HOW OUR CORE VALUES HELPED US NAVIGATE A WORLDWIDE PANDEMIC
A look at how Meetingmax’s core values helped us persevere
A look at how Meetingmax’s core values helped us persevere
Today we’re reflecting back on how Meetingmax’s core values and award winning culture helped us survive a worldwide pandemic which saw the tourism and events industry come to a halt.
Before looking at the specifics, let’s begin by acknowledging that the organizational culture at Meetingmax is one that we constantly invest in, never let slide, and is at the core of everything we do. This was thankfully (and strategically) the reality before the pandemic hit and we can say with confidence that those efforts have paid off in spades today. There have been countless times in the last 13 months where we were able to turn to what we knew and knew well to help push us forward; our core values. I imagine organizations that had skipped the effort and investment into their own culture prior to COVID had an even larger struggle to overcome. Below, we elaborate on how our core values helped us navigate during pandemic times.
Our core values are everything to us. Anyone who knows Meetingmax knows that our core values are more than words on a wall or in an employee orientation package (although they live there too).
This year more than ever it was important to make sure we were able to laugh. No doubt the mental state amongst our team could have suffered severely had we not fostered an environment where having fun is a priority. Some things that helped us laugh were: our regular Liquor Cart Fridays, we adopted our Spotify Days to become song suggestions on Slack, we injected fun into our daily huddles as much as we could making sure these daily rituals were light hearted, enjoyable to join and wanting people to come back and participate in tomorrow.
Having to establish new processes, do more with less resources, and be agile every day, the idea of Owning It. allowed us to get things done effectively this year. We live by personal responsibility. If you see something that needs to be done, you do it. If you take something on, you get it done. This saved us countless meetings and conversations and enabled action.
Has there ever been a year in which caring for people, and seeing people as people rather than an object has ever been so crucial? We agree – there has not. One way we remained passionate for people was by doubling down Ridiculously Remarkable Support. In a world of budget cuts, we were able to have big impact with small gestures, like buying another MMXer a virtual coffee, providing a BRAG for an outstanding act we witnessed, or sending a bag of All Dressed Chips to a client in the U.S. (only available in our homeland of Canada). We also reminded each other daily of the challenges our industry was facing (which sounds doom and gloomy) in order to better understand what our partners, clients, and friends were going through. This allowed us to face challenging situations and conjure awesome solutions.
Our ability to make 1 + 1 = 3 has enabled us to create opportunities when necessary out of what others may have thought was nothing. This is a valuable skill set in a world where everything is ‘new’. With daily changes happening to regulations and guidelines, our ability to shift and find a new path forward at a moment’s notice has served us well.
Considering the word COVID was non-existent in 99.9% of the world’s vocabulary last year, learning has been critical this year. Learning not only about the virus itself, as we all have, but learning to monitor regulations and guidelines around the globe. Furthermore, as everyone reading this is probably familiar with, every person within the organization was tasked with taking on new responsibilities and new projects outside of their area of expertise. In order to deliver on those, educating ourselves on the subject matter was key. Cross training throughout the organization became a top priority – making sure documentation was updated so that anyone within the organization could lend a helping hand in any other department.
We hire, fire, and promote based on our core values and sitting here, 13+ months into a global pandemic, we can say with confidence that it’s because our people live by these principles that we’re able to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
