GraceWins Peer Support is a not-for-profit Mental Health Peer Support social purpose organization.
Our Purpose
GraceWins Peer Support
To enable [this is our raison d’etre – our reason for being; the WHY] those among us that struggle with mental health challenges [these are the people we serve; the WHO] to overcome these challenges, realize our unique potential and live our lives to the fullest [this is the service we provide; the WHAT].
This is our purpose and we are a resolutely purpose-driven organization.
Our Values
Joy@GraceWins
Our Primary Success Metric:Â Joy
Not earnings. Not number of clients served. Not anything else. It is joy. Do we, on a personal level, realize joy within ourselves through our work here? Do we enable others – our clients, team members, partners, well wishers… – to realize joy within themselves through our work here?
If we, on a personal level, do not experience joy in our work at GraceWins then something has to change. Either something about our organization or something about ourselves or maybe GraceWins is not the right place for us.
If we realize joy through our work excellence will follow.
Client Success
Secondary Success Metric: Client Success
Excellence in enabling our clients to realize their Recovery goals and beyond, their potential is our raison d’etre [reason for being]. This is the primary consideration in every decision we make and in everything we do. The primary question: Will this best [not somewhat, not sort of, not good enough] advance the client on their Recovery journey toward realizing their potential? We harness the best of the resources available to us – people, experience, technology, connections – to make our goal happen. We are successful when we become redundant in our clients’ lives; when we’ve enabled them to the point where they are able to pursue the realization of their unique potential without need of us.
Joy and Client Success – our primary and secondary success metrics feed off and build on each other
Love
Our Only Motivator
Ultimately everyone is either motivated by love or fear. At GraceWins we are motivated by love. We do what we do because we love what we do. Because we love.
This love is manifested in:
the respect we have for all;
the honesty in our relationships, especially when being honest is inconvenient, for we regard honesty as the highest form of respect;
the compassion we have for all; we see ourselves, our joys, our sufferings, our potential, in everyone;
the courage and integrity with which we act, with which we stay true to our values and convictions, especially in the face of fear, risk, uncertainty, failure.
'Kickass' Excellence Mindset
We are a team focused on excellence in achieving our purpose. We ‘kickass’ in everything we do. By excellence we mean being the best we can be in the moment. Relative not to anyone else or any other organization or any other time but to our own potential in the now.Â
We do not settle for ‘good’ work. We do not ‘half-ass’ anything. Good is not good enough – it is the enemy of excellence. No room for ‘good enough’ or mediocrity in this space. We do not use our struggles as an excuse to deliver on anything with less than our best. We are never satisfied with the status quo.
We, individually, give our best to this team in whatever we do. And we enable each other to be our best. In everything. The little things first and thereby the big things. How we do anything is how we do everything. And we choose to do with excellence.Â
On the GraceWins Dream Team, everyone of us is self-motivated by our common purpose, aligned and unified by our values and empowered to excel in the service of those we are privileged to serve. In such a team there is no need for motivation, management or organizational hierarchies.
Anti-Ego​
We actively guard against ego – first within ourselves, then without. Our value at GraceWins is only based on the quality of our contribution to our purpose in the moment: the joy we realize and share; our commitment to excellence and client success; our dream-teamwork, our positivity, our integrity in the moment. All one’s experiences, degrees, skill sets, connections and such are only valued if they translate into excellence in the moment. Else they count for nothing.
This is possibly the hardest of our values to observe, given how pervasive the ego is, within and without. And it is essential to us realizing our # 1 success metric – joy.
Bold, Prudent Risk-Taking
We encourage bold, prudent risk-taking here. It is not merely accepted or managed. It is encouraged.Â
Because here in GraceWins we regard failure and mistakes from bold, prudent risk-taking as friends and highly valued teachers. They offer us invaluable opportunities to learn and grow if we so regard them and pay careful, respectful attention to the lessons they teach. Prudently failing forward is among the best ways to advance. We fail often, prudently, boldly, intelligently to succeed sooner.
Every Contribution is Equally Valued​
At GraceWins there is no lesser or greater work. Every task, every contribution done with love and a commitment to excellence in the service of our purpose is equally important, equally valued. Everyone is encouraged and empowered to contribute from their experiences, skills and talents in ways that positively impact our purpose.
This value is reflected in our equal pay principle. Because the assumption is that every one of us does whatever we do at GraceWins with love and a commitment to excellence, everyone at GraceWins, regardless of the work they do here, gets remunerated at the same rate.
Simple, Purpose-Driven​
We are a flat, agile organization, high on purpose, high on values, low on rules and policies. Processes, policies, rules, when they are needed, only exist in the excellent service of our purpose. Therefore when a situation arises where a process, policy or rule comes in the way of accomplishing our purpose, actions to accomplish our purpose will prevail over policy. We trust our people to make such calls in good faith and we stand by them in their decisions.
Open, Generous, Forthright
We are an open, generous organization that does our work for the whole world to see. Indeed, going further it does not matter to us whether the world is watching or no one is. We bring the same level of integrity and excellence to everything we do and as such have nothing to hide. What we learn we are happy to share so that more can benefit and grow from our learning. No intellectual property protection, no competitive secrets, no economic or commercial interests to guard here. While being very scrupulous that certain information, especially as they pertain to our clients and team members, be kept strictly private and confidential, whatever knowledge or information we can share, we will. And we do not say anything about anyone in their absence that we would not say in their presence.
Compassionate, Grateful, Entrepreneurial Stewardship ​
We regard every client we serve as someone we deeply care about – our friend, family, parent, sibling. They are not another.Â
We regard every dollar we spend or invest at GraceWins as we would our own hard-earned, after-tax money.Â
Every day, by delivering our service with excellence, we earn the opportunity to continue to serve.
Put another way:
What if the person I have the privilege of serving is someone I deeply care about – my mother, my brother, my friend who is greatly suffering with a mental health challenge? How will I serve them?
What if the money I have the stewardship of spending or investing is my own hard-earned money? How will I spend or invest it?
What if this organization ceases to be if I do not deliver on my service commitments with excellence? How will I approach and execute the opportunity to serve that is before me?
We are always grateful for the opportunity we have been given to do meaningful, life-changing work in the lives of our clients. We never take this opportunity for granted.
We are never entitled to exist.
