At Tandem, our values are more than just words – they’re the foundation upon which we build our business, guiding not only what we do but how we do it.
Our values inform every partnership, decision, and action we take. They ensure that profitability, impact, and wellbeing are intertwined outcomes for the businesses we support. And they keep us accountable to the matriarchal leadership principles that we believe can heal businesses and the world.
Let’s dive into our core values – Respect for Each Other, Respect for Our Craft, Decolonizing Assumptions, and Equitable Abundance – and see how they shape real-world outcomes.
Respect for Each Other
At Tandem, respect for each other means fostering relationships built on trust, mutual support, and collaboration. It’s about celebrating the unique perspectives and contributions that everyone brings, and creating a work culture where people feel valued, connected, and have the courage to voice differing opinions in service of shared success. It means standing up for each other’s wellness, sometimes at the cost of lost opportunities and business.
Example: Building Relationships, Investing in Potential
Respect for each other begins with the desire to build enduring relationships and recognize the seed of potential in each person. In 2017, we welcomed a new team member as a junior accountant, with no prior experience in the field. Having gotten to know them, we saw their entrepreneurial mindset and drive for meaningful impact. Rather than seeing inexperience as a limitation, we viewed it as an opportunity for growth. With mentorship, training, and a supportive environment, they developed from a junior to a senior role, taking on increasingly complex challenges.
One standout achievement was helping an award-winning digital healthcare platform develop a capital-raising strategy and provide comprehensive financial support. Their leadership helped secure significant funding through multiple investment rounds. This success wasn’t just because of technical skills — it was the result of a culture that encourages experimentation, collaboration, and the sharing of diverse perspectives. By investing in their growth and nurturing a culture of mutual respect, we helped them advance their career and bring enormous value to clients.
Respect for Our Craft
We take great pride in our work, holding ourselves to the highest standards of excellence. Respect for our craft means approaching our tasks with the intentionality and attention to detail of artisans. It embodies a commitment to lifelong learning and growth. Fueled by a passion to create meaningful outcomes for those we serve, our team strives to cultivate a workplace culture that uplifts each other’s dignity, addressing missteps with curiosity and a shared desire for continuous improvement.
Whether we’re refining financial systems, optimizing operational processes, or enhancing people strategies, our dedication to our craft transforms every challenge into an opportunity to enrich ourselves and positively impact our world.
Example: Elevating Operations
When a modular home building company needed help cleaning up their accounts and implementing construction management software, we knew that they needed a team member with the right mix of skills and experience, a passion for process improvement and operations, and dedication to financial precision.
Over a 6-month engagement, we took care in optimizing each of their accounting practices and workflows to support management oversight, compliance, and accurate reconciliations every month. Continuously implementing robust quality controls, our team missed no opportunity to refine and elevate our client’s operational systems. Beyond this, we trained their team to confidently manage the software, easing the leadership team’s technical burden and allowing them to focus on strategic priorities.
Decolonizing Assumptions
Decolonizing assumptions is central to how we challenge the status quo thinking and operating that often goes unexamined in business. We’re committed to dismantling power imbalances and outdated frameworks that don’t serve equitable and inclusive growth. This means examining everything from partnerships to procurement practices with a critical eye towards justice, inclusion and regeneration.
To decolonize our assumptions, we must continuously work to open ourselves to healing the impacts of colonization on our minds, hearts and bodies. This is an everybody effort (not just Indigenous people’s). Tandem’s team does this work individually and collectively through education, self reflection and regular dialog. And we support each other through the discomfort that can come when we act out of sync with the status quo, which tends to push us toward urgency, perfectionism and hierarchy.
Example: Letting Go of Urgency – and Control
When a non-profit facilitating reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in Canada sought Tandem’s support, they needed a trusted partner who understood the complexities of Indigenous leadership, including cultural frameworks and multi-generational trauma.
Deep in our own reconciliation journey, we recognized that moving forward requires acknowledging the past and committing to action. This understanding allowed us to connect with the organization’s mission and help envision their next chapter. To be successful, we needed to continuously look at how we could indigenize our processes for engagement, analysis and decision-making, as well as sloooow down our pace.
One of the outcomes of our work together was the leader’s realization that they needed to take a step back and prioritize healing – not grow the organization in a new direction. We supported them to put their own wellness first by co-creating a transition plan that would enable time and space to heal, with the assurance that the organization would be in trusted hands.
Equitable Abundance
At the heart of Tandem’s vision is the belief that businesses can achieve equitable abundance – a state where prosperity is shared widely and held commonly, and success nourishes not just shareholders but employees, communities, and the planet. Equitable abundance means rejecting a zero-sum mindset and instead embracing a regenerative approach to business that values inclusivity, sustainability, and interdependence.
Example: Connecting Women and Non-Binary-Led Ventures to Capital
We have been honoured to work with many impactful organizations, highlighted by our partnership with a global organization supporting women- and non-binary-led ventures to grow and scale. Our work began with in-house services but quickly expanded to special projects aimed at providing these ventures with financial advisory once they received funding. Through this partnership, we helped raise $9.2 million in follow-on funding within the first year. While contributing to a greater abundance of social capital, we’ve also enabled founders to connect with people and organizations that will help scale their impact journeys.
In the context of Capitalism, equitable abundance is a radical notion; it flies counter to the scarcity model that shapes the current economic paradigm. However, scarcity is a relatively new idea, and one we believe that’s been proven incorrect – and harmful.
Since time out of time, Indigenous peoples around the world (lineages from which we all descend) have looked to nature for instruction on how to build economies based on mutuality and shared abundance.
Re-imaging/re-remembering these roots, we invite you to consider what your business might look like as part of an economic model defined by equitable abundance – where prosperity flows through the entire ecosystem, enriching people and land alike. Imagine businesses where:
- Profits don’t just rise – they regenerate. Wealth circulates through communities, nourishing everyone and sustaining all Life for future generations.
- Employees feel a deep sense of belonging and purpose, knowing their work contributes to something larger than themselves. They are paid fairly, their wellbeing is prioritized, and they’re given the freedom to innovate, take risks, grow and rest.
- Supply chains are built on respect and reciprocity. Workers and artisans are seen, heard, and valued – receiving fair compensation, safe working conditions, and opportunities for growth and self development. Environmental practices prioritize regeneration over extraction, ensuring that business does not deplete the planet but heals and feeds it.
- Communities thrive as businesses invest in local ecosystems, infrastructure, and people and collaborate with Indigenous leaders, civic organizations, and environmental groups to create a more just, equitable society.
This is the world we are building everyday through the actions we take to live out our values.
Will you join us in calling forward our vision of an ecological economy, where businesses act as communities, leaders serve as stewards, and each of us feels uplifted by a deep sense of belonging and responsibility?
By Renee Mitchell
Based in Vancouver, Renee Mitchell is Co-CEO of Tandem. An Impact and Leadership Coach, as well as a Fractional COO, Renee is passionate about leading thriving, impact organisations for people, profit and planet.
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