Hello Players

You probably came out of the interview thinking to yourself one of two things. Whether you just found your lifetime opportunity or you need more time to realize what just happened. No worries, We understand.

It's unusual to have such an interview where morals are valued over technicality. We have been there. And that’s why we made this book to help you out in your first few months inside Baianat since we do things slightly different than most companies and you probably have noticed that. But let us walk you through the things that might get your attention or concern you on day one.

Our business side

In the business world, we are known as a multidisciplinary company with +10 years of field experience. Working across design, business, development and technology on projects that are driven by business strategy and branding. 

So formal right? We hate to be called this too.

We love to think of ourselves as a team of passionate members who embrace innovation and authenticity in all aspects. We aim to boosting humanity through solutions that add to people's life and impact their life style. 

Baianat has been always self-funded and is currently a mother company for +20 brands working in different industries. The beginning of the ventures idea was when we realized there is a lot we can give to the business field. We also considered our ventures value to the customers and how it could help in escalating their business size.

Meanwhile, we wanted to enhance our teams experience by working on different projects and entering new markets. Some of our ventures are launched already while others are still under development. And yes you can work on any of these ventures if you like to ;)

Pick your fight

Since Baianat is following a Holacracy structure and fostering a culture of freedom, you won’t be told which team to join, or what career to peruse. It’s your choice and up to you to decide what you would like to spend your time doing with us.

In Baianat, we believe everyone should be doing the thing they love the most and fuels their passion. So if you ever felt like your career or role is not the thing that would make you wake up everyday and do your best, raise a flag and let's discuss over it. Because we need more innovators not more repeaters.

The family 

We are 50+ members playing with passion for almost 8 hours a day. We are energetic and all over the place! We are strong believers and enthusiastic fans of our club. Yet we cheer for the nice moves as well ;)

The family concept might seem a little cheesy at first, but trust us, we are like those really cool families. We don't just support each other in work life, but also we enjoy our time outside the office and have gatherings where we share stories or throw birthday parties.

And like all families we might have conflicts and disagreements, but as long as they yield clear decisions, we will be welcoming them.

Our values

Authenticity

We choose to be ourselves and do things that represent who we are as humans. Things that we can be proud of and remembered for. We maintain authenticity in the way we learn, work and with our clients. We believe that each great chef has his own recipes and we have the fearless heart needed for being great chefs. 

Credibility

We believe that building credibility requires doing something great and influential that people get impressed of and give you the pass ticket for. Credibility means building trust. It takes only one lie to knock down all the bridges. So why promising and not fulfilling while we can maintain silence and let our actions speak for us.

Transparency

We have no secrets. Anyone can know everything about any project or situation the company is going through. If the project is a whole mess and someone told you lie to the client, go tell the client the truth in details.

Short term vs. long term goals 

No one will be telling you what to do or how to do it. Unless you're working on a project with other team members, you will be setting your own goals for both the long term and short term. This might seem like a huge responsibility. And it is actually. As we don't have this kind of formal or traditional structure, it's up to you to spend your time in the way that best matches with the whole project team.

You have to master the art prioritization and always refer to the time management matrix by Stephen R. Covey. Where the things that should be done are not the important- urgent stuff, but the important-not urgent stuff.

For example, we expect you to give enough time for planning your day and do that the night before, so you could come the next day with fresh mind, have an hour in the kitchen for breakfast then start with your big target for the day immediately. 

Every project or task in our hands is important. That's what we tell ourselves as not to fall victim for procrastination or laziness. We understand that projects will take time, but your sense of urgency will definitely be lower for a three months project. And in our peruse of getting things done, we believe in short term goals. This way you can measure your progress and have KPIs for every projects. So when you don't make progress daily or weekly, you can go back to review your plans and have goals.

This way, you will not be only able to estimate the time needed for every project and reporting to the client and project management, but also will be better managing your time and resources. Instead of leaving everything for the chances you will getting chunks done per sprint. Also, you will be able to test your speed and how fat you're learning to do things.

Catch the advice

Well, we are multidisciplinary, which means that there are a lot of teams inside with lots of perspectives, ideas and points of views. Try to utilize that by hearing and getting into conversations. But don't get affected by the current opinions and take it as axioms.

You are the stakeholder of the idea. In case you were so in doubt, pull more people into the conversation and test your assumptions. Don't be a stubborn or let go of your idea that easily. If you found that others logic is better, test it and see where that might take you. Eventually, we are all acting in the best interest of Baianat so whatever advice you her, it's different out of experience and genuine concern.

No one controls your decision. But bear in mind that others might have insights or data that's new for you. And when deciding your course of action, make sure that it matches the end user needs.

Stay scientific 

Through our experience, we found that assumptions, intuition and unproven theories can be harmful for our business. That's why we try as much as possible to keep the talks scientific and quote from books. Whenever you encounter a new challenge, go search, read a book or ask a team mate about a resource where you can read further on the topic.

Staying scientific helps us measure and predict the results as well. However, we don't pour what we learned in books into the real world randomly. We study everything carefully and adjust the solution in book into our case.

It is also part of our social responsibility. As awareness is our mission, we are committed to spreading knowledge and making sure that people get to learn the right way.

Respect the freedom

You were born with a freewill, so who we are to place you in a cage?

Since day one, you are free to talk, meet, email and have launch with anyone on the team. Even if you don't know their names.

Bring your whole self with you everyday to Baianat. This could mean getting your headphones on banging out to German metal, using the white board power for ideation sessions, or have having your favorite mid day snacks while doing some testing. Find the habits that gets you productive and stick to it as long as you're not making anyone else uncomfortable.

Whatever it is, it’s cool.

What you do should speak for itself. It doesn't matter how much you spend because we don't race to be the first in the morning. And it's definitely not a last man standing battle where you have to stay in the office till 12:00 am. Your output is what matters.

Generalists

There are many ways to describe someone experience or skill set. Some might be an "I-Shaped", and those are the people who have an expertise in one field and always digging deeper for more information and knowledge in it. Others might be "T-shaped", which means they have knowledge in lots of fields, yet they merge it all and focus to support one major field expertise they have.In Baianat, we are the latter.

We learned that trying to do everything is extremely exhausting and leads to having mediocre results. That's why we stopped trying to be all the roles, yet never stopped learning about the different fields. In Baianat, UX team will study content writing to validate the copy experience, while the business team, should have light info about the development technologies and languages in order to select the one that best matches the client budget and the customer needs. Everything is connected and adopting a multidisciplinary style is making things more logical.

We are generalists, even in our fields of expertise. So you can find a course or a book in your track that might not be directly related to your role, however, it will impact your way of thinking and help you better communicate with the whole team. Being generalists makes it also easy for us to cover up for each other when someone is on a vacation or when there' s an over load in the production line. Words like " it's not in my job description" or " I wasn't hired to do that" are things that we never say.