Daktronics Core Values

Daktronics Core Values

As for as Daktronics core values are concerned, we never really set out to establish core values. We didn’t have any task force to decide what our core values should be, we just tried to treat people in a manner that we would like to be treated.

First of all, we have to be honest with ourselves and then we have to be honest with our families, because if we are dishonest within our family, that’s insidious. And you know, how would we be honest with anybody else if we’re not honest within our own families?  So, we have to be honest to ourselves, we have to be honest within our families, and then that carries on to our fellow workers, our neighbors, our friends, and we need to be honest with them too. If we lie to someone it makes life so complicated, because now we have to remember who we lied to, you know, and then there is another lie that follows that and it just overcomplicates life and doesn’t allow us to really be very productive.

So, I think honesty is the underlying foundation that we can base productivity on. How can we evaluate a person or a system or a product or a market if we’re not honest? You know, we’re going to come up with false evaluations, so honesty is just the underlying foundation for building an organization. It allows people to be productive, it allows people to have a peaceful life, and it’s just fundamental to building a successful organization. When we make our presentation to candidates, we want to make sure we tell them the way it is. We want to tell them the truth, make sure they see what life is going to be like, that they have an opportunity to meet some of their future associates so they get to make a firsthand evaluation. And there is no value in skewing the presentation in any way, in either sugar coating it on the good side or being over critical on the negative side, there is no value in doing either one. The real value comes out in presenting things the way they are and if we’re not pleased with the way they are, the way they intend to have them as we go forward.

Next, I felt that we needed to have a lot of help from others, and in order to get that help, we wanted to help others and so we tried to develop this characteristic of helpfulness where we, first of all, help our customers because in starting a business, typically, the marketing mode is word of mouth and so one customer has to tell a prospect “hey, go and tell them that they’re a good company to go with.” And so, we really wanted to make sure we helped our customers that we have satisfied customers that would recommend us to others.

I always talk about 5 groups of people that we need to serve.  And those 5 are, first of all, the customers, and then I kind of put the owners and the employees in the next category at Daktronics, many of our employees are also owners so it’s easy to do it at Daktronics, and so we have to make sure that we serve them, and then our suppliers, some people, you know, don’t treat their suppliers very well and in the end that comes back to haunt them and we want to make sure that we understand the value that our suppliers bring to our table, and finally, the community. The community is really essential to us and is really essential to support our employee base. It’s essential to support our physical base and that, you know for the structure of the company. So those are the 5 groups of people that I feel that management team has to support, has to serve those groups of people. How do you serve them? You serve them by helping them.