Reflecting on the Rocket Software Values
February 16, 2024
Empathy, Humanity, Trust and Love. If you’ve spent any time around the team at Rocket Software, there’s a good chance you’ve heard these words. Those four elements make up the core values that define Rocket Software and help inform how we serve not only our customers but treat our fellow Rocketeers and partners as well. These values have been with us from the beginning, over 33 years ago, and make up the foundation of the work we do.
But for as much as we talk about those values, it’s just as important to take a moment to really understand what they mean to us and how they play out in our daily work. To help with that, we sat down with a few members of our leadership team to ask them what the Rocket Software values mean to them.
Let’s see what they had to say.
Milan Shetti (CEO and President) Opines on Love
Love is something that makes us really unique—you won’t find many companies that lead with love, but that’s exactly what we do. Its inclusion in our core values was a very intentional choice on our part. Every day that we log on, we bring a sense of love for the work we do together. And that’s an energy and mindset that carries over into our daily interactions and engagements, whether that’s with a customer, a partner or with our fellow Rocketeers. Ultimately, love is what helps shape my approach to just about every decision I make, coming at it from a place of compassion and caring for the community we’ve built at Rocket Software.
Phil Buckellew (President, Infrastructure Modernization) Reflects on Empathy
To me, empathy is one of our most important values as it helps us get things done, while also making Rocket Software the kind of place that we all want to work. It’s typically defined as the ability to understand and share the feelings of another, but what this really means to me is that we all respect each other enough to look at things from each other’s perspective. We should always assume folks around here have “positive intent” and when someone does something that doesn’t align with my line of thinking, or what I would expect, I have to step back and look at the world through their eyes. So, having empathy means you need to take a beat and consider why people are acting or behaving the way they are. Just recognizing what they may be feeling can go a long way to helping us all get along better.
Puneet Kohli’s (President, Application Modernization) View on Humanity
Humanity, to me, means treating all individuals with respect and integrity. Valuing the worth of folks and recognizing their unique perspectives becomes key to fostering a growth environment. This spans our customers, partners, employees, and even competitors. As a company that backs many mission-critical applications in the world, it is our responsibility to make a positive impact on society through innovation. Providing sustainability, volunteerism, or philanthropy through both our professional and personal work is part of our core DNA. Humanity means promoting teamwork, collaboration and open communication while creating an overall welcoming environment.
Michael Curry’s (President, Data Modernization) Take on Trust
To me, trust is a kind of unwritten contract. It is an understanding that two parties are going to try their best to support each other, even if they aren’t perfectly aligned on goals or approaches. At Rocket Software, trust is about providing an environment where ideas are safe, and every Rocketeer knows that they have the support of every other employee. It is also about extending that support to our customers and partners. We realize that trust is earned, and it is our actions that earn that trust, so our actions need to reinforce it every day.
Learn more about how Rocket Software puts its core values into action every day.
