As we reach our 6 year anniversary, as the Vice President of People at Nautilus Labs, I’ve been thinking a lot about who we are and what we stand for at Nautilus Labs. Of course, we are collectively mission-driven. We know there is a sustainable future for the shipping industry ahead and we know we are driving that change with every client conversation and every line of code written. We’re also strongly values-aligned. As a maritime technology company, it may not surprise you that our values – Thoughtful, Inclusive, Direct, and Empathetic – spell out TIDE. What probably does surprise you is that we talk about our values every single day. They so clearly embody our culture that you will regularly hear crew members refer to things as either High Tide or Low Tide because the meaning is easily and commonly understood across the business.
With this clear identity and purpose, growth at Nautilus has been relatively straightforward. With the team more than doubling in size in the last year, we realized we needed to connect the dots from our values and mission to how we operate. How do we do what we do? What is the High Tide path to a decarbonized ocean supply chain? With these questions in mind, we took a direct and inclusive approach, through shared feedback sessions, and determined the 6 Operating Principles of Nautilus Labs:
We are one team – we win together, we fail together.
We empower each other with thoughtfully shared information, making sure everyone has the insights they need to succeed. We communicate trade-offs, hard decisions, and deadlines directly and we trust each team to make decentralized decisions and deliver on their responsibilities. We always assume positive intent. Where we see a problem, we solve a problem.
We drive toward a decarbonized ocean supply chain by leading with a client-first mentality.
We know that changing minds can take time and changing priorities can take even longer. We are on a journey with our clients to align industry priorities between planet and profit, to maximize environmental outcomes through economic efficiency. Our shared commitment is to proactively make an impact on sustainability globally, bringing carbon reduction to the conversation and making it a business priority.
We prioritize speed to value above all else.
Iteration is key to our success and we will not let perfect be the enemy of good. Our goal is to provide value to our clients today, take their feedback, and then quickly iterate to provide even more value tomorrow.
We strive for continuous improvement with a culture based in learning.
Transparency is foundational to our ability to learn, and intellectual curiosity is our greatest strength in growth. We seek to learn, adapt, and improve through education, development and feedback, to better our people, processes and product. We embrace growth as individuals, teams, and a business.
We are empowered to have personal boundaries to be our best selves.
For life at Nautilus to be “also fun” (AF!), we have to enjoy life outside of Nautilus. On this voyage together, like sailors on a ship, everyone takes “one hand for themselves.” This means that while we have one hand on deck, working hard to achieve our mission, we also make time and space for the things that are important in our personal lives and for our own wellness.
We find strength in diversity.
We are a global team working together in a global industry and recognize the importance of diverse perspectives in achieving our goals. Everyone belongs at Nautilus Labs.
Knowing who we are and how we work together, has strengthened the crew and will catapult us into our shared vision for a carbon-free future. If you want to see more about Nautilus Labs and our culture, peek over to our Instagram, where we’ll be sharing what the Operating Principles mean to some of our crew members over the next several weeks.
