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Values are expensive words on a dusty page at some companies. They live on PowerPoint slides, posters in break rooms, and About Us pages on websites. It’s often assumed that they’ll magically cascade into the vast employee population and be welcomed with open arms.
Chances are, a good bit was invested in writing your company’s values. And with good reason - they’re incredibly important. Values guide mindsets and attitudes, which in turn drive daily behavior and decision-making. They put people over profits, integrity over politics. They are fundamental to long-term growth, but only if lived out.
So how do you get the value back from values?
It’s not enough to know what the company stands for. Progressive changemakers also ask what matters to employees.
If employees are not involved in the process of developing a company’s values, the probability of rejection increases substantially. If a company is simply a collection of people “breaking bread,” then what matters to them should matter to you.
Invite employees into the process. Ask them what they think about terms like “safety,” “reliability,” “integrity” and what these look like in their daily work lives. Values are interpreted differently depending on a number of factors, especially your role. For example, safety may be obvious to a truck driver, but what does it mean for a dispatcher or someone in sales or billing?
Companies usually TELL people their values. Guess which company’s values these are:
Sounds good, right? They’d look good on any lobby wall.
Well, those are Enron’s values. A company that lost its way, along with billions of dollars of value due to criminal fraud and corruption. We’ve seen famous examples of companies touting integrity and transparency, then being busted for deceptive foul play. Or “environmental stewards” contributing to environmental harm and “safe” producers recalling dangerous products.
Hollow values aren’t always so easy to spot. But when they’re “found out,” the effect is catastrophic, especially to the pride and trust of employees.
Similarly, overly abstract values, though well-meaning, can be confusing and hard to live out. “Excellence” sounds like a great quality, but does it mean the same thing to everyone? Is it actionable? Do we know what it means when we get back from the town hall and sit down at our desks?
Values become real when we can live them out in our daily lives. Values aren’t a checklist, they’re a mindset that guides behavior in countless scenarios and circumstances. And they’re best told through the real human stories of the people being asked to carry them out.
For example, this heartbreaking story. When a pilot learned that an expected passenger had suffered a terrible personal tragedy and was running late to desperately catch a flight home, the pilot held the plane for them.
As my husband walked down the Jetway with the pilot, he said, “I can’t thank you enough for this.”
The pilot responded with, “They can’t go anywhere without me and I wasn’t going anywhere without you. Now relax. We’ll get you there. And again, I’m so sorry.”
My husband was able to take his first deep breath of the day.
There’s no checklist or process doc for this situation. But there are values that guided the pilot to live up to the promise of the organization and do the right thing for the customer.
While this is an exceptional example, it’s a story that illustrates the values of the company more than any Powerpoint in a team huddle ever could.
If you want to make values real, start by having conversations with people in different roles across your company, and ask them to express how each value shows up uniquely in their day-to-day. Ask, “How do you live that value out? What does this value mean for your role?”
Next, use their feedback to develop role-specific behaviors that make the desired value real and tangible. And don’t be afraid to go back and ask if the specific behaviors you’re suggesting are hitting the mark.
Then, most importantly, SHOW employees what these values look like through human stories. People don’t follow brands, but they do follow other people. And there’s no more credible or convincing role model for teaching values than the person in the cubicle next to me.
LOCAL has our own set of values: Wonder, Joy, Authenticity, and Kindness.
When we picked our core values, the process took listening, analysis, and extensive dialogue.
These were great time and resource investments. But by taking the values work a step further to define key behaviors, it made these investments worthwhile. Values went from being elegant words on a break room poster to a source of direction during difficult decisions.
For each quarter of the year, LOCAL focuses our attention on behaviors tied to each value. Q1’s ‘Wonder’ quarter was fun. We asked the team to pick from a list of wonder-filled activities: reading and discussing articles about protecting one’s sense of wonder, cooking a slow, surprisingly delicious meal, going on an “Awe Walk,” and other prompts spanning the senses. We met over lunch and shared our experiences. It provided a space to discuss the nuances of a seemingly simple value. The team shared a memory and we got to exchange some of our favorite, more obscure tastes.
LOCAL’s values and behaviors reflect the values and behaviors of LOCAL’s people.
‘Wonder’ may not be the right value for another organization to champion. Each collection of individuals creates their own culture and determines the beliefs and actions that matter most.
Zoom out and look at your organization’s values as if you’ve never seen them before.
When you read each word, what do you feel? What do your people feel? Have you asked?
These unquestioned assumptions may be different from person to person. Here are some tips to bridge those differences:
LOCAL works with organizations to bring their values down to Earth, where its people, who drive culture and change, can actually live them out and be recognized for them. We do this by defining key behaviors for every role.
If your interest was sparked, or you need help defining and living out your company values, let’s talk.