doing what’s right for the team rather than choosing individual gains. We support each other and thrive with the people around us, celebrating individual and team successes.
Some examples of what the Stronger Together value might look like in an employee include: communicating openly, effectively, and frequently with your team, actively contributing and acting as a team player, giving credit where it is due, strengthening relationships with fellow employees, and contributing positively to a psychologically safe environment.
Curiosity: Understanding Why
“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing” - Albert Einstein.
Everyone’s work has a purpose. We ask our employees to always understand the “why” behind your work. We optimize for speed of learning, shortening the path from conviction to action.
At Sharethrough, we want our employees to constantly be asking questions, questioning the status quo, even when they might be uncomfortable doing so. 1:1 meetings are a great example of a time when Sharethrough employees are given the opportunity to become quizzical, and fill in any gaps in their knowledge and work. Foreign and new tasks are often given out to employees, even if they have no prior exposure to them. Embracing discomfort, and finding confidence in trying and achieving new feats is an important part of our Curiosity value.
Caring: Helping Each Other
Creating a positive work environment and building strong relationships is core to us at Sharethrough. We believe in creating a safe space to share your opinions and ideas freely and encouraging open discussion while demonstrating respect for others. A company is nothing without care and dedication to its employees.
At Sharethrough, we are always committed to being there for our customers, employees, partners, and fellow ad-tech industry members. What does it mean to embody the Caring value at Sharethrough? Acting with integrity and remaining aware of your actions. Delivering high quality work both for your colleagues and clients. Valuing diversity, equity, inclusion. Acknowledging and accepting differing views and experiences. Taking care of yourself. Looking after your physical and mental health. Remaining willing to apologize for missteps, and forgiving others for making mistakes.
Resilience: Failing is Essential
We’ve all heard the saying that failing is essential to teaching us resilience; it strengthens us and allows us to experiment and innovate to bring us to our next big success. We learn quickly, welcoming change and biasing towards action, always remaining eager to see what’s next.
Sharethrough employees are entrusted with lots of responsibility and encouraged to try new things. Failing is all part of the job, and it’s what pushes us to advance further in our careers than we would have if we had remained cozy and contemplative. What does it look like to be resilient? You are agile and open to change. You adapt quickly as priorities change. You strive in a fast paced environment. You manage stress effectively, work well under pressure, and are not afraid to ask for help.
Do Sharethrough’s values resonate with you? Are you interested in learning more about our company culture, or curious about our open job opportunities? Make sure to reach out to us, we’d love to hear from you.
Founded in 2015, Calibrate is a yearly conference for new engineering managers hosted by seasoned engineering managers. The experience level of the speakers ranges from newcomers all the way through senior engineering leaders with over twenty years of experience in the field. Each speaker is greatly concerned about the craft of engineering management. Organized and hosted by Sharethrough, it was conducted yearly in September, from 2015-2019 in San Francisco, California.
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