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“Company values need to be more than words on a wall - they should be the true north of your organization.”

– Andy Freed, CEO, Virtual, Inc.

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What sets great leaders and organizations apart? It’s not just results—it’s how they achieve them. In this episode of 5 Minutes with Andy, CEO Andy Freed shares insights from Virtual’s journey to show how leading with values drives success and inspires greatness.

Andy discusses:

• Why corporate values are more than words on paper.
• How values guide a company’s decisions and long-term success.
• The role of generosity, innovation, and teamwork in shaping Virtual’s culture and impact.

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Tune in to discover why values are at the heart of great leadership and great companies.

Andy Freed (00:12 – 04:25)

Hello and welcome to Five Minutes with Andy. My name is Andy Freed. I'm the CEO of Virtual Incorporated. For the last 25 years, Virtual has been helping standards bodies, associations and technology consortia make their mark on the world. And today we want to share a little bit about not just what we do, but that important thing of how we do it. And that comes down to values.

If I leave my office and step outside into the hallway, if I go to the left, I get to a really big jar of Starburst. And I could spend a lot of time talking about whether or not the red or the pink one is the best one. It's red, by the way, and yellow shouldn't even be in the jar.

But I want to talk about what I see in the other direction. Because if I look to my right, I see our values right on our wall. And it's no accident that they're right outside the door of my office on the wall, because values are that important, and should be the guidepost of everything that an organization does.

Form any organizations, values are something that they put on a sheet of paper, and they just never really think of or look at again. It's on their website, it's on their shareholder materials, but it's not really part of the organization. At Virtual, we decided that having those values and leading through them is such an important part of who we want to be and such an important part of who we are that we have them on the wall, and we make sure that everyone has them on their desk. But more importantly, we try to use them as a guidepost on decisions.

What does that mean? It means that, well, for example, innovation is one of our values. If innovation is one of our values, then time spent looking at things and time spent trying to make AI work for our business, time spent playing with Chat GPT, that's not wasted time. That's time living one of our values of innovation. If we're living by our values and one of our values is teamwork and team building, then the time that we spend just talking with one another, getting to know one another, and building trust and relationships - again, that's not wasted time. That's part of our values.

Same thing goes for our value of generosity. We believe in helping the world around us, whether that's taking a few minutes to walk around and pick up trash around our office and our office park, or whether that's supporting causes like the Jimmy Fund. Our decision to do that isn't something we've made on a whim, but our decision to do that is based on our values.

It’s important for every organization not just to have values, but take a look at them from time to time. Make sure that they still embody who you are today and who you want to be. You might find that your emphasis shifts over time. You might find that it's important to accentuate different things that might be important for the moment rather than things that were important for yesterday.

Your values should be a living document and part of where the organization is going, and taking you into the future. Because after all, it's not just about what you're doing, and it's possible to accomplish your job well, but not have the values and things that truly make you a great place to work and a great organization. Because that's what separates you from just doing the job and doing the job in a way that people want to follow you. I believe that's what we're doing every day, and I hope that our team does as well. Thanks for joining me and I hope that you found this conversation, well, valuable. Talk to you soon.

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