Core Values
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Culture
Culture is a set of beliefs and values that guide everyone in the company and are consistently followed.
Consistent behavior is what defines a company's culture, not just a document or statement.
Culture starts with the leadership team, and their behavior sets the tone for the rest of the organization.
There are three V's to consider when thinking about culture: Values, Vision, and Voice.
Today's deep dive is on the "Values" aspect of culture, which includes defining core values and embedding them into the organization's DNA
Values should be specific and actionable, not just generic statements like "integrity" or "innovation"
Embedding values into the company's processes, hiring practices, and decision-making is key to making them a part of the culture.
Values
Values are a key aspect of culture that anchor it and guide behavior in a company.
Core values are a small number of non-negotiable behaviors that represent what's best, right, and noble about an organization.
A company's core values should be consistently followed and used to guide hiring, assessment, promotion, and client selection.
The right set of core values can be an incredible guide, while the wrong set can be meaningless.
Every group of people, including organizations, has a set of core values, whether they are documented and communicated or not.
Proactively creating a set of non-negotiable behaviors is essential to ensure that they align with the organization's goals and values.
How to Create a Set of Core Values
The Mission to Mars Exercise: Imagine that you are going on a mission to Mars with a small team of people, and you can only bring people who embody the values that are important to your company. Who would you choose? What values do those people embody? This exercise helps you identify the key values that are most important to your organization.
Look at your existing employees: Look at the people in your company who are high performers and who you believe embody the values that are important to your organization. What values do they have in common? This can give you an idea of the values that are already present in your company culture.
Conduct surveys and interviews: Conduct surveys and interviews with employees at all levels of the company to get their input on what values they think are important. This can help you identify values that are already present in your company culture, as well as values that employees believe are missing.
Review your company's history: Look at your company's history and identify times when the company demonstrated values that were particularly important. This can help you identify values that are already present in your company culture and that have been important in the past.
Consider your customers: Consider what values are important to your customers and how those values align with your company's values. This can help you identify values that are important to your company and that resonate with your customers.
Involve key stakeholders: Involve key stakeholders, including employees, customers, and partners, in the process of creating your set of core values. This can help ensure buy-in and alignment with the values that are ultimately selected.
The Mission to Mars Exercise
The Mission to Mars Exercise is a collaborative effort between the CEO or business owner and the leadership team.
Each member of the leadership team identifies four or five people they would send on a round trip to Mars to represent the best of the organization and its culture.
For each person selected, a characteristic is identified that exemplifies what's great about the organization and its culture.
This exercise generates 15-25 adjectives or characteristics that represent the organization's values.
The potential core values are tested in three ways to ensure they are right and powerful enough to anchor the organization's culture.
Test of a Core Value # 1 - Fireable Offense
Are you committed to firing anyone who repeatedly and blatantly violates a core value?
Core values cannot be non-negotiable and aspirational at the same time
Example: A potential core value of "creativity" for a marketing firm may not be a core value if it is not a fireable offense to not be creative as an accounts receivable clerk
Example: "Honesty and integrity" may not be a good core value for a company that actively encourages not telling the whole truth to clients
Test of a Core Value # 2 - Financial Hit
Test number two of a core value: Willingness to take a financial hit
Would you sacrifice financial gain to uphold a core value?
Example scenario: a client violates a core value. Are you willing to let go of that client?
Importance of confronting clients who violate core values
Example scenario: a top-performing salesperson violates a core value. Are you willing to let them slide because of their productivity?
The danger of letting high-performing employees violate core values without consequences
Test of a Core Value # 3 - Are you living it today?
Test number three: Are you currently living the core value today?
Core values cannot be aspirational; they need to be lived and practiced daily.
The Mission to Mars Exercise can help determine if you are currently living your core values.
The goal is to have three to six core values that are easy to remember and uphold.
Once you have determined your core values, you need to integrate them into your company culture and daily operations.
Coming up with the Core Values
Start by brainstorming a list of characteristics that are important to your business.
Narrow down the list by combining similar words and phrases
Choose three to six core values that represent the essence of your business
Determine how to communicate the core values effectively, such as through a mission statement or visual reminders in the workplace
Consider using a word, phrase, or story to represent each core value
Core Values / Mission to Mars Exercise PDF
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Mike Goldman: Culture is one of those words that gets thrown around in business, that gets complained about in business. But there's not a lot of shared definitions within a company of what it is or what we do about it. It's kind of like accountability. Everybody complains about it, but nobody could really describe well, what it is.
[00:00:27] Culture
Mike Goldman: So, today I want to talk about culture and what it is, but what I really wanted to do is dive deep into one aspect of it. But before I do, let's answer the question.
What is culture? And here's my view. I believe culture is a set of beliefs and values that guide everyone in the company and are consistently followed. Set of beliefs and values that guide everyone in the company and are consistently followed.
If you have some beautiful document that defines your culture, but it's not consistently followed, it's not your culture. It's a beautiful document. It's not your culture, or a set of beliefs and values that are consistently followed. It's how you behave. It's your company's personality.
It's who you are. And it starts with a leadership team. It doesn't starts with, I wish these people would behave in a certain way. You are the people. If you're a member of the leadership team, you are the people. I have never seen a culture start off horrible at a leadership team level.
If collaboration is what you want to be part of your culture and collaboration sucks on your leadership team. I've never seen that get better. As you cascade down through the organization, of course it gets worse.
So, culture starts with the leadership team and I believe there are three V's we need to think about with culture. And I talked about this in episode three, where we did a deep dive on one of those V's. Today we're gonna do a deep dive on another.
[00:02:19] Values
Mike Goldman: The first V is values, and that's where we're gonna do a deep dive today. The second V is vision. We did a deep dive on vision in episode three, and the third is vulnerability. We haven't done a deep dive there yet, but we will.
But for now, let's dive deep into values and having a set of values or some call them core values is something that a lot of companies try and fail at. I have in my 35 plus year career in coaching and consulting, especially early on in my career, in my consulting career, I worked with a lot of Fortune 500's that had a beautiful plaque on the wall with their core values. But it was a marketing tool and nothing more.
No one really knew what those core values were or how they needed to live those core values.
Maybe someone talked to them about it once during the onboarding process. Then it's never mentioned again because it's bs. it's not really something they use. Some smart coach or consultant, or book told them they need to create a set of core values so they checked it off the list and in fact, for most of my career, I thought core values were bs.
I thought it sounded nice, but they were meaningless. But the right set of core values anchor your culture. The right set of core values. Describe what's best, what's right, what's most noble about your company. The right set of core values ought to guide you when you are hiring people, assessing people, figuring out who to promote, figuring out what clients to work with.
The right set of core values is an incredible guide. The wrong set of core values is there for marketing purposes. Might you put your core values out on your website, maybe, but you don't build them for that. You build them to build your culture internally. If it turns out, they might also look pretty good on a website, it may help you get some clients. Beautiful.
Now, let's define core values. We define culture. Let's define core values. I believe values are a small number, typically 3, 4, 5, 6. At the most, a small number of non-negotiable behaviors. That boil up what's best, what's right, what's most noble about who you are as an organization.
Small number of non-negotiable behaviors. Now, when you hear that, you might think either, ah, I already have a set of core values within my company, or, oh, we don't have those. Well, if you're one of those folks saying, oh, we don't have those, you do.
Every company, every family, every set of friends, every for-profit, nonprofit has a set of core values. Whether you have proactively documented them and communicated them or not, every group of people that work together or play together have a set of non-negotiable behaviors that drive them.
Now, if you are not proactively creating the set of non-negotiable behaviors, you may have a non-negotiable behavior, like whoever yells the loudest wins or don't admit you made a mistake, or you can get your head chopped off.
So, every group of people, every organization has a set of values, a set of non-negotiable behaviors that drive you. But if you don't proactively create them, they may not be what's best, what's right, what's most noble, you may not be encouraging, motivating hiring for promoting for the right behaviors.
[00:06:30] How to Create a Set of Core Values
Mike Goldman: So, let's talk about how you create your set of core values. There are a number of ways to do it. One of the ways that I recommend my clients that I work with my clients on is something I stole from Jim Collins called The Mission to Mars Exercise.
[00:06:49] The Mission to Mars Exercise
Mike Goldman: And I'm gonna do it high level here, but if you want the details in the show notes on my website, mike-goldman.com, click on Better Leadership Team Show, and then find this episode in the show notes, there'll be a download, a PDF that'll have step-by-step instructions to how to do this exercise, but it's called the Mission to Mars Exercise and in the mission to Mars exercise everyone on the leadership team.
Now I'm gonna stop there for a second. Leadership Team. Here's what that means. That means core values. The right core values are typically not created by the CEO or business owner sitting in their office with the door closed, uh, coming up with the core values, and then coming out with the two tablets of core values and saying, this is it. This is what we're gonna live.
It also is not a grassroots effort. You don't ask your 500 employees or your 12 employees, what they think your core values ought to be. Core values should be a collaborative effort driven by the CEO or business owner, absolutely. But a collaborative effort with the leadership team and in the mission to mars exercise, the leadership team, each member of the leadership team identifies four or five people that they would send on this mission to Mars.
Now it's a round trip. A one-way trip would be, that's where you'd send your C players and toxic C players. It's a round trip. And the mission to Mars, the purpose of the mission is to help the Martians understand what is best and right and most noble about your organization and your culture.
What are the best behaviors that you encourage? So, the four or five people you pick, that each member of the leadership team picks are those people that best exemplify who you are and what's great about who you are. What's great about your culture. And for each of those people, you identify a characteristic.
That characteristic should explain why they're on this mission to Mars trip. What is it that they have that exemplifies? Maybe it's their creativity, maybe it's their ability to collaborate. Maybe it's their accuracy, maybe it's their, upbeat nature. I don't know what it is. But when you do that, you wind up with 15, 20, 25 different adjectives, characteristics up on a flip chart.
And those don't become your core values. That's too many, and some of them are wrong. But then what you wanna do is go through those potential core values and test them in three different ways, three different tests.
And by the way, if you're listening to this and you already have a set of core values, use what I'm about to describe as your test to make sure you've got core values that are actually right and powerful and will help drive and anchor your culture.
[00:10:05] Test of a Core Value # 1 Fireable Offense
Mike Goldman: So, the first test of a core value is it a fireable offense? Are you willing more than that, are you committed to firing anyone who blatantly and repeatedly violates a core value?
Now, remember when I define core values, I said it was a set of non-negotiable behaviors. Core values can't be non-negotiable and aspirational at the same time. So it's important to know your core values are not. Here's how we hope to live one day. Here are the behaviors we hope we exemplify one day. That doesn't work.
The first test of a core value is are you committed to firing anyone who repeatedly and blatantly violates a core value? Or if your core values are aspirational, you're gonna have to fire half your team.
So, that's your first test. Are you willing, are you committed to firing anyone who repeatedly and blatantly violates a core value? Now here's how that works in the real world. I had a client, a marketing firm, a number of years ago that had a potential core value. They called creativity.
Seems like a logical core value for a marketing firm. It's important their graphic designers are creative. It's important their copywriters are creative, their account managers are creative, so sounds like it makes sense. But we went through the first test and what I said is that a fireable offense or you committed to firing anyone who blatantly and repeatedly violates the core value.
They said, sure. But then I said, what if you've got this amazing accounts receivable clerk, and they do a wonderful job. They hit all their goals. They've got a great attitude, but they're just not creative. Are you firing that person? And of course the answer was, of course not. Well, then it's not a core value. It might be a competency that you hire for when you're hiring for a graphic designer or a copywriter, but it's not a core value for the entire organization.
I had another client who had a core value that was honesty and integrity. Well, that's kind of a little too motherhood and apple pie for me, but okay. And when I said, are you committed to firing anyone who violates that, they actually hesitated. And I looked at the CEO and I said, what's going on? And he said, well, they were a B2B company and he said, when we're having a problem with a shipment, we actually encourage our account managers not to tell our clients the entire truth about what's going on with that shipment as long as we solve the problem behind the scenes.
Now, I'm not arguing whether that's the right or wrong thing to do, but if you are actively encouraging people not to tell the whole truth, honesty and integrity is probably not a good core value for you.
[00:13:20] Test of a Core Value # 2 Financial Hit
Mike Goldman: So test number one, fireable offense. Test number two, are you willing to take a financial hit in order to uphold a core value? Now, what does that mean? Is the core value important enough that if one of your clients violates it, you have a core value that says we treat everybody like grandma, which is about respect.
If you wouldn't say it to your grandmother, don't say it to each other, and you've got a client that just curses you out and screams at you and berates the service staff.
Are you willing to keep that client even though you are breaking one of the core values by allowing your service team to be treated that way? Or are you gonna confront that client and say, we just can't have this. You need to change how you treat us, or we can't work together anymore.
Another great example, and it's actually a good example of the first two tests, is you've got a kick ass sales person who is your best salesperson, they're blowing away their sales goals every month, but they're not living one of your core values. They're blatantly and repeatedly violating. Again, I'll use respect as a good core value. They're also berating your poor service team.
Are you letting that salesperson slide on a core value because of how much revenue they're bringing in?
If you do let them slide, your core values will become a joke. They become something you use to beat people over the head with if they're not performing, but you let your high productivity people get by without living the core values.
Are you willing to take a financial hit to uphold your core values as test number two.
[00:15:20] Test of a Core Value # 3 Are you living it today?
Mike Goldman: Test number three is are you living that core value today? Again, core values can't be aspirational. Are you living it today? By the way, if the way you came up with your core values is through The Mission to Mars Exercise, you kind of know you are living it today, at least in some way because that's how you came up with it.
So, you might start out with this list of 25 different characteristics, but I promise you once you get through the three tests and then start combining words that are kind of the same, you'll wind up with a much smaller number, hopefully three to six core values.
Now, what do you do once you've come up with those core values?
[00:16:11] Coming up with the Core Values
Mike Goldman: First you've got to figure out how you're gonna communicate them, how you're gonna communicate them once, and how you're gonna continue to communicate them. And the first part of that is to make sure you've got the core value right, in terms of, what's the word, what's the phrase that you're using?
And it could be a word. It could be a word like collaboration or respect. It could be a phrase. Like, measure twice, cut once, which is a core value of flooring a client of mine has because they want to talk about accuracy and thoroughness and for them, measure twice, cut once fits because they're a business where that's what they do when cutting the carpet and putting it down.
It could be a reminder of an important story within the business. So you could say, we treat everyone like they're really important, or you could say respect, or you could say, we treat everyone like Brian Blake.
Now, what the heck does that mean? It means nothing to outside companies, but for this particular company that I'm using as an example, it means everything because they know the Brian Blake story.
Brian Blake was someone who came to them looking for a job a number of years before. He was looking for a VP position and their company happens to be a marketing and PR firm, and he was looking for a VP position and he didn't get the job.
Brian Blake then goes and gets a job at a good size consumer products company, and one of the things he's got to do, in that consumer products company is pick a new vendor to help them with their marketing and PR and he says, stop.
I've got the company we've gotta work with. I went and interviewed for a job couple years ago. I fell in love with the place. As soon as I walked through the door. They made me feel like the most important person in the world. I felt like part of their family. I always said if I ever got a chance to work with them. I would work with them. It crushed me. I, that I didn't get that job. Now's my chance to work with them.
Now, he hires that company and for that marketing and PR firm, Brian Blake's company becomes by far their number one client. So their core value, which is everyone you meet, is Brian Blake. What it means to them is everyone we meet, whether it's another employee, whether it's a vendor, whether it's a client, everyone we meet, we need to treat them like they're the most important person in the world.
We need to treat them with incredible respect because you never know. So, sometimes you name your core value after a signature story like that, cause it's actually more personal to your organization.
[00:19:13] Describing the Core Value
Mike Goldman: Once you've got it named, then you've gotta come up with a description, two or three sentences that talk about what it is, what it's not, crystal clear.
And then I think it's important to document a story or two, a real story or two.
That best exemplify what living that core value looks like. There should be no confusion as to what you mean by that core value, and that's what you use to communicate the set of core values. But what do you do? What do you do once you communicate?
Do you communicate at once? Assume everybody knows it and you're done. Of course not. That's what most companies do, but of course not. Do you guys put it on a poster and assume everybody's got it? Of course not. Let me give you some ideas on how you make sure your core values are alive in the organization.
They're living, breathing, and they will always be living and breathing. Number one, think about how you might use your core values in the hiring process. What questions are you asking during the interview process to make sure you've got someone who is currently living your core values. You don't hire someone, train them in your core values so they can start living your core values. That's not reality.
You need to hire people that are already living your core values. So, how do you find that out in a hiring proccess?
What about the onboarding process? What are you doing to communicate and help people understand what your core values are and how important it is as an organization to live your core values?
Best example I've seen is a client I used to work with about a 500 person company. Did a lot of hiring. They had a lot of new salespeople coming on, every week where, or every other week, I think there were eight or ten new people they hired.
And of course they had a whole talent development staff and an onboarding team who was accountable for onboarding people and helping them understand their benefits and where the bathroom was and everything you need to do in onboarding.
But when it came to core values, the CEO walked in the room and described the core values, talked about the importance of the core values, talked about how they make sure the core values are alive within the organization.
Think about those new employees who very rarely may get access to and talk with the CEO of the company.
All of a sudden, the CEO walked in for the particular purpose of talking about core values. That tells you how important it was for that organization.
[00:22:00] How to Assess your Talent
Mike Goldman: Next, how do you assess your talent? I talked about back in episode 13, a quarterly talent assessment. And I made the point, and I'll make it here again, that you don't assess your talent just based on productivity.
You don't have a great marketing person because they're the best at creating marketing copy or great salesperson because they're blowing away their sales goals. That's part of it. But you also need to look at how well they're living the core values.
Are they adding to your culture or are they subtracting from your culture?
Giving formal and informal feedback. If someone does a great job in a meeting don't just say, great job. Pull them aside and say, I gotta tell you, that was an unbelievable example of living our collaboration core value. I just want to thank you for that.
Or someone does something, you pull 'em aside and say, I gotta tell you, I'm really disappointed that it's obvious you broke our measure twice, cut once core value, and I really need you to take that value to heart and start changing your behavior.
So, how are you using in formal and informal feedback? What about recognition? when you have a town hall meeting in front of the organization and you calling people out for doing an exceptional job of living the core value.
Now, I wanna make sure you're not hearing something that I'm not saying if that makes sense.
Recognition doesn't mean having an employee of the month award or a core values award. I've seen most companies try that and fail miserably. Let's face it, if you had an employee of the month award, the same damn employee would win the award every month. You wind up by month four and month five, saying who hasn't won the award yet? Who could we give this to?
Don't do that. It doesn't work real well. When I say recognition, it's more of, you know, patting people on the back in front of others and letting them know what a great job they did.
Company themes. I had one client who created four core values, and every quarter for the next four quarters, they created a company theme based on that value, they had contests and learnings and goals and fun and games.
All related to helping people understand that particular core value one per quarter, you know? And then lastly is kind of the bling, the t-shirts, naming the conference room after a core value, having a poster, up on the wall. Those kinds of things are great, but don't do that by itself. Your core values will become a joke.
Do all of those other things. Hiring, onboarding, assessing, talent recognition company theme.
Do all that first, before you start with the bling and the fun stuff and the pens and t-shirts and stuff like that.
So, wrapping up, if you don't have a set of core values. Man, it's such a great anchor for your culture. Go create them. Use The Mission to Mars exercise. Check out the show notes for that process.
If you already have a set of core values, I hope the three tests are helpful to make sure you've got the most powerful set of core values that's gonna create a resilient culture. And if you do have a powerful set of core values, think about those things we just talked about to keep those core values alive.
Go make it happen. Go anchor your culture. Talk to you again soon.