Thinkhaus Idea Factory works with companies each year to define their vision, mission, and core values. Almost immediately, someone steps forward with a list of one-word values they found after a quick Google search.
You've seen them: integrity, accountability, empowerment, inclusion, passion, teamwork, respect ... the list can go on for a while. What's wrong with these?
For starters, they're vague. How do you define when someone has made an integrity breach? You'd have no problem firing an employee who padded their expense report by $500. But would you fire another employee for taking a couple of company legal pads and pens home for their kids? Both are technically stealing from the company. If you'd fire one but not the other, "integrity" is on a sliding scale at your company.
One-word values can be ambiguous and interpreted differently by different people. When that happens, you get inconsistent applications across the organization.
They're also hard to represent in hiring and firing decisions. Would you hire someone who doesn't act with integrity? Of course not. Do you want your employees to feel empowered? Probably. But empowered to what degree?
Let me give you a quick example of why one-word values are challenging. Enron, one of the poster children for organizational dysfunction, unethical practices, and accounting fraud, had four simple core values: Communication; Respect; Integrity; and Excellence. You could argue that some people in the company used these as behavior guides. But leadership clearly didn't.
A method I was taught early in my career is still one of my favorites: working with leadership, unpack the behaviors of the best people in the company. You know, those you'd hire in bunches if they were available. What do they do that makes them stand out? How do they act? How do they treat clients and teammates? Conversely, do the same exercise on the behaviors of the worst employees. What gets them on the bottom of the list? Why?
When you go through this exercise, you rarely end up with single-word answers. Instead, you'll hear things like, "I can count on her to do the right thing even when no one else is around," or "He lifts others up around him so the team becomes stronger," or "She's action-oriented and gets things done."
All of these can be used to represent Core Behaviors that will help with recruiting and evaluations and will ultimately help the organization stand out among its competition.
What do you think? What's your favorite example of a core value statement? Which one stands out as the worst?