Levels culture—as told by the people who work there
We think a lot about culture at Levels. As a fully-remote team, being intentional about how we work together is crucial to the company’s success and our happiness. So we recently interviewed everyone at the company about our core values and compiled what we heard into these videos. We also gathered other resources that have informed our thinking about these values, including books and podcasts.
🥁 Trust and Autonomy
- Trust is the foundation of the Levels team
- Our team members trust each other to get work done and to do it autonomously.
- When it comes to giving and receiving feedback, our team trusts that it will be delivered in a thoughtful and actionable way.
- We trust each other’s judgment. We may have differing opinions on certain initiatives, but we trust the guidance of the team members who are making decisions on behalf of the team for specific projects.
Books
Articles
Podcasts
Super Soul: Dr. Brené Brown: The Anatomy of Trust on Apple Podcasts
🏕 Asynchronous & Remote
- The Levels team works as an entirely remote team. We have members across the US and Canada, in South America and in Europe.
- Our communication is default asynchronous, and we try to have as few meetings as possible.
- Synchronous communication can be distracting when not used correctly. This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t meet when meetings are required, but we should be cognizant of not distracting others with synchronous messages when urgent responses aren’t required
- We don’t have a centralized office and believe that people can get their work done from anywhere that they choose and on a schedule they choose.
Books
Articles
How asynchronous communication could change your workday
Asynchronous Communication: More Productive & Inclusive Teamwork
How to Create an Asynchronous Work Culture
Remote Work Is Here to Stay: Are You Ready for the New Way of Life?
Leveraging Asynchronous Communication To Bring Out The Best In Others
Podcasts
The Pomp Podcast: #417: Chris Herd on The Future of Work on Apple Podcasts
🙋♀️ Honesty & Respect
- Honesty and respect are two of the underlying principles of the way we communicate as a team.
- We give feedback directly, in a timely manner.
- Although we may not agree on all initiatives (nor should we), we disagree respectfully and commit to decisions as a team.
Books
Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts.
The Honest Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone — Especially Ourselves
Articles
How Honesty Could Make You Happier (Published 2017)
Podcasts
🧪 Experimentation
- We are willing to try many things, and failure is an option.
- Test > Learn > Iterate — three principles that are the foundation for all experiments.
- If we’re not testing, we’re not learning, and if we don’t learn, we can’t improve on everything we’re working on.
- Experimentation is in the DNA of Levels and every project that we undertake as a team — big or small.
Books
Experimentation Works: The Surprising Power of Business Experiments
Articles
Building a Culture of Experimentation
Podcasts
HBR IdeaCast: 722: How to Set Up — and Learn — from Experiments on Apple Podcasts
🌪 Velocity & Scrappiness
- Our team moves fast — we test things in the shortest period of time possible in order to learn, get feedback, and improve.
- We’re comfortable shipping work that is 80% “good enough” — provided the work doesn’t have to do with objective health information, customer data, or security.
- We set our sights on default “ship” and adjust course as we go.
- Velocity outweighs perfection.
Books
Articles
Council Post: The Art Of Scrappy: What Large Organizations Can Learn From Startups
Developer Velocity: How software excellence fuels business performance
Podcasts
What Levels does—and why
Inside Levels
