How to Get Your Company’s Core Values Right

The following is adapted from The Rack We Built.

Sometimes, you just have to check in with your gut to see if a decision feels right. I don’t know why, and I don’t know how, but your gut is one of the wisest, most intuitive tools you have at your disposal. 

Believe it or not, every organization has a gut check, too. Your core values provide a litmus test for every decision you or anyone else makes in your organization. If a course of action doesn’t measure up to your values, you’re going to get an icky gut feeling and know to step away. 

Your core values should stand the test of time and allow every employee to do three things: hire people, fire people, and make decisions when the leader isn’t around. 

Yet, so many organizations get this wrong. They use important-sounding words and create fake, fluffy, glittery “values” that really mean nothing. Things like, “We’re passionate about integrity.” What does that even mean? 

Your core values will determine the entire culture—and therefore, success—of your organization. It’s important to get them right. Read on to learn how you can define a set of values that will empower your employees and foster success. 

Defining Your Core Values

I advise organizations to define their core values as early as humanly possible, even if they don’t get them right. Having new employees walk in and see the core values lived from day one helps create consistency in expectations and behavior. 

The first step in defining your core values requires a lot of listening and fact-finding. Listen to your employees and customers and respond to them. Ask yourself the following questions to begin thinking about your core values:

• What are the things that are important to you? 
• What values will help you hire? 
• What values help you fire? 
• If you weren’t present and an employee had to make a decision, how could they use a core value to make a good decision? 
• How do you use a core value to celebrate a win when the value is done exceptionally?
• If the company asked you to train a new employee, what stories would you tell them that bring each core value to life? 

If you’re a small company, one good core value is enough to start with. In fact, I would argue that one REAL core value is better than five fake ones. If one works, what’s the rush to get a bunch of values? I believe the current trend of having half a dozen or more core values is misguided. 

Don’t Confuse Your Employees

The bar is so low in business these days.

Core values are not the same as simply being a good human. Diversity, I would argue, is not a core value; neither is ethics nor honesty—any business should have those right from the start. You either value ethics or you don’t. You would never start an Honesty Department. Whenever you try to introduce a belief system as a core value, it’s confusing and very hard to manifest into real action by your employees. 

Of course, there are exceptions to this. For example, in recent years, the hashtag #fakenews has created a lot of turmoil in the field of journalism. Because the brand of the industry is taking heat, a journalist can’t afford to bend the truth or misrepresent even a single story. So, if you are starting a news site or blog, having honesty as a core value would definitely be a plus if you can make it real. 

Real core values can be measured, and it’s hard to measure a belief system. For example, how do you measure things like inclusiveness and honesty? I’m not saying that belief systems never work. I am saying that they are the hardest values to make real and it is rare that I see them done well. So proceed with extreme caution. 

Measure and Celebrate Results

You might be familiar with the phrase, “what gets measured, gets managed.” We need to measure the things we do, and most companies track metrics or data of some sort. If you’re not sure where the goal line is, how do you know if you’ve ever scored a touchdown? 

I saw this principle in action at Rackspace time and again, where results were not only measured but celebrated. Managers would say, “This guy just hit 150 percent of his quota for three months in a row. Let’s celebrate that.”

Core values shouldn’t be lip service or simply words painted on a conference room wall; they should be actionable, measurable, and recognized when lived by employees. They give you an opportunity to point out what’s being done and celebrate with the team when they’re done well. 

Moderation is Key

Can you get a core value wrong? Absolutely. Core values are more of an art than a science, and giving yourself the option to change them and the flexibility to change them is wise. You should remain open, but like everything, pursue changes with extreme care. 

Too much of a good thing can be a bad thing. Every core value can be misused. Someone may do something borderline unethical because they wanted to get results. They wanted to sell the first million-dollar deal. That’s where you need to monitor them, and that’s why you have to have a strong leadership team committed to them. Otherwise, they may take a very dark path.

A good value can become a bad value at some point. A real core value can become a fake core value. All core values have a good and bad side. 

Beware of the Good Old Days

Employees who have been with a company for a long time will often give two types of feedback. They either pine for the good old days, which they view through rose-colored glasses, or they complain about former management and are glad things changed. Rarely do they talk about the reality; we did things that were good, but some things should have been changed, and we didn’t change. Or, we moved away from things that were working. 

The job of a leader is to objectively look at the past for examples you can learn from and apply to the decisions you are making right now and for the immediate future. My mentor Shannon Forester-Smykay once said, “Most employees will tend to romanticize the past even when it was bad.” It is the leader who has the difficult task of discerning when to use the past and when to leave it there. 

The Cornerstones of Any Successful Culture

Core values are the cornerstones of any successful culture. That’s why they have to be solid, substantial, and real. You can’t build a lasting company on a foundation of fluffy, glittery, or meaningless values. You should have a story for each core value that could be told at the water cooler. These stories are what bring the core values to life and allow the employees to spread the values organically.  

If you can’t pinpoint exactly what your core value means, why it’s important to your organization, and how employees put it into practice daily, it’s not a core value. Time for another gut check! 

For more advice on core values, you can find The Rack We Built on Amazon.

Lorenzo Gomez was one of the first one-hundred employees hired at Rackspace. During his nine years there, he served as a team leader and senior manager, pioneered the account manager/business development consultant split, and finished as a director of project management. As one of the leaders in creating San Antonio’s tech scene, Lorenzo deployed the principles he learned at Rackspace as CEO of Geekdom and chairman of the 80/20 Foundation. In addition to his work, Lorenzo has authored two Amazon bestsellers: The Cilantro Diaries in 2017 and Tafolla Toro in 2019.