How Do You Know You Have the Right Core Values?

Years ago, when I heard about com­pa­nies using core val­ues as a tool to com­mu­ni­cate behav­iour impor­tant to them, I thought it was a load of fluff and had no real busi­ness value.

Wow, was I wrong!

The issue was that I was exposed to com­pa­nies with mediocre, two-para­graph mis­sion state­ments and beau­ti­ful­ly artic­u­lat­ed core val­ues that were only words on paper. They didn’t seem to be alive in the cul­ture at all.

Many years lat­er, I real­ized that, although those com­pa­nies had great inten­tions, they didn’t know how to real­ly build a cul­ture and core val­ues with teeth. The ones that do, know how to deliv­er what their cus­tomers want, have a strong cul­ture, and use their core val­ues as guard rails to keep the com­pa­ny sustainable.

If you have any doubt about the impor­tance of core val­ues, just think of a sit­u­a­tion you’ve been in where peo­ple had dra­mat­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent beliefs about how peo­ple should be treat­ed, or how the work should get done. In those sit­u­a­tions, a huge por­tion of your ener­gy goes to try to find a way to work togeth­er — or around each oth­er — that dis­tracts you from doing the qual­i­ty work you want­ed to do, in the first place.

The right core val­ues cre­ate com­mon guide­lines that reduce fric­tion in the sys­tem and make it eas­i­er for us to deliv­er what we are account­able for. When you boil it down, their ulti­mate role is to define the behav­iours required to be an effec­tive employ­ee; and guide­lines for man­agers to hire peo­ple, train, pro­mote, rep­ri­mand and, unfor­tu­nate­ly, fire those who don’t fit.

In sim­ple terms, they allow you to break someone’s behav­iour into dis­tinct components:

• What — Their abil­i­ty to meet expec­ta­tions and goals in their role
• How – Their abil­i­ty to be in align­ment with each other.

“Core Val­ues becomes one of the most impor­tant deci­sion-mak­ing tools we have. When it comes to peo­ple, there are lots of dif­fer­ent ways to get results, but we want peo­ple who will do it a sim­i­lar way and with a sim­i­lar belief sys­tem. And when peo­ple don’t, it is a night­mare — hard on them and hard on the team because they have a dif­fer­ent belief in how the job should be done, or how we should treat people.”

Rep­re­sent Your Unique View

Most com­pa­nies’ core val­ues aren’t real­ly rep­re­sen­ta­tive of their unique view of oper­at­ing in the world because their process to define them was flawed. They come up with a list of the nice attrib­ut­es of a human being, but they are not require­ments to be here. And if you don’t play, you can’t stay.

One com­pa­ny I worked with had a core val­ue of ​“Account­abil­i­ty”. After work­ing with them for a cou­ple of quar­ters, they con­sis­tent­ly only achieved half their goals and were gen­er­al­ly OK with that. We then had an inter­est­ing con­ver­sa­tion about how ​“Account­abil­i­ty” was an aspi­ra­tional val­ue and not a core val­ue, oth­er­wise peo­ple would be up in arms.

“Com­pas­sion­ate and under­stand­ing” was closer.

Anoth­er com­pa­ny had a core val­ue called ​“Team Play­er” which meant, in their busy sea­son, no one could leave until all the work was done. One per­son on the admin team – maybe the smartest in the whole com­pa­ny – would get all her work done by 2pm, and to her cred­it, would stay anoth­er two hours to help the rest of the team. But she’d go home at 4pm, leav­ing the every­one else there until 8pm. When asked about it in a feed­back ses­sion, she said it wasn’t her fault that the oth­ers were slow, so when it became clear that her actions weren’t aligned with that non-nego­tiable core val­ue, she could no longer stay.

This was also an acid test for the CEO about the core val­ue ​“We’re all in it together”.

How Do You Know if Your Core Val­ues are Right?

If your core val­ues are tru­ly accu­rate, you should be able to say ​‘yes’ to most of these points:

1. You empow­er oth­er peo­ple to make hiring/​firing deci­sions using core val­ues as the only mea­sure of their char­ac­ter. This works because the top peo­ple fit the core val­ues very well and the high-per­form­ing jerks would have vio­lat­ed at least two.
2. You have a list of four or five not 15. Fif­teen is a LIST of val­ues — only four or five are CORE non-nego­tiable values.
3. You are will­ing (and have tak­en a finan­cial hit) to pro­tect your core val­ues. If any­one has vio­lat­ed them, you will­ing­ly pay to resolve it.
4. They are a real­i­ty now, not aspi­ra­tional state­ments of who you would love to be one day. This means the major­i­ty of your lead­ers live them consistently.
5. If you do 360 feed­back and use core val­ues as one of your mea­sures (which we rec­om­mend) your A‑Players, those who are high-per­form­ing and fit the cul­ture well, score at least 85% to 90% on each one.

On a side note: For one of our com­pa­nies, we knew the core val­ues weren’t right when we saw the results of the CEOs 360. This found­ing CEO scored between 70% and 90% on the core val­ues when it’s nor­mal­ly 90% plus for some­one like that when the core val­ues are right.

1. The lan­guage of the val­ues is used through­out your com­pa­ny on a reg­u­lar basis.
2. If you were to make a list of the most tox­ic but high-per­form­ing peo­ple you’ve worked with — employ­ees, cus­tomers, sup­pli­ers (in Your Oxy­gen Mask First call them Tox­ic A- Play­ers) — they would vio­late at least a cou­ple of your core values.

At the root, core val­ues define how you and your team are freak­ish­ly unique – your belief sys­tems that cap­ture the nuances and amaz­ing quirks of how you like to con­duct yourselves.

The Chal­lenge

• Are your core val­ues tru­ly required behav­iours for your company?
• If you have them right …con­grat­u­la­tions! How do you bring them to life more and what deci­sions might you need to make around those that aren’t in alignment?
• If you were to self-rate, on a scale of zero to 10, how much do you live these values?

If your val­ues aren’t right, let us know and we can help you get to your core.

For more dis­cus­sion about core val­ues, lis­ten to this episode of The Growth Whis­per­ers podcast.