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I regularly make this wager with CEOs, management teams, and employees at all levels of organizations, and only once every 36 times do I ever have to pay it.
“Core Values,” for better or worse, has become a buzz phrase in most companies. It’s one of those items on the corporate checklist that executives can check off after hiring an expensive consultant to come to a retreat and scribble five “cool” statements on a white board that no one truly understands, and will likely elicit groans come Monday morning.
How do I know this? Some call me a coach, implementer, facilitator, or advisor, but I prefer “disruptor.” I make a great living by challenging management teams on their culture and how it is defined.
As a Certified EOS Worldwide Implementer, on a monthly basis I will be invited to meet with management teams from self-professed thriving companies that are overjoyed with the five to ten core value statements that they have specially crafted and posted all over the office like wallpaper. More often than not, I find employees at these companies who either don’t know their core values, or if they do, they roll their eyes when asked about them. They’re the joke of the day in the staff room at lunch time.
Why does this happen?
For starters, before asking someone to explain their core values, try asking them to define “culture.” Culture is widely misunderstood because culture is everything. Put a group of people together and you have a culture. It’s the scent in the air, the noise level, the energy you feel, the speed that everyone moves at, the humor or lack of it, the interactions; it’s everything you take in through your senses. That culture—whether we are talking about a country, company, or church group—is defined by its core values.
The core values at your company already exist. It is your job as business leaders to properly discover them, define them, and explain them to your organization.
The great speaker and business author Patrick Lencioni explains that the problem with core values is that they are usually one (or more) of three things: they are “aspirational,” “accidental,” or “permission-to-play” (P2P). In my experience, most are aspirational and P2P.
Effective core value statements must apply to everyone in the organization. They don’t explain what you aspire to, they explain who you are.
For example, I see organizations that tout “organized” as a core value statement. If they truly believe in that statement, there goes their top sales people, who are by nature highly disorganized. Others proudly display a word like “professional.” What meaning does that core value have to the employees of a construction contracting business who nail drywall to studs? Or, ask 100 people and you’ll get a 100 different answers and leave some in the business wondering how to poor concrete or load a truck in a “professional” manner.
Then there are the permission-to-play descriptors. These are the core value statements like “integrity” that you hear and immediately think, “Yeah, you and everyone else.” They are words used by everyone and they have a million different interpretations.
I fly a lot. Every time I board a plane on Delta, a frustrated smile comes to my face when their CEO appears on the monitor and proclaims, “Our core values are honesty, integrity, respect, perseverance, and servant leadership.” So now I approach Delta’s flight attendants, pilots, ticket agents, and other front line employees and offer $20 if they can tell me their airline’s core values and what they mean. To date, I haven’t paid out once. And these are the front line, highly trained employees who interface with customers on a daily basis.
If you want your culture to be respected, don’t disrespect your culture by developing core value statements for marketing banners and customer presentations rather than for defining expectations for people functioning in your business environment. These are clear, concise, and important statements with a story behind them. They are going to determine who is hired, fired, rewarded, and recognized in your organization.
It’s not an exercise for the outside world. Don’t simply tell your customers your core values or present them in a fancy format on your website. Instead, let your teams demonstrate them.
You can define a core value with a P2P word like “committed,” or you can be more specific like my client Wade Bradley at Bradley Smoker. At his company, “everyone is prepared to push a broom.”
This core value statement leaves little to interpretation. If you wear a shirt and tie, work in finance, and you refuse to go downstairs at 3:00pm to help the shipping department load a truck on a tight deadline, then don’t work at Bradley Smoker. It’s not rocket science, it’s not right or wrong, it just is. No fancy words, no fluff, and everyone clearly understands. If sweeping floors or loading trucks doesn’t sit right with you, you are free to go work at a different company where there is no such expectation in that culture.
While you may have invested a lot of time and money into developing your core value statements, take this opportunity to revisit them. Do your core values really reflect your culture? Are they just aspirational, where there are valued people in your organization who will never aspire to them, or P2P words? If so, it may be time to go back to the drawing board.
The exercise can be difficult, it can be frustrating, and it can be time consuming. But done properly, with statements that are clear, truly reflective of your culture, and based upon great stories that people will remember and understand, you’ll find the results nothing short of magic.
To explore these ideas further, watch our quick video whiteboard.
