Written by: Haydee Moreno, COO and CFO of JUST
“If I had an hour to solve a problem, I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.” – Albert Einstein
Action is one of JUST’s three stated values, alongside Community and Trust (which when combined aptly spell ACT). We aspire to provide a financial journey that leads to economic empowerment and wealth-building for our clients. Addressing the needs of underserved, resilient entrepreneurs requires thoughtful and continuous action.
ACT & Our Core Values
By itself, action, can trick us into believing we’re advancing towards a stated goal, when in reality we might be standing still frantically waving our arms. “Run fast and break things” sounds inspiring until you pause to consider that the thing that you could break is someone’s financial well-being or their trust in the financial system or their confidence in their own decision-making. At JUST, we work alongside the tension that exists between action and impact. Action that has the potential to open life-changing opportunities and the deliberation necessary to consider the intended impact and unintended consequences of those opportunities.
We navigate this tension not by gut or intuition, but by process and follow-through. We use an experiment framework that guides our action from defining the problem to reflecting on the tested solution. This framework yields such success we use it across the organization, from product design and loan operations.
What is our Experiment Framework?
We think we know {key assumption} and if we do {new feature/product/program} then {causal effect}.
If the results are {acceptable range of outcomes} then we will {continue with the next step}.
However, if the results are NOT {acceptable range of outcomes}, then we will {pivot/reassess/abandon}.”
This allows us to have clarity on the problem we’re trying to address and our underlying assumptions. The experiment can be the pilot of a text campaign to encourage client engagement or a customer service onboarding approach for new clients. This process helps hold us accountable and take pause before we move forward with a false assumption or flawed hypothesis. We benefit from the guardrails to act quickly and often but to do so in a way that is aligned with our values and serves our mission.
The community we serve is underestimated and they are excluded from economic opportunities. Addressing this injustice is our mission and action is the catalytic spark that enables us to build a community based on trust that helps hard-working female entrepreneurs live with less stress and more joy.