The Global Vision

This document articulates how GlobalVision leadership thinks about a future state of success, and the consequences of that success. Like any worldview, this should evolve over time as we learn and grow. The purpose is to set our direction so that everyone can align and prepare for the ride 🚀

Our vision is achieved when everyone is winning: Customers, Employees, and the Company.

This is the flywheel of sustainable success, where we keep growing and reinvesting into our future.

Customers love our products, which increases profit, which increases investment into our employees, who can drive more momentum into the flywheel.

While this is written in the present tense, it is not our current reality, it is our north star!

Customers

The fuel 🔥 for the 🚀

Customers come first. They are the only reason we exist. The company and its employees can only be successful if they are successful. This means,

They trust us and our products
They consider us leaders in thought, technology and innovation
They couldn't imagine doing their jobs without our products
They enjoy and look forward to every touchpoint with us
They feel close to the future development of our products and processes by having easy ways to feel heard

Our core customers are the buyers and end-users of our products, but our partners for integration and resale can be included in the definition for this purpose.

Competition

The distraction 🧨

Focus on our customers.

“Don’t be afraid of our competitors, they’re never going to give us money anyway. Be afraid of our customers”
Jeff Bezos, Amazon

While market share is always at risk, to maintain market leadership, we have to focus on creating consistent and strong differentiation in our products by listening closely to our customers' needs. From there, we focus on:

Developing high performing employees and systems
Creating clear and focused strategies
Executing on those strategies

If any of those three fail, we fail.
Let’s focus all of our attention on making the best experience for our customers and the execution of our strategy.

Employees

The 🚀 itself

All of our employees unanimously and unequivocally align with our Values and this document.

If not, we're still here to support you.

We believe it is important to have an identity. We want to do business with those who relate to our stance on who GlobalVision is and why we exist. We hope that by spelling it out transparently, people can have clear expectations from the start.

If you do not align with our unique Values & The way we work, first, we appreciate the time and effort you gave to GV. We will genuinely support you to find a better fit at another company through resume reviews, career direction discussions, and connecting you to our external networks and recruiters if you flag this to HR or your manager. We will transition together over 3 to 6 months, or until you have found a new role.

If the company feels the values misalignment, we will have a direct and honest conversation and give employees plenty of time to explore other opportunities without fear of losing their salaries through a severance package. For managers, see https://globalvisioninc.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/HR/pages/2760638625/Letting+go+low+performers.

We want to be a great company, not a large company. We measure our financial success in profit per employee. We never surpass 150 full-time employees, since this is the tipping point where we fear losing the familial connection between each other, or worse, not knowing everyone's names. Also, this artificial constraint will force us to focus on developing high-performing people and systems. To achieve this,

Individual contributors are managers of one (no micromanaging)
High expectations on performance and growth
Heavy use of technology, automation, and systems to reduce low-level work
External contracts for scale

Employees have time to live out their full purpose portfolio, not just work. They have time to dedicate to innovation and creativity. There are no artificial barriers to driving impact or getting promoted. There is meaningful time available for career growth and training, but it is self-managed.

Employees are compensated generously so they can support fulfilling lives for themselves and their dependents. Compensation is aligned with the company’s success and our goal is to establish an average of 25% higher than the market value rate. As we make progress towards our success state, we reinvest in our employees so they feel confident that they can build a long-term career here through a complete menu of earn, learn, and grow 💰 👨‍🏫 🌱.

Company

The framework supporting the 🚀

This company has a unique history. First, it is bootstrapped, meaning that there is no outside investment. We do not owe justification or reports to external stakeholders, which gives us the freedom to pivot. We do not intend on selling or getting external investment to support inorganic growth.

We are here for the journey and believe in sustainable growth.

Sustainability is building a system of growth that allows GV to continue our longstanding success of 34 years of profitability into the next 34 years. Instead of betting on becoming a unicorn backed by venture capital – go big or go home – we bet smart and patiently. This will give us the capital for investing in this future we outlined for our customers and employees.

For our customers, their success will allow us to invest in the future to solve even more of their problems through new products, features, and R&D in advanced technologies.
For our employees, they will equally benefit from the opportunity to continuously solve new problems 🤓 As well, they will benefit from profit-sharing programs.

We are energized by the positive impact we can bring to society through bringing value to customers and supporting the families of our employees, their career growth, their future contributions at other companies, or even their own startups because of the learning they get here.

We are part of a community. There is significant diversity and zero discrimination in our employee base (Montreal vs remote, thought, gender, experiences, race or religion).

We want to build a world-class remote-first culture since we believe we can support a better growth rate in this workstyle: surrounded by more diverse talent, asynchronous work, and mutual trust on working where and when you want, just focus on results.

How will we get there?

If you have tracked SpaceX’s history, you’ll know that this isn't obvious. We may fail 100 more times before we get to this state… and we can’t wait for that journey.

Adherence to our Values and The way we work
OKRs to define measurable and ambitious objectives that will set us in the right direction
Data-informed decisions
Increase our standards for performance and interviewing over time

Presentation

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1o3yOcEaH95pj3VqQ5VCpgbiK0YDlL0vA/view?usp=sharing