Our Culture

People Focused.
Future Thinking.
Inventive.

Curious minds thrive at newicon

Our mission is to empower change makers to invent the future creating world class digital platforms and technologies

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team photo - guitar playing on sofa discussion

Why we do it

We want to work with likeminded people and organisations who challenge, invent, and create. We have built our business on these three pillars that support everything we do.

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Future

We don’t want to walk blindly into the future, we want to forge ahead and shape it. And we believe that people-centric technology is the key to achieving that.

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People

Technology exists to serve people, and people need to be considered from the very creation of an idea, right through to a product being brought to market.

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Invention

Necessity is the mother of all invention. But that’s far from the whole family tree. Curiosity. Creativity. Courage. They’re all part of the invention gene pool.

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How we do it

Our culture is an accumulation of ideas and philosophies we agree with and maintain. Lots of it is shamelessly stolen from other people's good ideas, that we support and believe in. We have taken many core ideas from companies we like such as Netflix, Toyota, Space X (because spaceships!) It represents what we believe and what we aspire to be and achieve.

"We believe we are on earth to change it for the better, the ones with passion and drive are the ones that do."

It's easy to list a set of values - it's much harder to live them. Culture for us is not about pool tables and funky sofas. Whilst that stuff is great, it's just stuff, and in reality, after the initial novelty, it does not create lasting work happiness and fulfilment. For us, living and breathing our values is what's important and we want to work with others that do the same. So we can do great, fulfilling work. We want everyone to help each other live the values and hold each other responsible for being role models. It's a constant aspirational challenge.

" If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the people to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea. "
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the author of The Little Prince

Our Mantras

Transparency and Trust

In the modern office everything tends to be done with email which is essentially private first. It's the wrong way around!
Default to transparency, this means all communications if possible aim to be available and open to everyone in the company. We encourage sharing of information when its possible. We are still working on the best tools and techniques to make this happen. Certainly, centralised cloud systems help - which we build for our customers - but there is still a need for innovation in this space! This fosters trust and responsibility throughout a company. There is no use putting up a corporate veneer people want to see real people. Doing real useful work. We have not quite mastered sharing all we do, it takes a lot of effort, but we are trying to work in a public transparent way by default.
All our energy has to be focused on delivering and producing the best products and solutions for our customers. There is no room for politics. We keep our organisation flat and as self organising as possible. Flat doesn't mean there are no leaders, it means, we accept leadership of the person with the best context. There are no ladders to climb, you are judged for your own worth independent of any artificial company grading or scoring system. This also extends to identifying, and tactfully, cutting through politics in client teams too. Often issues can be resolved with wider communication and context.
A Netflix mantra we love - the rare responsible person. Responsible people thrive with freedom and are worthy of it. We judge our success by the quality of our work not the time we spend on it
We do not perceive the world as it is, but as we are. Our senses are extremely noisey, we do not percieve our senses we percieve the model our brain creates from them. And to quote Richard Feynman, "all models are wrong".
So we should be very suspicious of any one model, and be open to new ideas and new models. We all see the world through distorted lenses of our own expereinces and our own filters. Understanding this enables you to change your perspective and view problems and situations through different lenses.

When asking why we do something - if you get "that's just the way we do it here". This is a problem. We should positively challenge how things are done. Recipes are a great way to be efficient but sometimes you need to question them. https://youtu.be/kib6uXQsxBA?t=109

Most of these values can easily be followed by simply being positive, and being kind. If a colleague or client spots a bug, or a problem - we thank them for it. We don't moan at people who can't fix the problem we talk constructively and directly with those who can. Negativity has a way of spreading and making everyone miserable. Don't make everyone miserable - what we do is challenging, creative and fun - and we should practice gratitude for that.

The session musician - this is the unsung hero that rocks up to the studio and lays down the perfect track. Perhaps too perfect. She is clearly the best musician in the room - but the band still have feedback for her. "It sounds too good! Can you play it more grunge?", "sure I'll give it a go". She lays down another perfect track to the best of her ability. The session musician is self confident in her craft, but always looking to incorporate feedback, never takes suggestions personally (she knows she rocks). No egos, no drama, just a focus on producing the best sum of the whole, creating the best music and honing her craft. She could easily play a better solo than the lead but in this moment the music needs just a few well timed notes to make it sing. Be the session musician. Love your craft. Fall in love with the results.

Empowerment and Growth

Want to change something. Go do it. No one ever gets a slap on the wrist for mistakes of action. See mantra "Make fast decisions"
Coach and seek to be coached by others. We aim to all be educators and learn from each other as much as possible, as well as deliver fearless feedback.

Be fearless when giving feedback, be thankful to receive feedback, and finally, decide what feedback to take on board. Feedback is the only way to learn and grow. It's also pretty rare - friends won't often give you feedback, they don't want awkward conversations. They will often know whats wrong with something - but wont tell you unless you push them. In Japan, to not give constructive criticism is a sign of disrespect - you are not giving the person an opportunity to grow. I love that. Apple also have a similar value called "fearless feedback".
Be fearless when giving feedback
Don't be scared to give feedback to help people improve. There are two sides to this as receiving feedback well is equally important. To make things more complex not all feedback is valid. Perhaps you are receiving feedback from someone who doesn't understand the full picture, this can be frustrating.
I'm OK, You're OK
Some people take feedback as a direct attack on their ego, or value as a person. They hear it as "you're not an ok person". Don't be that guy. Don't be the guy that turns up to the music audition and storms out when his groove doesn't fit. Be the guy who doesn't take the feedback personally. As a feedback giver make sure the person receiving feedback knows you think they are ok. It's pretty hard to give people real feedback, so you should be thankful for it, then decide what bits to take on board. Of course this doesn't allow people to be a jerk either.
The 4 A's (Netflix: No Rules Rules)
Netflix have an amazing chapter on feedback in their book No Rules Rules. It is called the 4 A framework.
When giving feedback:
Aim to help: give feedback aiming to help (not to be a jerk that's not cool - see no clever jerks)
Actionable: Make the feedback actionable something someone can do or take on board.
When recieving feedback:
Appreciate: be greatful for it.
Accept/Reject: decide whether to take it on board or reject it.

The world is changing fast, new technologies come and go - we must all be learning constantly in order to stay ahead and take advantage of opportunities. Furthermore we have to teach each other what new shiny things we have created and how they work. This is true of the organisation and the individual. If you are not learning you are moving backwards. Learning compounds and stacks, making future learning faster.
Failure is an option. Seek knowledge through rapid failure! You don't get good at something by doing it right first time. We'd never learn anything if we had to get it right first time! Seek knowledge through rapid failure and experimentation.
To stay still whilst the world moves is essentially to move backwards. The comfort zone is the dead zone. Fear of change means creates boring, predictable, the same, stagnant. A business has to be new, fresh and world leading, it has to make an impact, it has to evolve and stay ahead. Change = challenging environment = learning = innovation = longevity and prosperity. It's pretty rare that a change will irreversibly damage the business, and most changes can be easily reverted. Therefore the biggest risk to a company, though it can be scary for some, is not embracing change.

This one we have pinched from our mate Jeff Bezos - make decisions fast. There are two types of decisions - those that are easily reversible (type 1) and those that are not (type 2). Most decisions are the first kind (type 1) and easy to reverse, like sliding doors you can easily walk through, see what its like, and, if you don't like what you see you can walk back through. Some might think of this as a waste of time, but actually now you know whats on the other side, you have learnt something, so it's not for nothing. Other decisions (type 2) are irreversible and once you walk through there is no going back. However in business most decisions are actually the first kind and easy to reverse. Therefore we only need to use slow decision making for irreversible decisions. This also relates to the fail fast - accept failure and its risks. Often the risks are easy to mitigate and if they are low its better to embrace speed.

What not who - focus on the what, not the who. Programs like the apprentice give the wrong dynamic for high performing teams. When mistakes happen they suddenly cover their tracks and blame individuals through fear of getting fired. It's impossible to do good technical work this way.
We borrow the practices of engineering teams that have created the impressive aviation safety record. Mistakes and issues will happen - what is important is to focus on the chain of events. It is always the companies fault - never an individuals. This creates a safe working environment where everyone can contribute. Counter intuitively, this creates responsibility and accountability at all levels.

An excellent talk on this topic is: Who Destroyed Three Mile Island? - Nickolas Means

In essence:
  • There should be no taboo subject.
  • Prefer team discussion over individual chats especially when it impacts work.
  • If the dev drops production, that dev needs to be included in the fix.

Innovation and Engineering

We believe in the simple not the complex. "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler" - Albert Einstein
In any sufficiently complex system, requirements defined at the start are usually wrong. Most requirements are wrong, and be very suscipcious of requirements from smart people as they won't be challenged and they are still probably wrong
Often constraints are wrong. Technical systems often end up representing the structure of the organisation, if there is a department, there is probably a matching technical interface. But is this a good design choice for the product? We organise our team around the product as much as is practical. Constraints need to be validated first then embraced second. The business should organise itself around the value stream - (Lean engineering đŸ€©)
This means don't sacrifice the customer experience because of bogus constraints. It's very easy to accidentally loose priorities - we see people do it often. Without customers you have no business. It's very important to be led by the customer - not what makes your company easier to manage, more effective to run. You see this sometimes in larger companies, where people are so far removed from the customer - process improvements internally make their business measurably worse from a customers view externally. If the team or business was personified it would be saying "Hey, all our problems seem to be caused by our customers, lets just get rid of them!".
Avoid the common pitfalls developers, and fresh faced professionals fall into by becoming dogmatic. Most concepts and ideas taken too far completely fall apart. Technology and much of life is about balance and compromise. Push an idea to its extreme to see where it falls down but always expect it to fail. There are always exceptions to any rule.
Think physics first principles. Boil things down to fundamental truths and reason up from there. We experience this a lot - people choosing technology before knowing what they want to achieve! Teams saying they need a certain technology before understanding the problem.
In complex projects and systems (especially at the start) most people are wrong most of the time. Ask the stupid most obvious questions, and be fully aware and upfront that it's probably wrong. There is power in knowing you might be wrong. It makes you experimental. Challenges assumptions and gets to truths.
Whilst counter intuitive if you don't understand how something works, you are not in a position to properly asses this decision so you are better off building yourself. If its a core skill or responsibility of Newicon then we prefer to build it rather than buy it. This can take longer and cost us more but we prefer to be the absolute experts in what we do and sometimes the only way to fully understand something is to build it. Things we don't know how to build ourselves make us uneasy. There is nothing worse than telling customers that the problem is another companies or vendors fault, or simply not being able to fix something because you come up against a brick wall from another vendor. However we refer to the 'pragmatic not dogmatic' mantra here - if the tech is easy or not something we find inspiring and it's better for our customers than buying is an option. Software development is the one profession that will pull in an entire airplane when all you need is a fan. Think of all that surface area of unused code. Unused code can become attack vectors for hackers and introduce more potential states for the application.
We love lean engineering and lean principles - ask why 5 times! What this means is we like to solve root problems - ask why until you get to the root problem and fix that! This relates to business issues, process issues and coding issues. This essentially helps you get to first priciples and root problems which you can build upon.
Routine tasks are boring. Doing the same thing twice is boring. Following a process is boring (if it gets in the way). Unlike big corporate thinking, if you automate your entire job, you will not be let go to reduce costs! You will be celebrated and free to work on the next big idea. And we have far too many ideas than we will ever have a chance to actually work on!! The more free time we have the more time we can invest in our big ideas - and there is never a short supply of those!
Raw materials arrive at one end of the factory and fully formed car/spaceship/airplane comes out the other end. Any one can see that if the spaceship is half way through the factory then it is half complete! Car manufacturers even have moving production lines where the car is constantly moving whilst the various jobs are being done (value adding processes) to transform it into the finished article. This is a revelation in manufacturing. Instead though, most offices tend to batch things between departments grouped by their action. Each transition between a department adds movement, storage, communication and other waste to the process. For digital systems its often worse with people passing the product to each individual in the team - this causes even more problems, like, am I even working on the latest version? In a digital world we must aim to apply the same value measuring activities to digital and virtual products as we do physical ones. We must focus on the value stream, whilst we don't have physical factories we can visualise flows and provide shared portals into work being done.
Speed is very important - be bold and break stuff. If you are scared to break stuff then you should understand why. Until you are not scared to break stuff.

We use about 60% of our brain to process visual information, when compared to about 20% for language. Making things visual makes management of them easier. The human ear contains about 30,000 auditory nerve fibers compared to 1,200,000 retinal ganglion cells for vision. Ways to be visual:

  • Use white boards
  • Create dashboards
  • Summarise complex problems on one A3 sheet: Lean engineering
  • Dark cockpit: Don’t show all 100 things flashing, show the 2 items big and red that have a problem
  • Use UI and UX skills to help create meaningful representations
  • Think in interfaces not implementations

Team Values

Our team values are adapted from Netflix excellent work.

We first found Netflix work on their culture and values when we were trying to find other companies who had similar crazy ideas (and they had worked). We were searching for other companies that had extremely simple expenses policy. It felt very sensible for us to trust the team to make good decisions. After all, we are a small company, and everyone is just one phone call away or email away. Furthermore without trust its very hard to innovate and produce good work. So, did we really require more bureaucracy? We just wanted a statement that said something like, use your best judgement - we were 5 people at the time and obviously they all knew me well. Is it really so difficult? After talking to HR companies and puzzled looks from staff members I found Netflix expenses policy: "Act in Netflix's best interest". Amazing - I felt validated! How can it be a crazy idea if Netflix do it! I went to work to modify this into our glorious expenses policy. After much effort, and late night coffee-fueled hard grafting we arrived at the following: "Act in the best interest of Newicon"

Judgement

  • You make wise decisions despite ambiguity
  • You identify root causes, and get beyond treating symptoms
  • You think strategically, and can articulate what you are, and are not, trying to do
  • You are good at using data to inform your intuition
  • You make decisions based on the long term, not near term

Communication

  • You listen well, instead of reacting fast, so you can better understand
  • You are concise and articulate in speech and writing
  • You maintain calm poise in stressful situations to draw out the clearest thinking
  • You adapt your communication style to work well with people from around the world who may not share your native language
  • You provide candid, helpful, timely feedback to colleagues
  • You are positive, you lift the team up not bring them down

Courage

  • You say what you think, when it’s in the best interest of Newicon, even if it is uncomfortable
  • You make tough decisions without agonising
  • You take smart risks and are open to possible failure
  • You question actions inconsistent with our values
  • You are able to be vulnerable, in search of truth
  • You’re quick to admit fault and see it as a good lesson learnt
  • You actively seek feedback and don’t try to protect yourself from criticism

Curiosity

  • You are curious
  • You learn rapidly and eagerly
  • You seek to understand our strategy, market, customers and suppliers
  • You contribute effectively outside of your speciality
  • You seek alternate perspectives
  • You love to learn new things

Passion

  • You inspire others with your thirst for excellence
  • You care intensely about Newicon’s success
  • You are tenacious and optimistic
  • You are quietly confident and openly humble
  • You celebrate failures and what we learnt from it
  • You celebrate wins

Selflessness

  • You seek what is best for Newicon, rather than what is best for yourself or your group
  • You are open-minded in search of great ideas
  • You make time to help colleagues
  • You share information openly and proactively

Innovation

  • You create new ideas that prove useful
  • You re-conceptualise issues to discover practical solutions to hard problems
  • You challenge prevailing assumptions when warranted, and suggest better approaches.
  • You keep us nimble by minimising complexity and finding time to simplify
  • You thrive on change

Integrity

  • You are known for candor, authenticity, transparency, and being non-political
  • You only say things about fellow employees that you say to their face
  • You admit mistakes freely and openly
  • You treat people with respect regardless of their status or disagreement with you
  • You collaborate effectively with people of diverse backgrounds and cultures

Inclusion

  • You collaborate effectively with people of diverse backgrounds and cultures
  • You nurture and embrace differing perspectives to make better decisions
  • You are curious about how our different backgrounds affect us at work, rather than pretending they don’t affect us
  • You recognize we all have biases, and work to grow past them
  • You intervene if someone else is being marginalized

Impact

  • You accomplish amazing amounts of important work
  • You demonstrate consistently strong performance so colleagues can rely upon you
  • You make your colleagues better
  • You focus on results over process

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