Since 2015, we have been building the world’s first and only AI-powered marketplace for indirect sourcing, a mission we believe will transform the world of procurement. While many factors and functions have played important roles in Globality’s success to date, the power of our approach to engineering has had an outsized impact on our progress. Through this blog, we want to share what we have learned about the people, process, and technology domains of our discipline with those who might benefit from our learnings, and to engage with the world in ways that will help us continue to push the boundaries of what’s possible.

I am extremely proud of the engineering organization we have built together at Globality, and particularly proud of the talent, persistence, and passion each member of the team brings to their work. We are driven by a common purpose, and we succeed, at least in part, due to the shared context of our values. Globality’s founders (Joel Hyatt and Lior Delgo) did many things right when laying Globality’s foundation; one of the most crucial was establishing our values and enabling us to apply them as appropriate across disciplines.

Let me be open about this for a moment, because I know it’s a sentiment many of you will share — I have seen many variants of “corporate values” statements, but for me, none have ever really lived up to their promise. It’s easy to be cynical about a concept like corporate values, especially when either a) they do not align very well with individual/societal values or b) they are empty and pointless. Under the resource and time constraints that the people in all technology companies often experience, surface-level values can quickly fall to the side, leading to low quality output and low morale.

In contrast, I have found Globality’s values to provide very practical guidance for the engineering organization, as they are selective, succinct, and align very well with all we want to accomplish. They are:

• Innovation. This value represents the cornerstone of our identity at Globality; we started with one central innovative concept (building a procurement marketplace that leverages the power of AI) and continued rapid improvement from there. Invention is built into the fabric of our engineering organization; new ideas are encouraged (even expected) from all engineers, and we are amenable to reasoned risk-taking to advance our mission and the industry at-large.
• Collaboration. We acknowledge that we cannot work effectively without other people, whether on our teams, throughout the engineering organization, or across the company. This is not a strained, forced version of “working together” that large corporate environments engender; instead, it’s the real, supportive, energetic human relationships formed when working with zeal towards a shared purpose. When it comes to collaboration, there are no levels or divisions at Globality; there are only people supporting each other in every way possible to move us forward. We are also aware of the power and importance of diversity, and we promote this in our actions within the engineering organization. We have not achieved perfection in this regard, but we continue taking positive, measurable steps in the right direction.
• Trust. The lynchpin of it all; regardless of a person’s role, location, or circumstances, we lead with trust. We hire people with great personal integrity and foster an environment of interpersonal confidence. We rely on each other to deliver on time and with the highest quality, and we operate with transparency, allowing us to build confidence with our customers and partners.

When dealing with tensions and complexities, our values help us to behave consistently and productively. They are the backbone of our culture, and they help us to arrive at reasonable conclusions, even when we are faced with ambiguity.

Although this blog will enable us to share our technological, process, and organizational accomplishments and lessons, I believe it will serve an even greater purpose — to foster an exchange of ideas between the Globality engineering organization and our profession at large. Thanks to our common values, and to the efforts of every member of this team, we’ve got plenty to say, and we’re all extremely excited to share the Globality Engineering experience with the world!

Thanks,

Keith R. McFarlane
CTO
Globality, Inc.