We’re all big fans of Manifesto’s workplace culture. It’s so light and laid back. According to one of our colleagues, a seasoned communications professional, this is the best place s/he has ever worked. We think that already says a lot about us. But we also know that there’s always room for improvement. After all, business is about progress, not perfection.
With all of that in mind, a group of Manifesto staff got together to propose what we identify as our company virtues, and then commit to living and working by those virtues rather than “values”. Our idea was enthusiastically received by our colleagues and senior staff, so we immediately got to work.
What we wanted to do was to place our virtues rather than our values at the heart of everything that we do at Manifesto. Personal values are a different thing, the other side of the coin. We all have values that shape our character and our actions. They are private and personal to us. They matter, unlike corporate values which can often be reduced to just empty buzzwords.
We’re not surprised that people are increasingly starting to talk about corporate virtues instead. Virtues have the power to resonate much more fully than values. At Manifesto, we firmly believe that our virtues say more about us than our values, because our virtues are based on facts.
When we set about identifying our virtues, we were surprised how easy it was. In addition to our earlier in-house experience in businesses, we also reflected on our experiences of other public relations agencies. Almost everyone here had worked at one or more agencies before joining Manifesto.
As our project progressed, the virtues that define what we do began to emerge and take shape. You can read more about them here.
The Manifesto team