CDI Core Values

• We make champions of others
• Openness reduces complexity
• The community is the ultimate judge of value
• Networks are not enough.
• We articulate what we need to achieve our objectives
• We are accountable to one another, TSG< and our communities
• Sustainability is a necessary condition for long-term impact
• Failure is fast, frequent, and constructive.

On Work

Day-to-Day:

1. Bring it every day. Show up at a consistent time every day, and expect that your work is going to make a difference.
2. Respond. Our small team is highly dependent on one another to get things done. Please respond to team emails within 24 hours, or let them know why you can't. Similar rules apply for TSG staffers, respond within 48 hours to all TSG staff mail, or let them know why you’re unable to respond. 
3. Focus. Be prepared to articulate how your work is moving the dial for end-users, the team and the organization. Most everything we focus/work on should be impacting our program and enterprise objectives.
4. Prepare. Prepare agendas for meetings that you organize by actively planning next steps. Plan for the week and month ahead.
5. Share. Share meeting agendas with others at least 1-day before the meeting. Publish what you’re working on so your teammates have a clear view of where you’re going.
6. Be transparent. In a distributed environment, it’s important that we’re all transparent. Post updates about your doings on the wiki, yammer and other channels, and expect the same of others. 
7. Focus others. Begin meetings by outlining the objectives the meeting is setting out to accomplish.
8. Follow the process, or make the process better. When in doubt about how stuff works, hit-up the SOP and protocols page. When you want to change how stuff works, suggest a change and share the what and why with the team.
9. Assume that your memory will fail you. There’s too much going on here to remember everything. Take notes and figure out a system to share notes with your work partner and others on team. For example, I have a g-doc for every person I work with called “Name & BB Collab Page”. And one other doc for each person that captures “Performance Notes & Observations” to highlight the great work people contribute day-to-day. The document also covers specific areas where I see professional growth opportunities. Like all systems, this one isn’t perfect, but it is simple and with consistent use, it provides a valuable archive of conversations, observations, insights, etc. 
10. Communicate, communicate, communicate. Be clear about what you need to be successful, and articulate what is inhibiting you from success.
11. Ask for help when you need it.
12. Trust as default. The complex nature of knowledge work demands a certain level of trust among colleagues here in order for us to produce valuable work together.
13. Have as much fun as possible. 

Week-to-Week:

1. Publish on the NetSquared blog at least 3x per week (For content and community staffers)
2. Publish weekly reviews so that people know what you’ve accomplished on a regular basis.
3. No Meet Fridays. Schedule at least one day every week without meetings.

Month-to-Month:

1. Month Ahead. Once a month, publish the short-list of key items you’re working on so the team has an easy-way to review and better understand where your energies are focused.
2. Share your monthly report with the person responsible for the Program Directors Report at least 3-days before the monthly reports are due. 

Year-to-Year:

1. Take time off to unplug. TSG is generous with vacation and time-off policies. You’ll learn more from HR, but take advantage of paid time-off. Fwiw, I typically take off in June and December. The time off gives me the energy I need to bring it every day the other 10 months of the year. 
2. Annual Review time is very important to the organizaiton. Plan on spending a significant time preparing for your annual review conversations, and expect thoughtful feedback about your contributions and performance. We’ll talk more about approaching annual reviews separately, but I want to surface the importance of this exercise at the outset of our working together. 
3. Archive old projects and files and cancel unused services/accounts related to CDI/TSG work efforts.

Billy Bicket's Universal Working Principles:

1. Keep it simple. 
2. Integrity. Be honest about what’s working and what’s not. Expect the same from others.
3. Give people an A. Assume people are doing the best they can with what they’ve got.
4. Make champions of others.
5. Find a partner. Recognize that you need not go at this work alone.
6. Deliver, deliver, deliver. Focus on delivering something every single day.
7. Build expertise in a single area at a time. Ask people lot’s of questions, especially, what they’re reading and what they’ve read that inspired their thinking and work.
8. Establish common ground. Build upon the experiences and attributes that work for the people you’re working with.
9. Humility. Don’t be afraid to kill stuff that doesn't take off.
10. Wave the BS Flag! Don’t be afraid to wave the bullshit flag (diplomatically, of course).
11. Enable contributions. Design programming with opportunities for members/users/customers to contribute their own creativity and work back to the community.
12. Contribute. Actively contribute to communities of practice with different values and perspectives.
13. Go public. Strive to share as much of your work in public as possible via wikis, and other tools in order to help others benefit from our learning, mistakes and victories.
14. Innovate. Make things better by continuously questioning the logic of why stuff is done the way it is done. Propose new ways of doing things often. 
15. Demonstrate. Propose new ways of doing things often, and demonstrate your brilliance by showing how other people see the value in doing stuff in new ways.