XPLANE Culture MapEverything in the culture is designed to support our teams, which we call "X-teams." An x-team is made up of XPLANE consultants and designers, as well as our clients, working together towards a common goal. Transparent communication is critical to get clarity throughout the company. We believe in open communication (feelings along with the facts), including an open-books management approach. XPLANE people are encouraged to publish their development focus areas for the year for others to see. Visualizing goals makes them explicit and clear to all. For example, trend lines are easier to understand than spreadsheets. This culture map is an example of this principle in action. A napkin sketch will often suffice. We hire and support learners and when hiring, we look for "the learning skill" -- people who are curious, natural learners. Flat management means trusting people's judgment and empowering them to make decisions -- and to empower decisions, we need to tolerate occasional mistakes, as long as they are learning mistakes! Visual goals and transparent communication are important supports. Module builders means we think about re-use when we design for customers. Some of us call it "object-oriented design." Over time, we have built a modular archive of re-usable components, which can be used for discovery, design and deployment of visual communications. Teams need support; in fact you might say teams ARE support. When an XPLANE team needs assistance, we all are there for them to the best of our ability, 24/7/365. Transparent communication helps ensure that everyone in the company is aware of opportunities as well as threats to our doing great work. Visual goals are more clear and explicit than written ones. If it can be drawn, it can be done. Hiring learners keeps us adaptive to an ever-changing world. It keeps our people on the leading edge of our field. Modular design allows us to deliver faster results and find more flexible ways to meet customer needs. Flat management requires trust. It's a two-way street and we only get there by hiring the best people we can find. In performance reviews, XPLANE employees are reviewed by their peers and direct reports as well as their bosses. The modular approach applies to our job descriptions as well. We use a "merit badge" system to define skills, allowing people to grow more flexibly and giving them opportunities to offer different skills to different projects and teams. Another example of transparency is this culture map -- we're making our culture explicit to the world.
![]() Every company has a culture, but it can take time to learn, and the stated culturecan often differ significantly from what people actually experience.
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At XPLANE we have created a visual map of our culture, to guide our teams in daily decision making and help them make choices that are consistent with what we stand for and who we want to be. Roll over the photo for notes. Commentsdgray_xplane
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DerrickT
says:
Wonderfully-culture-spontaneous!
I imagine this being in the next edition of DIAGRAM magazine...
Posted 36 months ago. ( permalink )