The years of “hustling,” “toe-stepping,” and “principled confrontation” are officially over at Uber. The company’s historically problematic list of 14 core values has been scrapped by the company’s new CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi. In their stead, Khosrowshahi offers a crafted list of a newer, nicer Uber. Khosrowshahi published the new values in a post on LinkedIn earlier on Tuesday.
From LinkedIn:
We build globally, we live locally. We harness the power and scale of our global operations to deeply connect with the cities, communities, drivers and riders that we serve, every day.
We are customer obsessed. We work tirelessly to earn our customers’ trust and business by solving their problems, maximizing their earnings or lowering their costs. We surprise and delight them. We make short-term sacrifices for a lifetime of loyalty.
We celebrate differences. We stand apart from the average. We ensure people of diverse backgrounds feel welcome. We encourage different opinions and approaches to be heard, and then we come together and build.
We do the right thing. Period.
We act like owners. We seek out problems and we solve them. We help each other and those who matter to us.
We persevere. We believe in the power of grit. We don’t seek the easy path. We look for the toughest challenges and we push. Our collective resilience is our secret weapon.
We value ideas over hierarchy. We believe that the best ideas can come from anywhere, both inside and outside our company. Our job is to seek out those ideas, to shape and improve them through candid debate, and to take them from concept to action.
We make big bold bets. Sometimes we fail, but failure makes us smarter. We get back up, we make the next bet, and we GO!
Some of these new “norms” aren’t that different from the old Uber. “Big bold bets” has long been a tenet of the ride-hailing company. And “ideas over hierarchy” feels similar, if less aggressive, to “meritocracy and toe-stepping.” But the concept of valuing the “right thing,” rather than the thing that best benefits Uber, is very much new. Now, we’ll see if they mean it.
