By Lauren Elmore, CEO
Every so often, we like to revisit our values in some blog posts to bring them back to forefront of our followers’ minds. At Firmatek, we believe in holding ourselves accountable to our values and celebrating the stories of our team living them out. We have four core values: Team First, Stewardship, Trusted Advisor, and Innovation. Through the year, we will discuss all four of these values and what they mean to us. To start off the series this year, we’ll talk about Team First.
Without the guiding principles, or descriptions of what it looks like to live these values, it’s difficult to know how to apply them on a daily basis. For us, Team First means that we seek opportunities to go the extra mile for our teammates. It means we believe that we all bring value to the team and that our differences make us stronger. We don’t place blame on other parts of the organization and we answer when someone needs a hand. It means that only together can we accomplish our goals.
When we ask for values stories, the team always has a lot of examples of our Team First value. One of the biggest ways we see this lived out in our organization is in the way that our field team helps each other out. Our team is spread across the country. They are on the road for long stretches of time during our busier times of the year. Yet despite the isolation, long days, or time away from home we receive countless examples of the way they help each other out. Whether it is a phone call of encouragement or taking time out of their own busy day to help a fellow teammate troubleshoot a technical issue, they have each other’s backs. It is special and rare to see this mentality at any company. The Team First value is obvious when colleagues go the extra mile for one another without hesitation or thought of how it affects themselves.
Another way we often see this lived out is in how each team is willing to help another. Someone on the engineering team or the processing team will jump in a field truck to do some field work when we need them to. They don’t complain or ask why. They just jump at the chance to help the team and serve the client. Similarly, the field, the drone, or the engineering team will jump in to help process data when they are able. Each team has a role, but isn’t a silo. Our field technicians and processing team support each other constantly, freely sharing knowledge that ultimately makes our company stronger and filling in when the workloads ebb and flow. They are all willing to help each other out to make sure that we not only serve the client, but also that we support the needs of individual team members. Team First isn’t just about helping each other to get the work done for the client, it’s about taking care of the team members as well.
We have a special group of people at Firmatek. It is incredible to be part of an organization that lives this value of Team First on a daily basis. Each one of us knows there is someone in the organization that is willing to go the extra mile for us. Someone that will be there to help us out when we need it. We each know that someone’s got our back.
Click here to learn more about our Team First value from a Project Engineer’s perspective.
About Lauren Elmore
Lauren is the Chief Executive Officer and part owner of Firmatek. She has a background in finance and law. Lauren is part of the investment team for Indiana based private equity firm, Elmore Companies. Her experience includes glendonTodd Capital, LLC where she worked on deals in the technology and real estate industries and as a Consulting Associate at Cambridge Associates, where she advised clients on asset allocation, manager selection, and spending.
Other articles by Lauren:
Use Technology to Avoid Common Stockpile Measuring Mistakes
3 Tips for Modernizing your Landfill and Waste Management Plan
