Culture should always be a top priority for any company of any size, and it’s always the hardest thing to get right. We’ve been very fortunate to have started with a great culture at the very beginning of our company’s life and to have kept it over the last 4 years. The most important ingredient is the great people we have here in our Sonatus family. But, as any company continues to grow, it becomes harder and harder to maintain.
All of us have worked at companies with many dysfunctions so the contrast is compelling when you have the right recipe that enables success. We have a good thing going, and we want to keep it that way. So we’ve been thinking a lot lately about how we do that, and the most obvious place to start is looking at how we got here. It came down to four critical elements. These are not invented ideas, nor things we aspire to be, but rather these reflect what we already are doing every day that is helping us succeed:
- We lead future innovation
- We drive for customer success
- We execute on our commitments
- We practice inclusive collaboration
Those four values capture what it’s like to work at Sonatus and I’d like to take a few minutes to explain why we find them so important
We lead future innovation. Staff, especially our many engineers, have a choice about where they work and we know they care about the impact they make. We believe our commitment to innovation makes coming to work at Sonatus an inspiring choice for our staff, and we are seeing the fruits of that innovation on a daily basis.
We drive for customer success. We cannot be successful unless we make our customers successful. That takes persistence because we’re solving hard problems. It also means we have to understand our customers, their needs, and how we complement their teams. And “drive” is indeed an intentional double meaning because, yes, we’re all about vehicle technology but also we have to drive ahead to solve problems that achieve our customers’ goals.
We execute on our commitments. Businesses only succeed when they keep their promises. This couldn’t be more true in automotive, where design cycles are long and missed deadlines can jeopardize massive projects and delay production. We pride ourselves on strong execution and delivering on our milestones, but we do it in a fun environment where everyone loves to win and everyone celebrates our on-time deliveries.
We practice inclusive collaboration. Our team is composed of talented individuals with diverse backgrounds, education, languages, cultures, and even some vivid hair colors! We recognize that we are better for it because these diverse ideas make us better. But diversity only works if you listen and respect the wide range of ideas in an inclusive way. We do, and we collaborate in a way that gets us the best ideas by ensuring everyone is included.
We are proud of these values and when you hear from our people you will find they are true to who we are. It’s on this last topic that today we are launching a new, ongoing, series of videos where you can do exactly that: hear from the people of Sonatus. Every week we will share with you a story of Sonatus people talking about what makes them tick, what inspires them, and why they love being at Sonatus.
It has a simple name, but a bold meaning: We are Sonatus.
You can find episodes of this series on our YouTube channel and on our LinkedIn feed. We hope you will subscribe and follow us where you’ll find not only this series but many more technical and business resources sharing more about Sonatus and the technologies we deliver.
Jeff Chou
CEO & Co-founder
Sonatus
contact@sonatus.com