Since 1985 Exactech has ascribed to a philosophy of empowerment and a belief in managing by values. We have always wanted to encourage and facilitate employees to be relatively independent— to use their talents and their expertise to help grow the business. We believed that if you establish your purpose and your values, then you can give people a lot of freedom to work within that framework.
This has made a huge difference in Exactech. If you visit, you will notice that we have our purpose and our values posted in a number of our conference rooms. We train all employees on our culture. Within their first 90 days, new employees are even asked to write a value story—recalling something that they’ve done themselves or experienced or observed in someone else at Exactech, that is representative of our values. This has become a very important part of who we are. You can go to almost any organization and see its values on the wall or in the elevator, but we work very hard to ensure that we live these values on a daily basis.
