Intuit Vision, Mission, and Operating Values
QuickBooks Accounting Software

(Comments in parenthesis are not in this Intuit document. Long close contact, with top Intuit executives, clearly shows they try very hard to live the Intuit Mission and Operating Values. Do you want Intuit to quickly change QuickBooks Accounting Software Then show something that may not fully match this Intuit Mission and Operating Values. My call for a QuickBooks Accounting Software boycott may have cost Intuit $30 million. I then called for a TurboTax boycott, while on a QuickBooks Accounting Software Advisory Council. Instead of dumping me, Intuit CEO Steve Bennett wrote, "Keep raising hell when Intuit does something wrong.")

Forward

Intuit was founded on strong principles and has always acted on them. As the company grew larger. employees felt it was important to capture the spirit of those principles in writing—to "institutionalize" them for the future. In 1993, the company shut down for a day. All the employees went to a convention center and spent the entire day brainstorming ideas of what the vision, mission, and operating values of Intuit were and should be.

All of the input from that day was gathered and honed down over the next few months by cross-functional teams of employees. The goal was not to create a statement of what existed at the time, but something that could guide us into the future. The sum of that work is what follows on these pages.

OUR VISION OF INTUIT IN THE YEAR 2010

Intuit is the preeminent provider of automated financial solutions for small businesses and individuals. We are renowned as the company whose leadership and revolutionary innovations in financial services and software have delivered breakthrough value to our customers in every facet of their financial lives: banking, borrowing, investing. and beyond.

We are a large, growing, multinational company. Both our competitors and our shareholders respect us for our continued ability to create and establish leadership in huge, new markets.

Intuit's customer focus is legendary. Our unwavering devotion to outstanding quality—in our customer care, as well as in our products and services—inspires our customers' confidence and enthusiasm. Our products and services strike a careful balance between evolution—seeking out, understanding and responding to our customers' needs and desires—and revolution—continually delighting our customers with valuable new ideas they haven't even thought of. People around the world use our products and access our services both on the PC and other computing devices. We have become an integral part of their daily lives. Our customers rely on our solutions to help them simplify and organize their finances, make better financial decisions, save money, and do it all quickly, easily and with greater confidence thanks to our tools, information, and services.

Even though Intuit is known for the quality of its products and services, we know that the quality of our people is the foundation of our success.

OUR MISSION

Revolutionize how people manage their financial lives.

(Intuit's amazing user focus often shocks even Mike Block. By 2006 Intuit was helping us with more than financial management, so Mike kep asking top Intuit execives to drop "financial" from the Mission. Intuit Founder Scott Cook soon said this in a major speach. Brad Smith did so in his CEO acceptance.)

OPERATING VALUES

WOW! (Imagine a Fortune 500 corporate foundation document beginning like this?)

Many companies say their most important job is satisfying the customer. We don't. We believe that satisfying the customer is simply the minimum requirement for staying in business. Therefore, we don't seek merely to satisfy our customers; we seek to wow them.

What do we mean by wow? Wow means creating customer enthusiasm and delight. It means giving customers dramatically more value than they expect—whether measured by price, performance, quality, features, or service. We know we're succeeding when we inspire our customers to go out and tell others about our company.

But how do we continue to wow our customers year after year? We certainly can't do it by relying on a single product, person, or idea. no matter how brilliant. We must build an organization that enables us continually to do great things for our customers.

We do this by creating an environment in which the ability to make decisions rests with those closest to the issues. In this environment, we are surrounded with the trust and given the latitude to be creative. We can talk openly about what needs to change. and we can see and make improvements happen. We feel energized by our work. We feel our full potential is not only being tapped, but is growing.

Our fundamental belief is that people come to work seeking to do great things. So we've created an environment that does not bog us down with rules but frees us to achieve ever greater accomplishments.

We outline the guidelines for this organization in the following ten values. Living by these values creates the type of environment we all desire: an environment in which we exceed the expectations of our customers and those of each other, where we don't just satisfy people. we wow them.

1. Integrity Without Compromise.
(The excellent Inside Intuit book recounts that soon after Intuit began a Fortune reporter called about an article on when companies might bend rules. Intuit's founder risked needed publicity by saying he never would, but this led to a separate article about Intuit.)

Intuit is built on integrity. In all we do, we maintain the highest standards, never approaching what could be considered questionable behavior. On this. we never compromise. Having integrity means more to us than simply the absence of deception. It means we are completely forthright in all our dealings. We say what needs to be said, not simply what people want to hear.

Integrity builds trust. Only through trust do successful, long-term working relationships flourish.

2. Do Right by All Our Customers.
Doing right means acting with the best interests of the other party in mind. We commit ourselves not only to meeting expectations, but to exceeding them.

An important word in this phrase is all — it includes every relationship at Intuit. We treat each other, our business partners, and our shareholders with the same care and respect with which we treat our customers. In other words, there is a customer for everything we do. While some of us directly serve the customers who purchase our products, each of us serves customers within the company.

We know we've succeeded in doing right when all our customers feel that they have benefited from their association with us.

3. It's the People.
People are the foundation of Intuit's success. In fact, people are so important that the primary job of each manager here is to help people be more effective in their jobs and to help them grow and develop at Intuit. We have great people who want to do well, are capable of doing great things, and come to work fired up to achieve them. Great people flourish in an environment that liberates and amplifies their energy. Managers create this environment through support. respect, and trust.

Support means giving people the tools, information. training, and coaching they need to succeed. It means continuous effort to develop people's skills. Great managers help people excel and grow. Respect means understanding people's unique career goals and being sensitive to their life choices. It means helping people achieve these career goals consistent with the needs of the company. Trust means freeing people to do their jobs and to make decisions. It means knowing people want to do well and believing that they will.

4. Seek the Best.
We seek the best in two ways: we cast wide nets to find the best people to hire and the best ideas to adopt, and we base decisions regarding them on facts. While all decisions involve some judgment, we use fact-based analysis as much as we can. To ensure we find the best person for the job we aggressively seek across diverse, qualified applicant pools. When we've done our job right. the best person for most jobs will be someone here at Intuit. Most importantly, we evaluate solely on the basis of performance and abilities. There are no other criteria for hiring and promoting at Intuit.

The same principle is true for ideas. We actively seek the best ideas whether they are developed here or are in practice at another company. We have no bias; we adopt the ideas that will most help our company.

5. Continually Improve Processes.
Quality is the result of a process of inputs, procedures, tools, training, support systems, and materials. Therefore, to improve the quality of results, we must improve the processes.

How do we know if a process needs improving? The answer is, it always does. We can always get better. We strive continually to improve our processes, to help people do their jobs better, and to produce higher quality at lower cost.

While managers have a special responsibility to focus on processes, everyone has a responsibility to improve them. We all have two jobs: doing the daily work and improving the processes we work with.

6. Speak, Listen, and Respond.
At Intuit, we all have the responsibility to speak up. When we do, we deserve an open ear and a thoughtful response. Without open communication and expression, ideas get lost, needed improvements aren't made, and people get frustrated.

Managers at Intuit have a responsibility to create an environment that encourages people to speak openly, knowing they will be listened to when they do. Listening. however, is only a first step. It's also key to respond—if not through direct action, then through acknowledgment or feedback.

Speaking up doesn't mean just talking openly with your manager. When you have an idea or a concern, the right thing to do is talk to the person who's best able to act on it, no matter what role that person has in the company or what department is involved.

7. Teams Work.
The reasons to work in teams are simple: by building on each other's ideas and skills, we make better decisions and produce better results than we could by working alone.

Teams are also important because so many decisions impact multiple areas of the company. We find it works best to assemble a team of people with the relevant skills and let them make the decisions.

Teamwork means focusing on the team's success, realizing that ultimately the team's success is your success. It also means you succeed by helping other members of the team to succeed. The result? fDecisions that are not "mine," not “yours," but better.

Great teams elicit everyone's participation and actively seek out both dissenting and favorable opinions; however, once the team makes a decision, all members commit to it.

8. Customers Define Quality.
The customer is the most important judge of the quality of a product or process. Therefore, we gauge the success of a product, service, or internal process based upon how well it delights the customer.

Part of adapting to changing customer needs and desires is knowing what our customers want. Intuit has triumphed in part because we actively solicit input and invent new ways to solicit that input from our customers.

Quality is something we incorporate throughout all our processes. It's not something we simply look for at the end of a process. It means keeping all our customers in mind each step of the way.

9. Think Fast, Move Fast [Changed in 2000 to " Think Smart, Move Fast "].
Another aspect of quality is the ability to respond to customer needs quickly. In addition, the company's success often depends on our ability to act on market changes and new opportunities. To meet these challenges, we must think fast and move fast.

10. We Care and Give Back.
At Intuit, one of our most enduring values is our genuine care for the people for which we work. While our responsibility to Intuit people will always come first, we also believe that with our success comes the responsibility to give back to the community.

We seek to contribute to our community in ways that reflect broadly held values, have meaningful impact, draw upon our unique strengths as a corporation, and, whenever possible, reinforce our business objectives.


AFTERWORD

What about results — things like market share, growing our revenue, profits? We barely mention them in our values. Don't we care about results?

We do. Market share is a measure of how well we are serving customers. Long-term earnings growth creates shareholder value which also helps us attract and retain the best people, and further increases the confidence of our partners and customers in our company. And revenue growth and current profitability allow us to reinvest to deliver even more value to customers in the future. Do we have to sacrifice our Operating Values to meet financial goals? By no means. Living up to our Operating Values has always required making thoughtful tradeoffs - for example, balancing the bias for action of "Think Smart, Move Fast" against the emphasis on careful analysis in "Seek the Best.- Attention to the financial implications of our actions is simply an aspect of making these tradeoffs well.

What's more, if we do our jobs right, it's a chain reaction, not a series of tradeoffs. We get the best people and ideas, develop and energize our people, focus on the quality the customer wants, improve the process relentlessly, deliver higher quality at ever-lower costs, which wows the customer. and when we have done this consistently, higher revenues, higher profits, and greater share-holder value result.

Simply put, living and working by our operating values will create customer wow and shareholder value.

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(Intuit's reults, from its Intuit Mission and Operating Values, led to Fortune magazine saying Intuit is America's Most Admired Software Company and has long been one of the 100 Best Companies to Work For. http://www.intuit.com/careers/culture.jsp Intuit has always been known for aggressively getting and using customer feedback, especially in upgrades to its QuickBooks Accounting Software. A key related question (Would you recommend us to a friend or colleague?) lets companies track Net Promoter Scores. It most reliably indicates an ability to grow. http://netpromoter.com/netpromoter/index.php Intuit has, by far, the best Net Prompter Score in its field, so the best is yet to come.)

-- BlockTaxHome - 12 Jun 2008