RW Supply+Design is a service company, supplying and supporting flooring professionals to do good work, and to help everyone find their perfect floor, all for a greater purpose. That purpose is what this blog is dedicated to.
We operate in the flooring industry, but the reason we exist goes much deeper than our daily tasks. Helping orphaned and abandoned children is the heart of why we do what we do. There is great need and great opportunity for us to contribute to the lives of children in need.
There are over 153 million children orphaned around the world. Additionally, there are 168 million child laborers and 263 million children unable to attend school, causing generational poverty and child abandonment issues that last for generations.
UNICEF
Why We Exist
We are working for the day every child has a home.
We’re fulfilling this mission through four areas of focus:
- Homes for abandoned children
- Adoption grants
- Family preservation
- Education opportunities
We partner with organizations that are highly effective in the work they do with children and families in some of the most difficult areas around the world.
The RW Supply+Design Culture
So, what do we mean when we talk about our culture?
Merriam-Webster defines “culture” as:
“The set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution or organization.”
Merriam-Webster
We think this definition works well and encompasses most of what we mean when we talk about “our culture”. It is partly why we exist, it is our core values, our accidental values, our aspirations, our attitudes and partly our corporate personality.
In anthropological terms, there are some general components of culture which include: meaning, values, behaviors, mores, laws, rituals, traditions, language and symbology. We chose to use some of these “buckets” to help categorize all the different facets of the RW culture.
The foundation of our culture will always be our purpose, our values, and our behavior. These things will never change. Beyond that, each layer allows for increasing freedom, creativity, and response to changing market conditions. We need to always be firmly committed to our foundation and ensure that certain elements of our culture can adapt and endure.
The RW Culture Deck
A tool we use to document our culture and encourage culture conversations is our boxed deck of cards that cover each of the culture buckets above. Every manager and team leader is responsible for using the RW Culture Deck to start these conversations with their team. We track these conversations and use them as a lead metric for our strategic goal to foster healthy culture throughout our organization.