Automattic is a company founded by Matt Mullenweg. He also developed Wordpress ten years ago. He talks of the notion of a “company creed” which codifies the culture and values of a company. Here’s the Autommatic creed (as of September 19th, 2011):

I will never stop learning. I won’t just work on things that are assigned to me. I know there’s no such thing as a status quo. I will build our business sustainably through passionate and loyal customers. I will never pass up an opportunity to help out a colleague, and I’ll remember the days before I knew everything. I am more motivated by impact than money, and I know that Open Source is one of the most powerful ideas of our generation. I will communicate as much as possible, because it’s the oxygen of a distributed company. I am in a marathon, not a sprint, and no matter how far away the goal is, the only way to get there is by putting one foot in front of another every day. Given time, there is no problem that’s insurmountable.

Matt further says that:

If you’re building a startup or any sort of organisation, take a few moments to reflect on the qualities that the people you most enjoy working with embody and the user experience of new people joining your organisation, from the offer letter to their first day.

Finally Matt has an innovative way of introducing the company’s creed to new hires:

Finally, as a hack to introduce new folks to our culture, we put a beta “Automattic Creed”, basically a statement of things important to us, written in the first person. We put it after the legal gobbledygook and before the signature area; if you chose to accept the offer, you’d sign your name next to the values before starting work. This seemed like a powerful statement and might affect people’s perceptions in the same way that putting signatures at the top of forms increases honesty.

Read the full article on Matt’s blog.