Q1 2025 Product
We have a very exciting product launch coming in January/February. It’s a reinvention of something we’ve done in the past. 😀
We’ll of course restock your favorite knits in Q1 as well.
We’ve got the best merino pants! I can’t shout that loud enough. We’re so excited about our stretch canvas five pocket pant and our stretch twill chino pant. The fabric is amazing. I’ve been wearing my stretch canvas for 70+ days straight. 100 days straight, here we come! Snag your pair and join me with a 100 day challenge.
Values & Principles
Building culture in an organization with less than ten people is an organic process—you really don’t have to give it much thought. Now we’re at the size where building culture requires intention. What do I/we want the values of the company to be? How do we live those values in our everyday work lives?
Earlier this year, I initiated an organization-wide values exercise by asking each team to write out what they like about our current culture and what they feel is missing. I then created a 2,500 word Notion document using the team’s ideas and my own thoughts inspired by years of personal experiences, podcasts, movies, newsletters, TV shows, and X threads.
(Sidenote: We had been using our task management tool, Asana for documentation and recently switched to Notion for internal documentation. Game changer!)
One of my favorite moments as I explored company values came at an unlikely time. I got the flu a day after our second child was born and was exiled to an air mattress in the basement for a week! Luckily for my wife, we had family members traveling in to help during that period. I had time to burn, so I binge-watched season 9 of ALONE, the survival show where contestants self-document their experience. SPOILER ALERT: When the winner JP was interviewed, he said this:
Having a strong mission in life matters. It doesn’t matter where you come from, as long as you are passionate enough, you can be better than anyone else, if you’re obsessed like I am. It’s not easy, but it’s possible.
I couldn’t help being inspired especially considering that I was on my own week-long version of ALONE in the basement. Whether you're actually in a survival situation or just navigating the challenges of modern life, being purposeful and passionate go a long ways. I rewatched this clip multiple times. I may have shed some tears. 🤫
Below are some snippets from our Values & Principles document.
Core Principles
- Inspire the team. The quality of your work and output should inspire the team.
- Ownership mindset. Be proactive, take initiative, operate independently. Prioritize impactful, strategic work (generally the stuff that’s the hardest and easiest to procrastinate on). Work with a consistent, focused intensity. The company’s success is your success.
- Everyone is responsible for pushing projects and initiatives forward. Bias towards action.
- Good ideas can come from anywhere. Any division, any role. Inspiring quote from Mac’s great-great grandma in a letter to her son: “Dear Clarency – boy, you must be sure to keep your eyes wide open because opportunity lies in your shadow, lurks in your path and could be right in front of you or around the corner. You need to be alert to see what others cannot and grab hold the opportunity in your midst.”
- Each of us individually contributes to company culture each day, whether we realize it or not. Take pride in the vibe you’re bringing to the workplace. A company’s culture is the sum of the parts.
- Have fun. Work should be exciting. Obviously, it’s not sunshine and roses all day everyday, but work shouldn’t be something you dread.
Additional Principles
- Work is a vehicle for growth, community, and purpose. Embrace it and use it. Work doesn’t just impact career growth; but can help you become a better person.
- People (that’s you!) are the cornerstone of everything we do at Wool&Prince. We have high expectations for ourselves as an employer.
- Luck and success are intertwined. We can look successful after a lucky year or two. Success is consistent and exceptional performance over an extended period of time. Humility and hard work help us avoid the trap of conflating luck and skill.
- Humans are naturally risk-averse. We need to force ourselves to take calculated risks. Expect that some calculated risks won’t work out and that’s okay. Failure is failure, but it’s also a sign that we’re taking risks. Identify asymmetrical risk where there is an imbalance between the risk and the reward. “Risk tolerance is the scarcest resource in most companies.”
- Work/Life Balance. You can have it all, but not all at once. If you’re professionally ambitious and want to grow as much as possible, you will at times have to give something up. Just because you have to grind through a project and work nights/weekends for a week doesn’t mean you don’t have work/life balance. That grind is temporary. You can decompress when you’re finished. That being said, you can still be a successful team member working strictly 40 hour weeks, but the team member who puts in the extra effort when there’s an opportunity will likely grow faster.
Be the Best
- To be the best, you have to care immensely. Caring alone isn’t enough though; care needs to be coupled with discipline and curiosity. How effectively do you turn “giving a shit” into action? Skill is far less important than caring, discipline, intensity, and curiosity. Skill can be developed. “Ordinary people can choose to be extraordinary”.
- To care immensely, you have to be passionate about our mission. Are you excited about delighting the customer and launching beautiful product?
- “Everything around us was crafted by people not any smarter than us, but perhaps more driven by purpose.” - Steve Jobs
Ways of Working
- Clear written communication. Writing is more important now that we have a larger team and less all-hands meetings. Clear written communication breaks down complex decisions and processes into logical, digestible pieces.
- Over communicate. Someone will let you know if you’re over-communicating. (To Mac’s knowledge this still hasn’t happened since 2013 when Wool&Prince started.)
Customer Focus
- Customer obsession, but not every customer request needs to be acted on. Balance customer centricity with business needs.
- Don’t confuse customers with too many choices. What information do customers need? Can customers understand the differences between similar products? People are busy and have short attention spans.
- Everyone should shop our site with a critical eye. Look at spacing, links, photos, copy, etc. What could be better? We can’t forget that our website is how we present to EVERY SINGLE CUSTOMER.
Decision-Making and Strategic Thinking
- “Work expands to fill the time available for its completion” is a principle known as Parkinson's Law. I fear that as the team gets larger, big, long-term projects will not progress with speed or we’ll lose track of the why. Long-term projects need short term milestones and deadlines.
- Frame projects by asking what the ideal state looks like and make that your north star. It can be tempting to take the path of least resistance or make quick fixes, but sometimes things need a complete overhaul.
Career Growth
- Anticipate what your manager needs. Save your manager time by thinking deeply about your work. Ideally, your manager will set an example for thoroughness and thoughtfulness.
- Instead of asking your manager to make the decision or asking them how to do something, do the research and go to your manager with context, options, and an opinion.
Performance Culture
- We’re a team, not a family. We actively protect our culture and team quality. Zero tolerance for toxic or underperforming employees.
- If it doesn’t work out here, that’s okay. You’re going to be alright and we’re going to be alright.
Writing all this down is the easy part. Living and acting on the values is the hard part.
As I make decisions and collaborate with the team, our values trigger in the back of my mind. Sometimes, I’ll say “this is one of our values” and try to use the situation as an example. I also try to evaluate my actions in regards to how they align with our values. 100% alignment is the unattainable goal. How close can I get? Every time there is misalignment, it’s an opportunity for learning.
These values are second nature to me, but I wrote the document and founded the company. How do these values become second nature for the entire team? I’m not entirely sure, but I do know that reading the document once or twice isn’t going to get the job done. The values need to be part of our everyday work experience.
Three immediate applications for our Values & Principles document are recruiting, onboarding, and employee development. Already this year, one team member wrote their annual review self-evaluation using our values to frame the conversation. Another idea would be to have a Values & Principles workshop at our company retreat where team members share some of their projects and relate them to our Values & Principles.
Seeing others value what we value
I love to see and hear things that reinforce our values:
the people that give a shit are the ones that succeed pic.twitter.com/M03nbgvaEa
— Patrick Millegan (@pmillegan) December 2, 2024
We don’t have comment functionality enabled on our site at the moment, so feel free to email me at mac at woolandprince .com or find me on x at macbishop4 if you have any thoughts or questions. Happy Holidays!
A few photo highlights
Jeonju, Korea historical village
Korean factory visit
Bike commute ❤️
Family selfie
