I often get asked by executives how we come up with the words when we start the Vision, Mission, and Core Values process. Or, as one executive asked, “Do you already have this stuff written down somewhere, and you’re just making us go through these exercises?”
The short answer is no; we don’t already have predetermined answers. We work hard to uncover and discover the values within each company.
There are two types of organizational drivers to consider when thinking of crafting core behavior language:
Start-Ups and Assigning Values
It would be a mistake to say you assign values to new companies. You don’t, really, because companies are started by people with prior experience. And that experience is a launching point for the future company’s core behaviors.
If we’re working with executives starting a company, we dig deep to understand their vision for the future and what kinds of people can help them reach their goals. Similar to working with existing companies, we ask founders to describe the best people they’ve worked with in the past. Many founders may have a tough time articulating pithy strategy and value statements, but most can give you an idea of the kinds of behaviors they think will help their company and brand stand out in the marketplace.
Those behaviors rarely sound like, “We’d like people with integrity, who are accountable, and who feel empowered to do smart things.” Why? Because everything I just mentioned is common sense and fairly obvious. Stating the obvious isn’t differentiating.
Many startups need to have a speedboat mentality. They need to be nimble, responsive, able to take action quickly, try new ideas, and adjust on the fly. And so their core behaviors should reflect those needs to help ensure they recruit the kinds of people who embrace that kind of culture.
As a new company grows, founders need to demonstrate the behaviors in how they operate and treat people each day; then, new employees can embrace the core behaviors as simply part of the operating system. The key here is demonstration. If it’s just leaders telling people how to behave, that’s worst case assigning (imposing) values … and it rarely goes well.
Uncovering Values in a Change Initiative
Vision, Mission, and Core Values are standard fare in many organizational change initiatives. A trick here is understanding what’s driving the company to change. Are you fixing a problem? Restructuring? Changing business strategy? Coming out of a merger or acquisition?
If we’re starting from a positive position, uncovering the positive values can be a simple experience. We unpack the behaviors of the best employees, compare those to the behaviors of the worst employees, factor in executive goals and company vision, and articulate the values already present in the company.
If we’re starting from a negative position, we first have to understand how broken the culture is. Some cultures need to be healed before the new language can be introduced. If negative behaviors have been the norm for a while, no amount of positive thinking and well-crafted attributes will stand a chance. So, we fix the culture while talking about the behaviors that would set the company up for success.
In this case, it can be helpful to get the employees involved in discussions of the kind of culture they want to be a part of, how they’d like people to act, and how they’d like to be treated. By engaging employees and not just executives, people at varying levels within the organization can play a role in the change initiative.
Then, when the new core behaviors are introduced to the company, they won’t feel like something assigned to everyone out of the blue. It’s worth saying again: if the company culture has been broken, it MUST be mended before new language can be introduced. Otherwise, management is asking for a rebellion.
Values aren’t something to be assigned or imposed—they emerge from the lived experiences, aspirations, and demonstrated behaviors within an organization. Whether working with a speedboat company needing values that enable rapid innovation, or an established tanker organization, the key is uncovering and articulating authentic behaviors that will drive success. This requires careful attention to context and alignment between stated values and demonstrated behaviors, between leadership actions and company culture, and between the organization’s past experiences and future aspirations. When this alignment is achieved thoughtfully and authentically, values become a powerful force for positive change.