Friday Forward - Wall Art (#434)

Why so many companies get core values wrong--and how to get them right

Recently, I was coaching a CEO through the process of updating their company’s core values as part of a larger strategic planning initiative.

During my initial discussions with the leadership team, I carefully broached the current core values, trying to discern which ones resonated deeply and which were mere platitudes. It became clear, as I’ve seen with many organizations, that none of the leaders felt a strong connection to any of the company’s existing values.

The issue wasn’t that the leadership team lacked shared convictions. In fact, as I walked the executives through a set of questions related to the desired and undesired behavior of their teammates, I sensed a clear consensus on what they cared about most. However, these values weren’t the ones stated in the company’s literature.

Teams, like individuals, often have strong values without being able to articulate them. This can be especially troublesome when leadership teams face challenging situations and don’t have a clear values rubric to lean on. It’s only once they’ve done the work to reflect on and identify their nonnegotiable principles that those tenets become clear.

For example, I previously worked with a non-profit board of a well-known organization that was overhauling their core values after fallout over the behavior of several prior board members. The board members shared that, when dealing with these counterproductive actions, they found their organizational values were too generic to help them respond.

Having gone through that experience, they decided it was essential for their updated core values to clearly repudiate the objectionable behaviors that caused the conflict.

Despite a healthy dose of initial skepticism, the board became highly engaged in the process and everyone was excited with the values list produced by our work. Vague platitudes were replaced with phrases that clearly defined the behaviors the board wanted from their current and future members, and it was apparent that the previous board’s troubling behavior violated the newly clarified values.

This transformation illustrates how crucial it is for core values to be specific and actionable, rather than abstract and ambiguous. Core values should give leaders a vocabulary to reward desired behavior and challenge undesired actions.

Once, I believed organizational core values were largely pointless. Like many people, I’d encountered too many organizations with values that were nothing more than wall art, disconnected from, or even in conflict with, the actions of employees and leaders alike. If you only think of a company’s values when you see them in the office lobby or on the company website, then they aren’t values—they’re marketing slogans.

Great companies have clear, distinct organizational core values with the following qualities:

• People know what they are without having to open a document.

• They go beyond obvious traits such as “honesty,” “integrity” and “teamwork.” Almost every company wants collaborative, honest people; core values should be distinct characteristics that describe your unique company culture to a tee.

• They represent the DNA of your best people.

• They are the nonnegotiable principles for behavior in the business. Therefore, there is demonstrable accountability when they are violated.

Companies with effective core values keep them alive in the following ways:

• Leaders and employees mention the core values regularly in the normal course of business, especially when making decisions.

• The core values are used to hire, fire, and promote. The company might even have behavioral-based interview questions aligned with their values to easily screen for them in interviews.

• Awards or recognition are regularly given out to showcase behavior that aligns with the core values.

• Leaders frequently share core value stories about their employees, which become part of the company lore.

At the end of the day, core values aren’t just things you say to feel good about yourself—they are behavioral guides. True core values are lived, influencing decisions and actions at every level of the organization. In organizations with strong values, these values often remove the need for many rules, as people feel more empowered when emulating inspiring, resonant principles, rather than following a litany of rules.

When properly defined and lived, organizational core values become a powerful tool for guiding behavior, fostering a positive culture, and driving the organization towards its goals.

Does your organization have core values? Are they real?

Quote of The Week

"Anyone who makes a decision aligned to one or more of our organizational core values is always safe.” - Garry Ridge, Former CEO of WD-40 Company

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