Values: Level 1 Business Hierarchy of Needs

Values

Every company needs to have a set of core values. These are the words and phrases that clearly articulate how a company wants its stakeholders to behave towards each other, suppliers, and customers. Core values will often be described by such words as integrity, honesty, transparency, accountability, collaboration, innovation, teamwork, and other similar words. One of the words often found in a company’s values is integrity. It gets a lot of lip service because I have found in recent years that integrity does not mean what it used to.

I was brought up in a household where if you said you were going to do something, agreed to it verbally, shook hands or signed a contract, you better do it or there was going to be hell to pay. I was also taught to respect other people’s property such as trademarks and patents, but in today’s world those perspectives have become fuzzy at best. Trademark and patent infringement decisions have become a financial analysis in the technology world as demonstrated by the court-defined cross payments between companies in the technology world. This is happening in every industry and many countries do not pay attention to it at all. So, when making decisions about stakeholders you want to work with, be keenly aware of the value of integrity.

As social norms have matured, and organizational thinking has developed, we often see inclusion and empowerment as additional words when discussing values. Over the years of my career, I have become skeptical of just listing words for values. While the various dictionaries have similar definitions for these words, each of us will have a different interpretation of them based on our education, ethnic background, religious beliefs, upbringing, and our mood on any given day.

Many companies incorporate adherence to core values into their yearly performance appraisals, but I find rating people on this is cumbersome and embarrassing both to the reviewer and the employee. An example might be: “Hi John, I gave you a three out of five on integrity, because I have seen instances where you have not demonstrated that principle”. You can quickly see how this might set the wrong tone for the conversation. Neither the employee nor the supervisor has any idea how to rate integrity and probably would not define it the same way.

So, we are talking about fluffy stuff here and leaders are not trained to be able to have a proper discussion around single words and what they mean. Did I mention that each of us will have a different interpretation of the meaning of a word? It only gets worse when a leader must do a deep dive into their own interpretation. Businesses should not take the time or spend the money on making them apprentice psychologists. Let us leave that stuff to the professionals.

Some companies will use single words, and expand on them in the employee handbook, on their website, or someplace else. I am not a fan of any of the above. How do we solve this dilemma? We solve it by creating core values that are action oriented. Let us make it clear what we, as leaders, want as acceptable behaviors in our organizations. Examples of a core values and action-oriented approach are as follows:

1. Integrity: We demonstrate integrity by being honest with ourselves and our associates and doing what we say we will do on time.

2. Responsiveness: We respond to our internal and external customer needs within one business day, whether we know the answer or not.

3. Innovation: As innovators, we are focused on providing new and unique solutions to the needs of our internal and external customers.

4. Social Responsibility: We will be as enthusiastic about social responsibility as we are about corporate performance, and we will measure our progress.

5. Teamwork:

a. Everything we do will be done as a team and each of us will recognize and demonstrate our commitment to making every team successful.

b. We are willing to be equally accountable to our own performance and to our team’s performance.

6. Sustainability: Everything we do is focused on the achievement of our company’s Most Important Goal.

In every one of these examples, the core value is measurable. I can think of dozens of measurements for each one of these. For integrity, it might be the percentage of projects that were done on time for which the leader then assigns a score. For responsiveness, it might be a measure of the aging of open customer tickets, purchase orders, service level, order aging, and many other criteria. Every functional organization can measure responsiveness. For innovation, it might be how many new processes, products, or services were initiated by the stakeholder. Social responsibility might be measured by the number of projects related to it and how effectively they have been implemented. Teamwork can be measured by a team’s success rate in meeting its goals, and objectives. Sustainability can be measured for all stakeholders against the achievement of the company’s MIG.

These values are quantitatively measurable and tied to the company’s MIG and strategic objectives so the discussion on stakeholder performance to values becomes easier. Definitions are not open to different interpretations here. No special training is needed. Taking this approach will ease the pressure on leaders because they can explain a rating and if the stakeholder is in touch with their own personal goals and objectives, they already know the rating before the discussion. Problem solved.

After reading this section, you should be asking yourself the following questions:

1. What are the core values that will help our company achieve its objectives?

2. If we have core values, are they too fluffy?

3. How do we make our core values actionable and measurable?

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