Culture

At Shane Co. we take pride in what we do.  We try very hard to act ethically, openly and honestly, and we try to always abide by the “Golden Rule.”  We always attempt to see both sides of the equation, whether with a customer, a diamond vendor, or each other.  Even with all of this, I think I am most proud of the culture we try to establish within our company.

Culture is a very difficult thing to establish, and even harder to maintain.  It is tough enough to do in a home, much less an office building with over 100 people in it, but it becomes most tricky trying to maintain a consistent culture across a country, and even across an ocean, in our case, in our Bangkok merchandise facility.  For us, however, it is central in running our business properly.

We operate our business much differently than most companies I know of and our company philosophy reflects that differentiation.  First, my father and I share an office, even though there is an empty office space right across the hall from us.  Although this can become distracting, and frankly a bit annoying at times for either one of us, it is the best way to maintain our fingers on the companies’ pulse, as closely as we can, at all times, always staying close to what’s going on in each other’s worlds.  Our office has an all glass front to it.  No blinds, no locks on our doors, and completely transparent to anyone who walks by.  This is a literal way of showing that our doors are always open, to anyone, at any time.

I decided to take this one step further last week, and made our literal doors virtually open to the entire company worldwide, via the internet.  I had a tool built whereby any employee can jump on our internal intranet portal and fill out a feedback form that gets sent directly to Tom, myself, or any member of our leadership team that they choose.  While we of course have company-wide email that can accomplish a similar task via a more commonly used method, this form has pre-filled options of topic matters such as:  “Make a Recommendation,” “Raise an Issue,” or “Identify an Opportunity.”  Furthermore, one can choose to list which store they’re writing from, and who they are, or they can elect to remain totally anonymous.  We’ve built it so it’s untraceable as to who is writing us, should anonymity be desired.  Already in its infantile stages of existence, it is paying off dividends, thanks to our open and honest team members, and thanks to our open culture setting precedent that it is not only ok to give us feedback, but it is desired.

We truly believe that the only way to hear the truth is to be open to listening to it.  Best of all, we want to hear how our employees feel about any topic matter, big or small, good or bad.  My father always said to me growing up that, “When an ostrich sticks its head in the sand, (blinding itself from the world around it) there’s another part of its anatomy that is exposed.”  If we have anything coming at us, I for one would rather see it before feeling it.