ACCESS TO BREAKTHROUGH PERFORMANCE

The core values that we co-created in 2010 have been a foundation of our performance. Those five core values were Integrity, Responsibility, Communication, Leadership and Results. Occasionally we renamed them or tweaked them, but the core themes of these core values have persisted in our corporate culture, becoming the context in which we operate. The 2015 version of our core values was the basis for a cartoon, Babies Vs. Aliens, which has received 120,000 views on YouTube.

Our core values don’t exist for us as aspirations, but rather as guidelines that shape our behaviors and actions. When applied thoroughly, these core values reliably lead to strong performance and results.

Meanwhile, we maintain Integrity and Responsibility as foundational principles that we expect from our whole team. By integrity, we mean that we honor our word and we are reliable, operating from a shared commitment for everything to work. By responsibility, we mean that we see ourselves as the cause rather than the effect. In other words what we say and do will impact the end result, in contrast with being passive, hoping, waiting or giving reasons or explanations for why we can’t deliver the results to which we have committed ourselves.

As we were rolling out our core values and practicing applying them from 2009 onwards, many of our investee companies noticed the change that happened within Mekong Capital – how our team members had become much more powerful and effective, and they wanted something similar for their own companies.

Most notably, MobileWorld was able to transform its culture over a single year. Starting with the strong commitment of the five co-founders of Mobile World, they cascaded down to build a culture of integrity and customer focus. And this culture still runs very deep in Mobile World, being embodied by its 65,000+ employees. Many other companies in Vietnam were inspired by the model of MobileWorld, and took action to build strong cultures of their own.  

Some of our investee companies had a view that the core values were outside of their urgent priorities – they would get around to them eventually. Often, employees had the view that the core values were aspirational, or for marketing purposes, not that it was their job to apply the core values in their actions at work every day.

• Effective core values must be actionable behaviors that lead to performance and results in the business the company operates (not aspirations or feelings). 
• Applying the core values starts at the top, first with the CEO and then the senior leaders. They must be models of the core values before anyone else will apply them. 
• People discover the core values by practicing them in their real work, not from watching presentations or receiving motivational talks. 
• When the core values are alive, they exist in the network of conversations, people will refer to them to shape their perspective on whatever they are dealing with, especially when facing challenges.