The community is built on appreciation and respect
12 | 2022 Kari Kellokoski, Co-founder, COO
For a community to foster an atmosphere of mutual respect, its members must dare to speak up. Conversely, to dare to speak up, there must be an atmosphere of respect and appreciation. Which comes first, or do they go hand in hand all the time?
My own and Kipinä's thinking is based on how we should respect all people and all living things. The same values-based thinking applies both in our leisure time and at work. How you treat others is in line with your values. In the business world, manners and respect are the basic requirements for psychological safety. Of course, there are others, such as fairness, justice and honesty. But it must not be forgotten that business, and in particular maximising profits, must not override manners and respect.
At Kipinä, we have believed from the start that we will also succeed in business terms when we maintain our integrity by respecting each other and our particular way of doing business - in addition, of course, to having the fundamentals of our business in place: exceptionally experienced talent in teams for our clients' core digital projects as entrepreneurs with their own faces.
There is a false norm in working life, which Kipinä has wanted to break right from the start. The norm is that it's okay to laugh at being bad at something when it's part of the job. Or that difficult things are not tackled or talked about. The minimum requirement in working life should be to respect everyone as human beings. And not to laugh at inconveniences. This means
Good communication
That we do not lie
That we maintain integrity
The individual and the community come before business
The atmosphere is open
People are genuinely cared for as both employees and individuals
The courage to address difficult topics
The great moments when I always realise that the path we have chosen is the right one and that it has value are the ones when the people at Kipinä dare to say that they don't know something and dare to ask their colleagues for help. Or when a large group of people discuss and know how to disagree, and yet the discussion is respectful and good and understanding of others. Or when someone is just excited to share new information about something they have learnt in a technical field.
Traditionally, companies want no one to ever leave and expect everyone to stay put—preferably quietly, on a modest salary, and with their skills developing entirely on their own. At Kipinä, we certainly don't want good people to leave, but we feel that if someone wants to leave to learn something new or pursue a different path in life, they are free to do so. Trying to forcibly hold onto someone values the business over the individual and fails to put people first.
At work, respect for people can be shown in many ways. Everyone's life situation changes, and the Kipinä's model may no longer fit your situation. In these moments, we want to support the person at the moment of decision and think about the well-being of the individual. And to recommend a new place with warmth. We do not own people, or their thoughts. Experts work for us because they want to work for us, as members of the Kipinä community.
At the root of everything are shared human values, and at the core of Kipinä lie collective decision-making and equality. This means genuinely transparent decision-making where there are no ambiguous matters or barriers to trusting one another, and everyone is respected and valued equally—not because of hierarchy, but as members of the community.
A great moment in my career was when we held a meeting at Kipinä that had been thoroughly prepared, discussed beforehand on Slack, and where we collectively decided on important matters such as salaries, vacation lengths, and sick leave compensation for extended absences. We made quite a few decisions, and voted on a couple of points where different options were discussed. The feeling that all of this discussion was rooted in caring for one another and living by our values—that was priceless.
We want to work all the time to ensure that the values of Kipinä are not just words. We want to make visible a new kind of working life, that such a prosperous working community can be achieved by doing a lot of the right things.
Kipinä's thing is a strong community where we respect and value each other as people, partners and experts.