Innovatemap Values Deep Dive: Community with Jon Moore

At Innovatemap, our company values are defined and incorporated into all areas of employee life. In this new blog series: Innovatemap Values Deep Dive, we are sharing more about our values and how our employees personify them day in and day out. Today we explore Community. We describe the core value of Community this way: We believe in giving back, sharing our gifts and being active thought leaders in our physical and digital communities.

Jon Moore is the Principal Designer at Innovatemap, where he’s worked for almost six years. Not only is he an incredible designer and leader, he’s a passionate mentor to people inside and outside of the community. To get to know him is to get to know not just his work for Innovatemap client projects, but his work to make every community better.

To name just a few of the ways Jon promotes and personifies our commitment to community, he has given multiple design workshops to our internal team, spoken to high school students in area schools about what it’s like to be a designer, given presentations at Indy Design Week multiple times and is always looking for new ways to share his expertise to the Innovatemap team and broader community.

How would you describe the “community” of Innovatemap?

The community of Innovatemap is definitely one of collaboration. Everyone comes to the table with unique skills to create this wonderful whole. So, our community has become a team of individual experts, and the sum our whole is naturally more powerful than any individual for that reason.

Once someone joins, however, there is no hoarding of expertise. We want to influence not just our clients, but the local and Midwest tech communities, so we seek opportunities to elevate individual voices and share our knowledge. Whether that’s writing a blog post, sharing tips on social media, attending or presenting at events, or hosting webinars, we’re always looking for ways to strengthen our communities internally and externally.

Why is it important to impart wisdom to others?

There are a couple reasons why this is important. First of all, we typically hire from our own community here in Indiana, so it serves us well to contribute to the community as a whole, because we want some of them to work with us one day. Secondly, we want to raise the bar for technology and raise the bar for design. Ten or fifteen years ago, when people thought of great design, they thought of New York City or Silicon Valley; there were pockets of great design and everything occurring outside of those areas seemed to be one-off success stories. That has largely changed. Now, Indianapolis and other Midwest cities are consistently churning out incredible design. Our people and our companies are more successful as a result, and that’s a win for everyone.

How does Innovatemap work to make its clients feel like part of their community?

When we’re working with our clients, we use the word “partner,” and we mean it. We embed ourselves into our clients’ processes and invite them to do the same into ours. We are so thrilled to celebrate client wins, not just because the work is done (and admittedly, it usually isn’t), but because we’re so invested. We have a team that cares so deeply about the work they’re doing. Working with such incredible companies is a driver for us, as we truly want to see them do well. It creates a natural bond. We also treat our clients like partners in that we offer client-exclusive learning opportunities and events for them, because again, imparting wisdom is part of our culture.

How has Innovatemap worked to keep its internal community thriving despite remote work?

We have digitized as much as possible to keep our relationships strong. From Zoom happy hours to outdoor, socially-distanced get-togethers, we’re embedding time to talk about non-work topics into our days. We meet as a company on a weekly basis but also host breakout sessions and what we call “bagel breaks” to encourage so-called water-cooler chatter that we’d typically be having at the office. We have an incredibly healthy mentorship model within the company, so everyone is always checking in on one another. Working from home can be lonely, but we don’t let anyone feel like they’re on an island.

What is your favorite thing about working at Innovatemap?

Here, everyone has equal volume. Executive team members are not the only ones who lead; leadership can come from anyone at any level. We also really care about everyone’s happiness in work and in life. If someone has an area in which they want to grow professionally, we nurture it, not letting the specifics of their job description confine them. For example, we had a product designer who was great at her job, but she started to feel it wasn’t the right fit. Turns out she had a passion for video and animation. After letting her take on a video project and seeing her absolutely knock it out of the park, we transitioned her into a new role. She felt more fulfilled and we added a new service to our repertoire.

Does the Innovatemap community seem intriguing to you? Have a look at our Careers page. If there’s not a current job opening that seems appealing, we encourage you to join our watchlist. We’ll reach out if we anticipate a future opening may be a good fit for you.