Culture

1. What culture means to us

At mendesaltaren we understand culture as shared beliefs, ideas and values. A common understanding of how to do design, how to work with clients and how to grow as a team. That's what we call culture.
For us, sharing values and ideas creates a sense of belonging and elevates the level of work. Culture is what binds people to the firm, what aligns individual goals with those of the studio.

2. Company philosophy

We come from pure design, from stripping away until we find "The best way", from looking for the most effective and simple solutions. Respecting the codes of our predecessors, we always seek to add a more emotional side to make our designs stand out and be more effective, more memorable.

We want to be a golden building in the middle of minimalist blocks, like the Fondazione Prada in Milan. One that respects the roots but gives 1% more.

This vision is reflected in our 5 working principles, which we keep in mind at all times:

• Rigor: is to commit ourselves both to the client and their problems as well as to the quality of the design and processes.

• Rebellion: is to understand and respect the codes in order to break them and embrace the changes of the ecosystem.

• Generosity: is to think of the group before the individual and to let ourselves be carried away by the desire to share as a way to grow.

• Essentialism: is to clear the noise and distractions of the context to reach the optimal solution.

• Honesty: is not hiding anything to clients or colleagues as a way to collaborate and grow in the fastest way.

We are a team of restless people, good communicators but above all good listeners who question the whys and wherefores of things and shy away from systematic execution. Generous team players who are driven by the desire to grow and constantly improve.

3. General ideas

Beyond our 5 working principles, our culture is nurtured by a series of core ideas.

1. High-performance team: We use the metaphor of the elite athlete to exemplify our vision. An athlete needs optimal conditions to excel, he is subjected to a high level of demand and thanks to this he manages to reach his best version. In the same way, we allocate a lot of resources to provide the best conditions so that each person in the team can shine and develop their maximum potential, confident that they will manage to stand out.
2. Group over individual: We believe in the importance of relationships. We look for team players. Bringing together our different skills, perspectives and experiences leads to higher levels of success and overcoming individual limitations.
3. Process = Work: At mendesaltaren we give equal importance to the process as to the work itself. Having an optimized and unified design process helps the different members of the team to focus better on the solutions, providing more value and making clients grow with us.

4. Experimentation & constant growth: Despite having a polished and worked process we do not take anything for granted. We understand that we live in a changing world that evolves, and therefore we also evolve with it. In the studio there is always an openness to learning. We experiment both in our work with clients as well as in our own process and methodology.

5. Shared language: In the studio we have many different types of people: different ages, nationalities, origins or cultures. We are open minded and find our common ground in our philosophy and our way of understanding our work & design. We are also all part of the internet culture in one way or another, so meme, shitposting and humor are always part of our conversations. We like to have fun working and these shared languages help us achieve that.

6. Horizontality & honesty: Although there are different levels of experience in the team members, we understand that no one is better than anyone else. We seek shared glory.There are no better or worse tasks, there are only necessary tasks, and that's why no one will fall off the rings if at some point we have to go down to the mud. When it comes to pushing, there are no hierarchies, only shoulders.

7. Responsibility, communication and freedom: Since the pandemic, we decided to become a fully remote team and, although many things changed, we had no trouble adapting to the new times thanks to these three pillars. We don't believe in working from 9 to 19, we do believe in people's independence and freedom. We believe that everyone can use their time freely and organize themselves as it works best for them, as long as they reach their goals and communicate efficiently.

8. Sharing with the community: We are aware of all that the design community gives us, and we want to give back part of what it has given us. Although generosity does not appear in the philosophy section, it is the sixth value of mendesaltaren. Generosity towards the inside, towards the other members of the team, and generosity towards the outside, towards the community. And this handbook is an example of it.

4. How culture fits into the studio structure

The studio is structured around three essential areas: the Productive Area, the Operational Area and the Satellite Areas; one of these Satellite Areas is in charge of promoting culture transversally throughout the studio to generate identity and create a positive work environment.

The culture department is always communicating with the People departments to ensure that its dynamics help the team grow, and with the Community Area to contribute and share in a unified way.

5. Dynamics: How we drive culture

There are a series of dynamics that help us to generate those spaces for sharing and that feeling of belonging, in addition to helping us to constantly improve and get to know the team better.

1. Summit: The four-monthly event in which we try to bring together all the people who make up the entire group of Modulor companies. Two virtual and two physical ones where the idea is to share and enjoy together.
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   Link to Medium
2. Demos: Weekly dynamics where we seek to show some of the work form different team members. We tend to learn the ins and outs of the different teams, processes of the company as a whole and extract lessons learned from a difficulty or challenge that we have faced. Sometimes we also do them just to get to know each other better and chat quietly among ourselves.
3. Mentoring: Internal dynamic that helps us to continue sharing knowledge and giving visibility of projects to other colleagues in the studio who are not directly involved. Each week the progress is reported to the " mentorees " so that they can learn from the project, provide feedback and be in contact with the team in case help is needed.

4. Retros: Monthly dynamics held on the first Friday of each month. A space where the team can talk honestly about the things that work best and worst for us on a daily basis. From them we get actionables that help us to polish details of processes, internal dynamics and project actions.

5. Modulor Newsletter: mendesaltaren is part of a group of companies called Modulor and to improve and encourage communication between companies we have created an internal newsletter where we share milestones, project progress and information to keep the whole team aligned.

6. Radio Button: The mendesaltaren podcast. This is another initiative dedicated to be in contact with the community and to be able to contribute and learn from it. A podcast in interview format with different people from both the industry and satellite sectors, recorded in our office in Madrid. The newest edition will be out in the Fall od 2024.
   
   Link Listen to RadioButton
7. Jueves Community: An community space in which we dedicate effort and attention. For now we have a newsletter where both we curate content and share reflections that help us grow.
8. Visual Cafecito: A new initiative that is growing within the studio. Every two weeks a member of the team informally tells us about the most visual part of one of the projects they have worked on to help us improve in this important aspect of our daily work.
9. Newcomers: An initiative that was created with the aim of making it easier to pass on the culture and all our processes to people who are new to the team. These consist on a series of sessions that are held and then recorded for anyone at the studio.

6. Evolution of our culture

We understand that the culture is evolving, we need to adapt to the changing times and the growing team. It is a constant work in progress and our way of adaptation is based on observing, communicating with the team and reflecting on how and where we want to be in the future.

Throughout the years, we have already experienced some events that have made us shape our culture and adjust our dynamics to improve the well-being of the team:

From a team of 2 to almost 60:

During the first three years of the company's life, the team has grown from 2 people to 12. The culture included going to the office in person and it was easy to be in total alignment on almost everything. From the fourth year onwards the company has grown to almost 60 people as well as working remotly. The culture has had to evolve and the team structures have also adapted to the new needs (especially in OPS). Having more independent and focused teams that can put at risk the sharing dynamics that are so natural for in-person teams, which has naturally led to generate projects such as the Demos or the Visual Cafecito. Also, the Summits were created to create a space to see the whole team in person at least twice a year.

COVID19 & remote culture:

When the pandemic started, we decided that we wanted to be a 100% remote company. We knew that the change was going to make everything more complicated but we also knew that it was going to be very enriching for the growth of the studio. The growth of the remote team meant more unique remote dynamics that aim us to connect in different ways.

Minimum Run and Modulor Ventures:

From 2020 we stopped being just mendesaltaren and Minimum Run was created, a Growth and NoCode agency focused on helping companies grow faster. That was just the beginning of the Modulor Ventures group, which was later joined by two other companies: Tailor Hub and NoCodeHackers.

This gradual change has challenged us to be able to coexist with other cultures in the same environment and to learn how to work together to keep delivering the same level of results. Some things that we have done was create joint Demos between companies, to align visions before working together on projects and above all, see each other the face-to-face during Summits.

The evolution continues and the challenges continue.