Weak core values can hold companies back in the battle for the best people and minds, investors and brand enthusiasts. Capture the values that make you unique and build the healthier culture the best employees seek.

1. Kill Hollow Core Values

Ever since Jim Collins and Jerry Porras called attention to the importance of organizational core values in their book Built to Last, the world has rushed to fill the corporate walls with attributes, beliefs, quotes and any number of vacuous statements that might pass as a value. We’ve all seen them: Honesty, Authenticity, Respect, Courage … the list can and does go on and on. It doesn’t have to be this way.

I encourage my clients to push beyond generic language to words and expressions that leave no room for misinterpretation. Let’s use Integrity for example. Integrity is an excellent trait. I believe all companies should fundamentally be built on a platform of people acting with some sense of integrity. If that’s true, and every company should act with integrity, and all employees should embrace it as a core value, how does one company differentiate their spin on integrity from another?

Therein lies the challenge, because synonyms for integrity include honesty, principle, sincerity, candor, goodness and righteousness, among others. What do you, specifically, mean when you list integrity as a core value? Do you want people to be honest, or sincere? To be good, or righteous? I’ve found that when the interpretation is left to the individual, the advantage almost always swings in the favor of the individual.

Want further reason to kill hollow values? Enron, now the poster child for corporate corruption and scandal, listed four core values in their 1998 annual report: Respect, Integrity, Communication and Excellence. Granted, they wrote clarifying sentences after each, but those sentences are just as hollow as the values. My personal favorite follows Respect: “We treat others as we would like to be treated ourselves. We do not tolerate abusive or disrespectful treatment. Ruthlessness, callousness, and arrogance don’t belong here.”

2. Watch How The Best Employees Think And Act

We as individuals live our lives based on what we value, and we want the places we work to operate the same way. As Jessica Amortegui points out in her article, “5 reasons You Need To Instill Values In Your Organization,” “rather than get people to live the values, [organizations] should focus on the values that live in the people. This taps into the innate qualities that exist across mankind: human virtues.”

Throughout my career, I’ve regularly conducted one-on-one interviews with people across my clients’ organizations prior to developing core language. During these interviews it can quickly become apparent what values the company embraces, what isn’t working and what the top employees wish could be expressed. By the same token, taking note of the traits the worst employee exhibit can often help provide clarity for what the company does not want to move forward. Once we’ve helped our clients discover the values that match their organization, we help craft language that will set them apart internally and externally.

3. Write Your Values To Reflect Your Organization

Expressing core values uniquely matters immensely for your company. They serve as a tool for recruiting and as a barometer of sorts for existing employees. They can be a banner to guide the desired ideas and actions, and guardrails against unwanted behavior.

Write the way your company thinks, acts and talks. If your environment is ultra casual, feel free to express your values that way. There’s nothing wrong with saying “No one here is too good to take out the trash or sweep the floor” if that fits who you are. If your culture is more formal, you might try “Entrepreneurial Spirit—We expect everyone here to do the little things in order to help us reach our goals”. Stay true to who you are—and what you want to become.

Here are a few examples that might help frame in different approaches:

Delta Airlines

• Always tell the truth

• Always keep your deals

• Don’t hurt anyone

• Try harder than all our competitors—never give up

• Care for our customers, our community and each other

McDonald’s

• We place the customer experience at the core of all we do

• We are committed to our people

• We believe in the McDonald’s System

• We operate our business ethically

• We give back to our communities

• We grow our business profitably

• We strive continually to improve

Sealed Air

• Uncompromising Ethics

• Courageous Determination

• Ingenious Collaboration

• Purposeful Innovation

Zappos

• Deliver WOW Through Service

• Embrace and Drive Change

• Create Fun and A Little Weirdness

• Be Adventurous, Creative, and Open-Minded

• Pursue Growth and Learning

• Build Open and Honest Relationships With Communication

• Build a Positive Team and Family Spirit

• Do More With Less

• Be Passionate and Determined

• Be Humble

4. Wait A Year Before Handing Out Mugs And T-Shirts

How you introduce new values language to any organization is important. We caution our clients against rushing to print posters, mugs and t-shirts with the new values, which are often tied in with Vision and Mission articulation. It’s not that we have anything against t-shirts and mugs, it’s just that people tend to hate them in these circumstances. Seriously, hate them. T-shirts offered up too early in the process signify that a company is more interested in the organization than its people, and if the people don’t come first that t-shirt is likely to only represent how out of touch management is with those who make the company great.

We promote cascading communication—starting from the CEO and moving consistently through management—and management living the messages they preach well before they try to drive anything down into the system. A senior manager who cheats the system to get his way in front of his managers is going to have zero chance of getting his team to buy into anything he says about Integrity as a value. Once managers consistently demonstrate that they buy into the new corporate language, through their actions, the rest of the company can start to get on board—and then you can give everybody in the newly refreshed brand tribe a t-shirt to help them celebrate.

5. Have An Exit Plan For The Haters

Sometimes during the process of rolling out core values across an organization, companies find people who simply don’t or won’t embrace the new language. Let’s be clear here: the company carries the burden of first communicating any new cultural language to its employees and helping employees see the advantages of moving towards the new ideals collectively. But at some point management owes it to the rest of the company to help the naysayers move on. It’s really hard to have a healthy organizational culture when most of the company buys into the values while a few negative outliers are allowed to passively or actively fight the system. Either people agree that the values matter and live them, or the values don’t matter and neither does the culture.

 

Core values are an important part of building healthy organizations and getting everybody on the same script. Most companies don’t have to look much further than their best employees to know what kind of culture they have and what they should celebrate. But the words you use to articulate your values, the way management lives them, and the way you introduce the new language to the company can make difference in whether the organization buys into the program or just waits until management moves on to a new topic.

If you need help getting send me a note and let’s get the conversation started.