Core Values Matter

This is the sixth in a series of articles about Lessons Learned from over 25 years in software development.

While my six years at Amazon were often a time of extreme stress and consternation, one of the positives was seeing the Leadership Principles in action. At nearly every other position I’ve held, the Core Values of the company were just words that were written on a wall, or explained during New Hire Orientation, but were otherwise meaningless. Often, I never heard the Values mentioned again. However at Amazon, the LPs were spoken almost daily, and were used as a lens through which to view nearly every decision and action.

The Amazon Leadership Principles were not without their flaws, and often could be contradictory (by design, I suspect). However, observing firsthand how discussions around feature areas drove to a better outcome once someone asked “are we really Thinking Big here?” or hearing engineers talk about not passing a code review until a minor formatting error was corrected (30 seconds of work, honestly) because they wanted to Insist On Highest Standards clued me in to the upside of actually living the Core Values of an organization.

Good Core Values are well defined, memorable, and understood by everyone at the company. They give employees a common vernacular around which to discuss direction and decisions, and may open the door to new ways of thinking for employees unfamiliar with better approaches to doing business. Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit is a perfect example of an Amazon Leadership Principle that often causes new employees to scratch their heads. At it’s base, it means that employees should argue hard for their beliefs, but once a decision is made, even if they disagree with it, they should commit to seeing it through to the highest level of quality possible.

At my own startup nearly a decade ago, I developed six Core Values that drove our decisions and set the culture. They weren’t difficult to develop, and they were easy to understand. I was sure to speak them often, and use them in decision making to set a pattern of how our culture would work moving forward, and I received good feedback from my team that this was a company at which they wanted to work because the values were solid, consistently applied, and made for a better workplace.?

The six I developed for my startup were:

• Focus on the User. Their happiness and enjoyment is our primary goal. We start and finish by focusing on what makes for a great customer experience, and we build based on that.
• Be Relentlessly Transparent?with our data, our progress, our vision, and our status. Only by being open can we build a trustworthy environment dedicated to excellence.
• Deliver Excellence. Challenge ourselves continuously to improve the quality of our technology and our content.
• Progress over Motion. We value meaningful contributions and accomplishments over meetings and time-wasting activities.
• No Difficult Geniuses. We create an environment of excellence, but we work together as a team. No person is too talented to excuse being a troublemaker.
• Always Be All-In. Commit to the overall vision. Stand up for your beliefs, but when a decision is made, even if you disagree with it, commit to seeing it through to the highest standards.

Often, when I’m advising people who are interviewing for a new role, I’ll tell them a great question to ask their potential employer: What are your core values, and how do you use them on a daily basis?

This, of course, leads to a follow-up question, which is: what happened when a leader breached the core values? Unfortunately, at a smaller company, I had an up-close view to this very thing happening. This company had a value about being honest and reliable, as well as another about being part of a team instead of individually focused, both of which were broken by two leaders in this particular case. After weeks of long hours by dozens to employees prepping a demo version of our soon-to-be-released product for a high profile public event, two leaders decided to show off a different version of the product that had not undergone rigorous QA, nor been signed off on by the other team leaders. The event went well, but relatively soon after the event, the team got wind about what happened. Overworked employees were extremely annoyed that their efforts felt meaningless, and other decision making leaders who signed off on the intended version for the demo felt powerless and overridden. Trust was destroyed immediately across the team, and I had several discussion with individuals that boiled down to “I guess person X and Y get to do whatever they want.” Overall, it created a bad environment, and communicated that our values didn’t matter at all, they were just words. Without surprise, the leader who developed the Core Values at this company (but not either of the leaders who violated them) was informed they were being laid off about a month after this incident.

If this happens to you, unless you are absolutely desperate for the money, my advice is to start looking for a new team or company. The saying “the fish rots from the head” could not be more true than in these situations where leaders do not abide by their own values, and the employees will absolutely notice and understand that the organization is not special or culturally fit. There will be other side effects in the quality of your product, communication, or office environment. Your best people will always want to work in a place that is ethical, high standards, and aspirational, so stick to your values and reprimand (or exit) those who don’t abide by them.

Next up, a brief update on my personal thoughts about the Agile Development Process.

Lessons Learned:

• Core Values can’t just be words that are posted on a website or a wall poster.
• Use Core Values to drive decision making, hiring, promotions, and to hold people to high standards.
• Your employees are smart; if leaders don’t embody Core Values, they’ll know the values are meaningless.