My Reflections on Andela’s EPIC values
This is my second day of the Andela Nigeria Cycle 37 Bootcamp and it has been a great learning experience. Andela’s mission is to advance human potential by powering today’s teams and investing in tomorrow’s leaders. With that in mind Andela has values that governs and guides them and that is the EPIC values. You might be thinking what is are EPIC values and what do those it mean, EPIC is an acronym which stands for Excellence, Passion, Integrity, and Collaboration. This values mean different things to different people and and i’m going to talk about what it means to me.
Let’s start with Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit. ‘’Aristotle”. I have always based my life on my core values which excellence happen to be one of them, i can confidently say it has worked adequately well. Here’s a true life example just to portray and drive home my point. When i heard about the great opportunity in Andela, I brushed my rusty skills, set my head up high and faced every challenge on the way, I have to say it was not easy for every step of the way, but the excellent spirit which i like to call “My Fighting Spirit” kept me going and i can positively say I have learnt, I have grown and I have conquered many obstacles. Just like Andela defined excellence I advance through merit alone.
Passion…. What comes to mind when you hear that particular word? From my understanding it is that Drive plus Love to simply define it. I always say to myself “If you are not ready to love a new chapter, challenge or situation like a relationship, do not even start to put in that work”. My belief about passion is in-Iine with Andela’s definition which says “I believe I can change the world and I act accordingly. I constantly seek to inspire and to be inspired. I approach every goal with unwavering energy and conviction; I embody grit and persistence”, this reminds me of my current stage at Andela a little example of when passion has kept me going is when I started learning to code, I started few months ago with the drive to see that my excellent spirit was backed up with passion. I got talking with my LFA after he reviewed my work, he gave me some feedback, I’m working day and night to see to it that I improve my technical and soft skills.
Integrity is said to be the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles, or moral uprightness. It is a personal choice to hold one’s self to consistent standards. In ethics, integrity is regarded as the honesty and truthfulness or accuracy of one’s actions. I always make sure I stay true to my words and actions, I have learnt to live by the code of conduct of moral standards and that as helped to shape and guide me to be the lady that I am today.
Collaboration is the process of two or more people or organizations working together to complete a task or achieve a goal. Collaboration is similar to cooperation. Most collaboration requires leadership, although the form of leadership can be social within a decentralized and egalitarian group. Presently at Andela’s Boot camp we have been categorized into groups headed by a learning facilitator assistant (LFA) that work like a body system whereby each and every system work to achieve a common goal. For instance if you experience any blocker with your APP you can ask for pointers or guide on how well to solve it and you can be rest assured that they are there to help.
This is my reflection of Andela’s EPIC values and how it is in-line with my values.