When I worked at a large bank we had mandatory classes in the company values, and adherence to the values was explicitly measured in annual appraisals.
You can pretty much read a list of company values to find out exactly the things they do only for show.
The companies I've worked for have always ignored any stated values as soon as it costs them money or gets in the way of making money. Which is, you know, always.
I've worked at two companies that have a definite set of values: Amazon and Shopify. In both companies the values serve two purposes. In decision-making, they act as something you can point at when you weigh choices. And in performance evaluations, they act as something you can point at to say that you or other people demonstrated certain values.
In this way they act as a norming force to keep everyone in a large company aligned on how decisions should be made and what behaviours are considered good. One of the biggest challenges a large organization faces is keeping all its parts aligned, and a specific set of values helps with that.
One company I consulted at, maybe 200 people, went through a substantial internal process to make their values explicit. I wasn't there for it, but I understand everybody participated, and there was a lot of discussion about what they really wanted in a mission statement and a set of values.
When I was there, it amazed me to see employees at all levels actually pulling out the list of values when hard decisions were happening. They used it to remind themselves of what really mattered to them.
Admittedly, I've only seen it once, but it really appeared to work. It's definitely something I'm keeping in my pocket the next time I'm at something that crosses Dunbar's Number.
I think you should have couple of chats with different department leaders about what they think and capture systematized feedback somewhere. This will show value prop exactly for your org, exactly for the values your company operates with.
I like something from the Netflix culture slide deck (circa 2009). It says that company values are not what's written in a doc like this, or on a plaque on the wall. Those are what the company would like the values to be. Company values are what really happens, day in and day out.
Hopefully the two align; in many cases they don't.
Plus managers who define their worth by easily measurable values like how many 0s on their p+l statement, and lines to them on the org-chart. Success of the project is much more subjective.
I totally agree with this but would add a bit of nuance. I'd love to see all companies do a "X and the cost of Y" value system, but there is another part of stating you have values like "Integrity" which is the same as the Google "Don't be evil" thing. It's a claim that you can be called publicly on, and that's important as well. You'd be surprised how many companies out there aren't willing to make a claim for something like integrity. But yeah, who wouldn't say they value integrity, for instance, when asked?
That being said, I'd also add that most values have those implicitly baked in. For instance, if you do say you value integrity, you're saying you're devaluing growth/money for the value/benefit of integrity.
They're expressed in the S&P 500, DJIA, NASDAQ, etc.
Edit: Going by the rule "your values are demonstrated by what you do, even when it costs you to do that", it's fairly easy to figure out what they are.
I think this is spot on. I used to hate the ideas of values, since I only saw examples of it done incorrectly. I’d see corporations create values or frameworks and it was obvious that they never adhered to them. So, we didn’t have company values for the first few years of the company. Then, a group of people on the team came to me and said we needed values to preserve our culture as we grew. The idea to create values was a grassroots effort at HelloSign. Then, we went on a retreat to create them. A year later, the team was absolutely right. Values have been hugely helpful in sustaining our culture as we grow.
Usually with company values you don't just give them to somebody once and never talk about them again -- you repeat them over and over again in company meetings, with lots of examples and associated lore. Most values can't really be properly interpreted without context. Fred has taken these values out of context for the purpose of the blog post. (Not disagreeing with you that this value absolutely needs more context than most, though!)
Do companies ever inflate or deflate values to look better to shareholders? What about values that are hard to measure, or are open to interpretation, in particular?
I'm not sure about a small company, but a couple of years back we did an organization-wide values exercise at Engineers Without Borders Canada. As a highly distributed organization with chapters across the country and staff across Africa as well, having a stated set of values that resonated extremely well with me and many other members and staff was very useful. It's a great foundation to build upon especially as the organization continues to grow.
Very well-said! Wouldn't it be nice if we knew going in which companies understand this? I'd like to see more companies state these ideas explicitly in their values.
One can also try to work for companies that properly appreciate the value of all necessary components of the business, even if one can't directly tally their contribution. Most important factors to success are not easily measurable.
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