The Issue with Company Core Values

When­ev­er I have a dis­cus­sion with a new CEO client, and the top­ic of com­pa­ny core val­ues comes up, I absolute­ly cringe.

Peo­ple are usu­al­ly excit­ed about their vision, mis­sion, and core val­ues. Often, they have spent hours and days get­ting them clear. They are so proud of them – like the kid com­ing home from kinder­garten with their first piece of artwork.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, most of the time, the work peo­ple do on their com­pa­ny core val­ues is the qual­i­ty of that kinder­garten art…when they should be wor­thy enough to hang in a gallery.

“True lead­ers don’t look at just the out­ward appear­ances in the selec­tion of team mem­bers, they look at one’s core val­ues and heart.” — Far­shad Asl, Author, No Excus­es Mindset

The root of the prob­lem is that com­pa­ny core val­ues are usu­al­ly mis­un­der­stood. Whether peo­ple do the work them­selves or get an expert to help them — they often end up with some­thing that is nice, but far from what is core to the business.

These val­ues end up becom­ing busi­ness or mar­ket­ing strate­gies. And often some­thing even less rel­e­vant — that list of ​“favourite words” brain­stormed by 20 peo­ple in a board­room that get mashed into a con­cept that does­n’t rep­re­sent the core val­ues of your busi­ness at all.

I was one of these peo­ple when I start­ed 20 years ago. Since then, thank­ful­ly, I’ve had some great insights and learn­ing that have helped me bet­ter under­stand com­pa­ny core values.

Core val­ues are the core, non-nego­tiable belief and oper­at­ing sys­tems that peo­ple must have to be in your com­pa­ny or to part­ner with you, exter­nal­ly. Absolute non-nego­tiables, and the list by which you decide whether to hire or fire some­one, assum­ing they are good at their work.

It’s not a ​‘what I want to be when I grow up’ list — it’s an absolute must have. It rep­re­sents the core of your orga­ni­za­tion that peo­ple who work with you should appre­ci­ate and share.

The most pow­er­ful and effec­tive way to get your core val­ues is to have the founder and a few key peo­ple in the room.

Com­pa­ny Core Val­ues Exercise

• On the left-hand side of a page, make a list of five peo­ple who are absolute­ly amaz­ing at their work and so delight­ful to work with, you’d like to repli­cate them. Jim Collins has an exer­cise called Mis­sion to Mars where you think of the five peo­ple you’d send to Mars to start a new divi­sion of your busi­ness. You’d nev­er be able to talk to them, but you trust that they would do it right.
• On the right-hand side of the same page, write a list of names (or ini­tials) of the five peo­ple who are excel­lent at their work but are a night­mare to work with because they just don’t fit in the cul­ture. They are like­ly no longer with the com­pa­ny – or should be! I call these Tox­ic A Play­ers.
• Next, look at the attrib­ut­es of both the spec­tac­u­lar peo­ple and the nightmares.
• What did the great ones have, and what are the oth­ers missing?

This will help you to tri­an­gu­late your core val­ues and get down to the essence of what is required.

This could take 30 min­utes or a few hours. Do it over a cou­ple of ses­sions, sit on it, run it by a few oth­er peo­ple. Once you have some­thing that is close — three to sev­en words that describe your core val­ues — do the acid test.

Run these core val­ues through the list of five and five, and make sure all the peo­ple on the left side of the page have them all – at least a nine out of 10 level.

The peo­ple on the right of the page would seri­ous­ly be miss­ing at least one of the core values.

You’ll find that some of the Tox­ic A’s have some of them (you did hire them in the first place) but they’ll have seri­ous gaps on one or two. If not, go back to the draw­ing board until you get it right because those peo­ple should be fil­tered out if you get it right.

To sum­ma­rize, core val­ues are the required behav­iours or quirks of your unique view of the world – and it is the list by which you’ll hire – or fire – high per­form­ers and make and imple­ment impor­tant decisions.

Core val­ues are not just fluff that make you sound like every­body else, so make sure you get it right.

The Chal­lenge

• If you are going to cre­ate core val­ues, please do them right (so some­one like me doesn’t have to come in and fix them for you!)
• If you already have core val­ues, even if you’ve print­ed them out and put them on the wall, go and re-vis­it them. Are they clear and bina­ry enough to rep­re­sent what your com­pa­ny is about?
• Final­ly, if you have any of those Tox­ic As (high per­form­ers that don’t fit in your com­pa­ny) make sure you have an action plan to address that in a rea­son­able amount of time, oth­er­wise peo­ple around you will trans­late the core val­ues based on your actions and behav­iours, not nec­es­sar­i­ly the words on the page.