NetApp Values

After my blog on company values, one reader asked for a link to NetApp's values statement. There you go.

When Dan joined NetApp, the first value he focused on - long before we had an explicit, written list - was Trust and Integrity. At the end of his first staff offsite meeting, Dan said, "I want everyone to rank our candor. You know each other better than I do. Did people say what they really believe? Did you? I won't ask you to explain your score, but I'm going to go around the room, and I want everyone to give a grade from one to five - five is good - on how candid you think we were with each other during this meeting."

NetApp had gotten to be a pretty political place before Dan joined, and that was something he wanted to quash. He didn't mind at all if people disagreed with each other - that is a healthy part of finding the best path forward - but he wanted us to do it in the open, to each other's faces.

We went around the room, and the average score was two, maybe two-and-a-half. Dan didn't beat us up, and he didn't ask for details; he just said, "I see we have some work to do. This is something that's important to me."

The value Create a Model Company represents our explicit choice to build a company that would have a long-term presence in the market. Many entrepreneurs plan to "flip" their startup, to invent some intellectual property and quickly sell it to a large corporation. There's nothing wrong with that, but you should be clear about what you are doing. If you are building a startup to flip, you would probably focus 100% on the technology, and on getting that first product out the door. Little need to spend time on corporate values or long-term relationships with customers.

I remember Tom Mendoza's reaction to the first draft of our values. Dan had convinced his staff to spend time at an offsite to discuss our values and write them down, and Tom said, "These are all so touchy-feely. Trust, Customers, Integrity, Teamwork - I certainly can't disagree with any of them - but where does it say that we spend our time doing stuff that matters, and not just sitting around feeling good about each other?"

That's when we added Go Beyond and Get Things Done! to the list. Tom always drives people to action and I love that our written values reflect his passion about this.

In the end, a company's true values are what employees actually believe and how they actually behave, not some list on a piece of paper. Written values can be destructive and lead to cynicism if they don't align with belief and behavior, but if they do, then they can help reinforce the values, especially with new employees.

Comments

[Anonymous]

Dave,

I get the feeling that NetApp's value for 'Trust and Integrity' somehow is not as far reaching as you think it might be. NetApp representatives in some asian countries have time and time again shown not to uphold these values. There have been incidents where suspected money laundering, bribery, and distributor favoritism have occurred, and yet the NetApp employees are still unquestioned of their activities. If you really do believe that these values hold true in every corner of the NetApp world, I hope you do check every corner that world once in a while.

Don't get me wrong. I have always been a big supporter of NetApp technology and innovation. But it's a bad feeling in the stomach when the good name of NetApp is marred by questionable activities of some of its employees.

[Drake Pruitt]

Dave, this is a great piece. We have recently gone through the exercise of re-defining, writing and training all of our employees on core values. Aside from the subjective benefits, a culture galvinized around core values executes with greater speed and precision-- critical elements of ROI in building a software company.

[Alan I Cohen]

As a former customer (because of change in companies, not elimination of NetApp), I can say that one of the reasons we were so pleased with NetApp as a vendor was the "Trust and Integrity". I always felt that we were dealt with in an honest and straight forward fashion. Many times NetApp also did "Go Beyond" in helping us either resolve issues or get equipment on time. This effort was an incredibly positive reflection on the company.

It's never easy to deal with angry or dissatisfied customers. It was how you dealt with us in resolving problems that also left an extremely positive impression.

It is one thing to have documented corporate values. It is quite another to have employees who embrace those values and show them to the outside world. Kudos to NetApp for that.