Andela’s EPIC Values

In this post, I will be explaining what I understand by the EPIC values at Andela. I believe that if someone can apply these values to their daily life (not just in professional life, but also in personal life), they will be able to achieve success in even the biggest goals they set for themselves.

Excellence

With this life approach, I aspire to be the best possible version of myself. I know that my work is a representation of who I am, and I hold everything I do and everyone I interact with to the highest standards. I am a lifelong learner who strives for mastery of my craft.

In my opinion, excellence is a daily commitment. It means that you take every new day as a chance to keep improving your life.

In order to keep improving, you need to be able to look back to yesterday and see what things you did wrong, and what areas of your life need improvement. After taking a look back, you need to ask yourself: “What can I do today so that I am better than I was yesterday?”, and then you need to take steps to do the things that will answer this question. If you can do this on a daily basis (or even weekly depending on how fast you like to move), you can safely consider yourself to be on the journey to excellence.

Passion

With this life approach, I believe I can change the world and I act accordingly. I constantly seek to inspire and to be inspired. I approach every goal with unwavering energy and conviction; I embody grit and persistence.

I believe that passion is mental state (or emotion) where someone has a very strong belief in something or someone. A person with passion for their work has a strong belief that their work is meaningful and impactful. This passion will lead them to enjoy going to work everyday, and even on days when they don’t feel like working, they will persist as much as possible because they know that their work is valuable.

Integrity

With this life approach, I live in accordance with my values. I know that all I do is a reflection of the values I profess. I embrace the added responsibility of leading by example, and want others to hold me accountable. I know Integrity is everything I say and everything I do which is a true reflections of what I value and what is important to me.

I view integrity as a life skill where someone acts according to their beliefs and values. Most people form their beliefs and values from their family life as they grow from childhood. To have integrity means that as someone grows up, they continue to act in a way that is in line with the good/progressive values that they picked up during their growth into adulthood.

Collaboration

With this life approach, I will be able to have a greater impact by joining forces with others. I will know how to effectively collaborate with individuals from different backgrounds, with different beliefs and personalities, in order to achieve our goals.

From personal experience, I have learnt that: for anything to have a big impact in the community, it cannot be done by a single person. It needs to be the work of a team. Through collaboration, knowledge can be shared among people, making it possible for people to connect this shared knowledge with their existing knowledge resulting in creation of new ideas. Collaboration also helps to save time by division of the work load.

In project work, for example, it is extremely hard for one person to do all the tasks required to fully complete a large project that will be used my many people all over the country. This is because such a project requires a team with various areas of expertise bringing their skills together to complete the different tasks, with each task needing different types of knowledge and skills to be completed.