About Us
January 12, 2017
Over the past months we have held a series of all-team meetings to take stock and revisit the fundamentals of AVP: who we are, what we do, and why we do it. An outcome of this is a series of statements that serve as a reference and reminder to ourselves as we move through busy days and the weeks fly by. We consider them something we can turn to as a guide for clarity, principled decision making and action. While our focus was initially internal, we have come to believe that it is important to make these explicit declarations accessible externally so that others who are not familiar with AVP and our culture gain insight into us as individuals and a company. We’re working on a re-design of our website this year, and eventually this will have its own section there, but for now we wanted to share it with you in some form.
Vision
To free people from the obstacles of information management
Core values
1. Be honest and maintain integrity
AVP ensures integrity in business practices, professional activities, and client interactions for ourselves and for our clients. In order to adhere to this core value, we:
-
Maintain confidentiality on behalf of our clients and colleagues
-
Represent honestly what we can and cannot do
-
Know our individual and group limits and ask for help when needed
-
Have compassion for others and ourselves
2. Be socially conscious
AVP operates in a respectful manner, by being inclusive, generous, and equitable. In order to adhere to this core value, we:
-
Have empathy
-
Trust and empower each other
-
Work in service of and contribute to communities that surround us
3. Be committed to excellence
AVP staff are leaders, both within the company and the fields in which we work. In order to adhere to this core value, we:
-
Engage in continuous learning and self-improvement
-
Set goals and are accountable to them
-
Are flexible and willing to grow in new areas
-
Are holistic and innovative in our work
What we do
We maximize the usability of information to the benefit of individuals, organizations, and causes.
How we do it
-
We listen and we understand; we explore and we discover.
-
We mediate, we interpret, and we bridge — making connections and bolstering those connections. We strengthen networks. We facilitate understanding.
-
We collaborate, we strategize, and we innovate.
-
We analyze, synthesize, and create. We offer processes, mechanisms, and workflows to quantify the unknown, to manage the unmanaged, and to turn information into knowledge.
-
We empower. We enable. We advocate. We promote.
Why we work on the projects we do
-
We enjoy the challenge and the reward of developing innovative solutions that bring about advancement of technology, policy, strategy, business, or operations.
-
The project provides a meaningful and clear benefit to the organization we are partnering with, or to a larger community or cause we feel passionate about.
-
We feel that we can make an impact and our contributions can lead to lasting and effective change.
-
We feel that what we can offer is integral to the success of the project within the scope of the resources available and what we can realistically provide based on that.
Why we work with the organizations we do
-
Either:
—• they have desire, vision, a clearly articulated need, buy-in from the top, and a commitment to see things through;
—• our involvement can provide a missing piece of the puzzle and can be a catalyst toward reaching their goals; or
—• there is a champion within the organization with vision that we believe can make it all come together.They are good people to work with.
We believe in the mission of the organization and want to contribute to its fulfillment.
We value the information the organization stewards and feel compelled to assist in its preservation, access, use and care.
