The Gradient Way

The purpose of this document is to lay out, to the best of our ability, the Gradient Way to working collaboratively. The Gradient Way is both a mindset and a specific orientation to how one approaches any task. We like to think that our success is due to everyone striving to adopt the Gradient Way, which—yes—sounds a tad cultish. But like any good cult will tell you, a shared paradigm is kinda essential to achieving shared objectives. Creepy but effective.

At Gradient we start any task or project with a vision for the final product, and work backwards to create that product through a robust spec process. During the spec process we outline and agree to as many elements of a project as possible before its execution. This is The Gradient Way and our approach sets clear expectations, limits surprises, and ensures value. We acknowledge “The Gradient Way” doesn’t come naturally to everyone and recognize many new hires will experience growing pains as they adapt to this process. As a result, we’re not afraid to over communicate among ourselves or with our clients.

Below you will find the “What” and “Why” of each Gradient Way element. Employees understand why we do things the way we do and why getting on board the Gradient Way “train” will be uncomfortable; it is created that way for a reason.

Real world examples of these elements in action are available in the Gradient Way Example Library.

We want to create a company that does research better than the norm and we are betting that The Gradient Way is a better way to do it.

We acknowledge that not everyone is well suited to The Gradient Way, and that is perfectly fine. We identify those who are amenable to it during the interview process and orient new hires to it during their onboarding period. This is by design.

It should feel extremely gratifying to have worked through the discomfort and come out the other side with a unified perspective and set of skills with which to work in The Gradient Way.

Sorting out how to get on board the Gradient Way “train” in a way that works for you. This is how resilient humans learn.

Struggle helps us learn where our expertise really lies, how our expertise complements each other, and who in the company is the best for certain kinds of feedback for improvement of deliverables.

You may be uncomfortable, but very supported in working through any discomfort. Learning is hard—we know that, and are here to make it as constructive as it can be.

Taking responsibility for whatever needs to be done in order to make the client / project / company successful.

You never say / think “that’s not my fault” and are always working towards how you could have improved the situation.

Communicating clearly throughout the production process of any kind of deliverable by spec’ing and utilizing feedback reduces chances of miscommunication, deliverable errors, and wasted time.

We take the organization and structure of how we communicate our thoughts very seriously because we’ve been burned many times through poor communication, which in most cases can be avoided with a little extra thought.

Start from the end by thinking about how a deliverable (of any kind) will actually be implemented.

Rather than just plowing ahead, really take the time to put in writing what the deliverable needs to do. Now only what you want it to do, but what the end user will do with it.

https://hbr.org/1985/05/backward-market-research

Anticipating someone else’s needs before they even know the need exists.

This gives the impression that:

• We have an intimate understanding of the decision that needs to be made (aka their business case).
• We value their time and are proactive partners in helping them use our deliverables.
• We’re attentive.
• We are designing the output with the end user in mind (aka empathy) and not ourselves.

If we were not empathetic, then we would just send the results and feel good that we checked something off our to-do list. Instead, we send the results AND make them immediately more valuable by explaining questions we know they will have because we have put ourselves in the end users' perspective.

Everyone at Gradient will get a lot of feedback. There is no other way to grow professionally without feedback, but we have a specific way to go about it so that it’s constructive.

Feedback is how team members calibrate their performance to match expectations. It may be overwhelming at first, but we really try to view feedback as a gift, not a judgment.

Feedback will come in a very structured form, ideally in writing. This is to ensure that there is no ambiguity around the substance of the feedback, and it serves as a reference point to assess progress.

Your feedback is a gift to the recipient. We transparently build our products and service our products so everyone feels empowered to speak up when they see something that can be done better, even if they are not directly approached.

Everyone’s voice has equal value, we want to hear your thoughts and opinions. You never know when your feedback will create improvement of a process or deliverable.

There is no ceiling to improvements, both for the company and as individuals. We embody a paradigm that is always looking for improvement big or small—not to do so from the motivation of blame, but rather from one of collective betterment.

Principle No. 5: Are obsessed with constant improvement: Individually, we are always looking to learn new techniques and develop valuable skill sets. We proactively seek feedback to improve our collective performance.

We can use our minds on the high value-add work, less wasted time!

Everything of value needs to be documented, from client communications to meeting notes to putting in writing the most complicated of analyses.

As a remote team, the way that we collaborate relies on documentation.

If everyone at Gradient was hit by a beer truck tomorrow, someone could view our documentation and pick up right where we left off. Without a record of these things, they don’t really matter.