The making of Linqia's top five values

The vision of our co-founder Christopher Pommerening - a fellow EO member, is for Barcelona to become the entrepreneurial hub for ambitious new startups. Part of this vision included Linqia serving as a case study for how to create the ideal successful company without all the pitfalls and obvious mistakes he's seen time and again.

To kick off this process we invited our team of 9 Linqia Stars to experience a weekend retreat like no other. The aim was to ensure total alignment amongst the team in respect to what Linqia is, why was Linqia created, our company values and our top five priorities.

We invited one of the most talented strategic facilitators JC Duarte to share the weekend in El Convent in the Costa Brava last weekend with our team (Daniela, Andi, Edwina, Christian, Sven, Jean Michelle, Marco and me).

The process of creating the company values is a simple and extraordinary experience. JC asked each team member to share the qualities of a 'Linqia Star' and the qualities of a 'Black Hole'. We shared words which reflected people we'd like to work with (team member, supplier, clients, investor, etc) and people we wouldn't want to work with.



As you can see, it's quite a long list! The process which follows is to ensure that each undesired trait is listed in the desired list (the black words). Once the 'Best Linqia Star' list is finalised, we narrowed down the list grouping similar traits - for example caring, kind and warm could be grouped under the word 'Empathetic'. Narrowing the list to 13 traits and then voted each on our top five.

The outcome? We look for Linqia stars who are Passionate, Team Player, Authentic, Resourceful, Fun and Healthy.