The five attributes we recognize work by

Every workspace I set up starts with the same five attributes, and I have stopped pretending that is a coincidence. Supertype publishes eight values on its careers page, and like most published values they are written to be read slowly, in a quiet moment, by someone deciding whether they want to work here. Recognition does not happen in a quiet moment. It happens in the two seconds after a teammate does something worth noticing, while a thread is still moving and three other things are waiting. Whatever you ask people to pick from in that window has to be short enough to read at a glance and clear enough that nobody has to think twice about which one applies.

So the eight values become five attributes. Advance, Breakthrough, Craftsmanship, Duty, Ethos. That is the template this workspace can import with one click, and this is the reasoning behind each of them.

The five, and the values they carry

Advance is for taking almost too much initiative. Somebody saw the thing nobody had assigned, started it, and told the room afterward. It carries two of our values at once, being remarkable, which asks people to start the conversation rather than wait for it, and taking longer strides, which treats speed as a habit rather than a mood. When a teammate turns a decision into motion the same afternoon it was made, that is an Advance.

Breakthrough is for the work that moves the needle rather than the work that fills the day. It is the rarest of the five by design, and it should be. This is where taking the long view lives, along with the trust our team extends to anyone making a high stakes bet without a guarantee it lands. Breakthroughs come from people who were given room and used it, so recognizing them is also a way of proving the room was real.

Craftsmanship is for polish, for the deliverable that arrives finished instead of merely done. Mastery sits underneath it, the belief that you build a reputation on depth rather than on titles, and so does delight, because good is a low bar and the difference between good and delightful is almost always craft that somebody chose to spend time on when nobody would have noticed its absence.

Duty is for the teammate who shows up and keeps showing up. It is the least glamorous attribute and the one I would remove last. Ownership lives here, and so does the other half of trust, since autonomy only works in a team where people can be relied on without being chased. Most teams are carried by a few people quietly doing this and never getting a point for it.

Ethos is for embodying the culture rather than describing it. Integrity belongs here, the willingness to do the right thing over the safe thing, and so does the part of delight that has nothing to do with the product, the person who is simply good to work alongside. Ethos is the attribute that catches everything the other four measure indirectly.

Eight values compress into five attributes

Values and attributes do different jobs, which is why mapping them one to one would be a mistake. A value is a paragraph that explains itself. An attribute is a button somebody presses without breaking their train of thought. If we shipped all eight, the picker would turn into a small quiz, and people would either default to the first option every time or stop giving points at all. Both outcomes destroy the data you were trying to collect.

The compression also forces a useful argument. Deciding that mastery and delight both live under Craftsmanship means agreeing, out loud, that we consider polish and care to be the same instinct. That conversation is worth having once, at setup, rather than every time a point is given.

Why six is the ceiling

Viably caps attributes at six, and the cap is deliberate rather than technical.

The first reason is mechanical. Slack renders a row of buttons five at a time, so a sixth attribute already wraps onto a second row, and the choice stops reading as a single glance. Anything past that turns a reaction into a form.

The second reason is that recognition is a snap judgment and every extra option taxes it. With five choices, the right one is usually obvious before you have finished reading the message. With ten, two of them almost always overlap, and the pick becomes arbitrary. Once picks are arbitrary you are no longer measuring the work, you are measuring the person's tolerance for choosing.

The third reason is that thin data is worse than no data. Attributes are only interesting when you look back over a quarter and see that a team shipped plenty of Advance and almost no Craftsmanship, which is a real signal about how you have been spending your quarter. That comparison needs volume in each column. A team of fifteen giving a few hundred points across five attributes produces a readable picture. The same team spread across twelve attributes produces noise you could read any way you like, which is another way of saying it tells you nothing.

A short list of attributes people actually choose between beats a complete list nobody reads.

Make them yours

The template is a starting point and not a vocabulary you have to adopt. Import it, then rename anything that does not sound like your team. A few things I have learned about naming them well.

• Name a behavior you want more of, not a job function. Craftsmanship invites anyone to earn it. Design does not.
• Keep the name short enough to read on a button without squinting. Everything in the template fits comfortably, and the field caps at 24 characters for exactly this reason.
• Write the description as the sentence you would actually say while handing out the point. Duty reads "reliable and shows up for the team" because that is the compliment, phrased the way a person would phrase it.
• Resist the urge to add a sixth just because the slot exists. Add one when you find yourself repeatedly wishing for it, which is a much better signal than a brainstorm.

If your workspace has attribute mode turned on and an empty panel staring back at you, import these five and edit from there. You can read more about how points and attributes work in the medal leaderboard docs, or add Viably to Slack and start with the template already in place.