Do you really need company values?

I often meet with founders who believe they should be doing something about values but are not really sure what that something is. They’ve had experience of great cultures that ‘do’ values well, or have read the Netflix Culture Deck and want to recreate that.

I love their enthusiasm and this makes them great to work with. But it can also mean that they are jumping ahead without first trying to establish what they want as the outcome.?

Do you need company values because you’re being told you need them? Or that you see others have them? Do you want values that are set in stone, or are you looking for some guiding principles to help provide behavioural guidance??

What’s going on under the surface?

The iceberg metaphor encourages us to be conscious of those behavioural influences that are hidden from view. The visible cues are easy – appearance, knowledge, body language, skills, how people generally show up. But what’s going on beneath the surface is more difficult to assess – attitudes, self-image, motives, history, beliefs.?

How can we then create a single set of concrete values to which we all adhere 100%? We can’t, but we can create guidelines as an anchor to how we communicate and behave in our work environment.

Is 'values' the right word?

The word 'values' is often something that we get tied up about. Are they my values? Or the company's values? They don't all resonate with me.

Maybe they're just our guiding principles or anchors. They're how we want our employees to work. They tell us what's important to us as a company. Working with Melbourne VC Rampersand, they call them their 'Rocks'.

(For the purpose of this article, let's just call them values.)

How well do they represent your business?

I despair when I see "Respect. Integrity. Honesty...." Surely these should be assumed?! These aren't specific to your business, they're ubiquitous. One of my all time favourite values is by Mentorloop - "Balls to the wall! - We're not afraid to experiment and we push the limits. Always pushing forward, we take a position and back ourselves (and each other). And in our eyes, failure is an inseparable part of learning."

This can be interpreted in so many ways, and that's good. What does this value mean for the business, for each team and for each individual? You can work that out for yourselves. That's the whole point!

Does this represent Mentorloop? I'm sure it does! And anyone looking to join them would already have a great sense of the culture, and what is expected of you if you worked there.

I worked for a high growth global tech when our new values were launched. One of the values was "A sense of urgency". While this was key at that early stage, as the business scaled and became more established, this was no longer top of our list. It had become more important to focus on continuous improvement or right first time, rather than fast. And so we adapted, updated and communicated our new values.

Why do we need company values?

When created, they are used:

• to remind you what's important to you
• to attract new talent, as part of your EVP
• as indicators of good performance
• to support onboarding processes
• to build leadership
• as reference in succession plans
• to support engagement and retention strategies
• to develop careers

Some questions to ask?before you embark on the ‘new company values journey’:

Why you want to create company values?

·??????Are they really important to your company?

·??????Are they linked to the business strategy? And the people strategy (if you have one)?

·??????Is the timing right??

·??????Who owns the values? (Hint: not HR!)

·??????How will you be inclusive?

·??????What are possible cultural impacts; will they be interpreted differently??

·??????How well will they reflect your culture? (Too corporate?)

How do you implement them?

·??????Who needs to approve them (founder, CEO, the board)??

·??????How are you going to use them??

·??????Will there be a launch, and what might that tie into??

·??????What merchandise or collateral might be designed?

·??????How will you embed them? And reinforce them?

Ongoing engagement of values

·??????What happens if they don’t all resonate with everyone? (This will happen)

·??????Who will champion them?

·??????Are all leaders onboard and regularly promoting them?

·??????Where will they be integrated? In 1:1s, performance discussions, career conversations?

·??????Are they ‘live’ and can they be adjusted as appropriate?

How NOT to create company values?

The least effective values are those when the Founder or CEO or leadership team design them, in isolation from the rest of the business, and then 'roll them out!'. And worse, when 'Inclusion' is one of the values!

It's critical to have an inclusive process, from the start. Not everyone will agree with the final round and that's okay. At some point, leadership needs to make a call. It's good to just know that they're live, and it's okay to update them as the business grows.

What’s changed?

With a shift to hybrid working, it can be more difficult to engage your team in living the values. We don’t have the visual clues to make behaviour easier to observe. We are far more aware now of the distractions of working from home.

Can we judge people for not being so present and having their cameras on? The Barrett Values Centre shares that what is important to people has shifted as a result of COVID-19, to ‘making a difference; adaptability; wellbeing and caring’. How well are you accounting for the shift in company values and culture? What worked before may no longer apply.

If you’re not going to live them…

Finally,?@colindellis?recently wrote how ‘values should be lived and not laminated!’ I love this! Be really honest, if you’re not going to do anything with your values, then don’t bother creating them.

If you’d like to establish if it’s time to create your company values, I’d love to chat and see how I can help. I might just save you a whole lot of effort!

#peoplestrategy #culture #values #startups #scaleups #leadership

Mary Butler is a People Strategy Expert, with particular focus on building legendary leaders in scaleups.

She gets what traditional HR doesn’t, and is an Author, Coach and Mentor.

Mary has 25+ years of talent management experience, from global corporates to scaleups in every sector, across Europe, the US, Asia and Australia in industries from aviation to tech and FMCG. That’s deep expertise, across a broad range of leadership topics, that we can leverage in your business.?

While she has a BSc and an MBA, it’s Mary’s ability to identify and address those often buried challenges that makes her different. She has an ability to cut through to noise to help you make the tough calls. And she doesn’t offer an off-the-shelf solution because you don’t have off-the-shelf challenges.

If you’d like to learn more, here are four ways you can explore how Mary can help:?

Download Mary’s whitepaper? Founder as Leader. Are You Ready to Lead?

Read Mary’s Musings on her blog.

Pre-order her new book,?Legendary Scaleup Leadership ,?or buy one of her previous books.

Make a time to chat ?about how Mary supports founders and scaleups like yours.