The Power of Trust, Curiosity, and Clarity .

In a recent interview with TechSverige I shared that “as a new leader, it’s all about building trust”. When I joined Epical just over a year ago, it was clear that we had a huge opportunity to strengthen employee engagement and rebuild trust across the organization. It became a priority to reconnect with our people and create a shared sense of direction and vision.

Virtues are the guiding light

The starting point for a profitable healthy business is engaged and committed employees, and that can be achieved through increasing clarity, transparency and openness throughout the organisation. With the belief that everyone wants to do a good job, it’s important to empower employees to be able to do so, to value the curiosity to learn more, to find new ways but also to guide through feedback and expectations of accountability. Epical’s virtues (curiosity, empowerment, empathy and accountability) are our guiding lights, the virtues describe who we want to be and how we want to act as an organisation. And we want to be an organisation that cares for each other and the world, that tries to understand and show empathy.

How do we ensure that the company’s culture and mission stay strong as we scale? It comes back to clarity. We need to be very clear and aware of what our culture is in order to succeed in scaling. Knowing who we are, who we want to be and to continuously foster that mindset, to make sure all new joiners with the organisation are given the platform to fully understand how they can be part of the culture and support the mission. And, of course, to continuously work with ourselves in evolving, making changes when needed to support our core virtues. This is done through small initiatives such as internal communications, training our managers and making sure we have a climate where feedback is appreciated and acted upon.

Our expertise is data

The IT-industry will continue to develop and evolve, driven by the fast technological developments. At the same time, we’re becoming more mature as an industry, we’re more stable as organisations and we’re an integral part of any business. This creates the expectation that IT is an important and natural part of any initiative in all organisations, and we will see more of a segmentation in the industry where specialisation is a key competitive factor.

What sets Epical apart is the fact that we are experts on data, we are not generalists. And if IT is seen as a competitive factor for all industries (it is), data is core in realising that competitive factor. As a consultancy, we are the sum of all our employees, and success is created by making sure we all have the knowledge, platform and mandate to act in our respective roles.

Going back to the beginning, you’re probably thinking what is the status regarding our employee satisfaction. The measurements show that we have employees who are happy, engaged, feel trust in the future and are happy to act as ambassadors for Epical. That’s what I call a true competitive edge.

Märit Sareyko, CEO, Epical

Curious to read more about Märit's reflections after her first year as CEO of Epical? Check out her recent interview with TechSverige.