Values in action

0:03 Welcome to business purpose and clarity with petri I'm your host we talk about startup life insights practical tips mistakes failures and everything between the last few weeks have been really good examples and tests to those values and how do you practice them in action it is said that companies should be a political they should not take standing on current affairs because that could isolate and divide their customer base I then do agree to an extent but there are cases the latest russian invasion to ukraine is one of them where inaction is an action it's very clear where the.

1:09 The right side of this war in reality is if you're not taking sides or you are completely ignoring what's happening because this a really big thing the biggest military escalation in europe after the world war this is an exceptional event which will shape a lot of things in the future as well and if you're not doing anything in times like these people will remember I will just show you a few examples what I have found and discovered and observed after the russian invasion started let's take an example of a company called fatser they are in russia they are providing to the saint petersburg which is one of the biggest cities in russia.

2:11 Almost 40 percent of the daily stable bread and other bakery goods and for that area they are a large company reputable company in finland they've been operating over 100 years and they made a statement in the beginning of march that they considered their service so that is humanitarian keep on providing and keep on being in the business in most of the companies have already announced that they will or cancel the operations they will withdraw totally from the russian market it took less than 24 hours for the company in this particular case fatser to reverse the position.

3:15 They started to get a lot of angry customer feedback and saying that they actually supporting the russian invading military that they are actually in enabling this wall without going too much into the politics without going too deeply into the discussion now there are explaining an excuse in well they wanted to do this decision earlier but it was not possible but yet after 24 hours it was possible to do the right decision the damage you do staying on the fence the damage you do by not doing anything can sometimes be a real big thing but I think even more worrisome thing is that why did you not react in the.

4:19 First place by doing the hard thing because that is what it is if you've been building your business for years if you've been putting a lot of resources you have a good thing going it is obvious that you don't want to give it away you don't want to admit that political geopolitical risk you took materialized and that's what it is you took risk and it materialized but you are slow to admit it has these are things which really test your values where whether you're putting the money maybe the rational side maybe the cognitive dissonance that you explaining yourself that it's not really that bad maybe this goes away maybe you can wait.

5:24 From the right thing to do the right answers in your business in these situations but I think the important thing is that you have values you have a purpose and you are willing to make quick decisions you are willing to commit and do things when they matter even more importantly it takes a lot of bravery to show initiative and be the first to do something and not just stand and wait others to make the lead and then you follow values are something what you do when somebody is not looking when nobody is looking you do it because that's who you are and so that's how your business is another related issue is how can you actually help donating money some are.

6:32 Donating a lot of money like I saw giving almost at least 150 million to the course let's take an example I think this has been done at least partly but it's just a good example that if you have a you may not need to donate money if you can actually provide the service well elon musk sent the starlink and activated in ukraine that's a really good example you can do it with your product telco operators made the calls within in and out of ukraine free of charge they enabled roaming free of charge and and this is a good example where your product has a utility this is important valuable and and you can do that because otherwise people need to spend.

7:35 The donation money to to buy the services from you so sometimes it's not that hard to do the right thing but I think the important distinction is but do you actually really want to help or do you just want to do the signaling so that you do something because that's what you're supposed to do.