Values Start At The Top, But Are Reinforced In The Middle

Picture your first day on your current job. What do you remember from that day? From this most important time of indoctrination into the organization you've decided to join, what did you take away?

I asked this question to my friends at six  different companies, and the answer from all but one was... nothing. How can this be? Companies spend enormous resources on designing and delivering onboarding programs that get people excited about their company and communicate the things that are important to them, so why does all of this investment seem to have so little return? It's obvious that values were covered in the orientation, so why don't people remember them?

It’s simple - employees don’t embody their company’s values because their managers don’t expect them to. You might wonder why managers would not expect this - after all, if the company’s values are important, managers should lead by example, embody them, and understand how fundamentally important they are to the company's performance and to their own success.

My hypothesis is that the managers themselves have forgotten or never really learned their company’s values in the first place. This is likely because the company and their executives have done a poor job of embodying the values and continually reinforcing them to managers. If your entire leadership chain doesn’t embody the values and culture the executives are trying to create, it shouldn't come as a surprise when the company's culture and values becomes a mishmash of whatever every manager thinks they are. A company’s leaders  must take steps to embody the values and communicate them to middle and line managers, because they are the ones who live the values and model the right behaviors to your whole organization.

You may wonder about the single person who did remember something from orientation that I mentioned above. What was different about this person and their company? They work with me at LinkedIn. I love working here for a lot of reasons, the one that appeals to the Industrial Psychologist in me is that our executives tell us what matters to them. We have a company all-hands meeting every other week, and at every single one of those, our executives go over our four operating priorities. They are always discussed in the same order, with the same intro slide that lists them, and it’s a routine that makes it trivial to remember them. This technique should also be applied to other small pieces of information you want people to internalize, like the company values.

We’ve done this at LinkedIn - when we celebrate successes at these meetings, our leadership always ties in at least one of our company values to the event. We are subtly, but regularly, reminded about what the company's values are, and -- most critically -- we see that people are rewarded for acting in accordance with those values. They aren't just hollow phrases you see once on a slide on your first day; they are the backbone of our decisions on what is important as a company. As a leader, it is your responsibility to do the same with your company’s values each time you recognize accomplishments made by members of your team.

If you are trying to convince your employees to live your company values, you need to make sure that everyone knows - and really knows - what they are. You should establish a plan to make sure your managers teach the company's values to every employee. You must instill your values in new employees early in their tenure, and your recognition and reward programs must be based on embodying the company's values to continue building the knowledge in your existing team. Embodying the values should be the way to succeed. Create a recognition plan that emphasizes and teaches your company’s values, and people will start to internalize and believe in them.

My next post will discuss examples at LinkedIn where I've seen people live our values and talk about how to foster peer recognition of the company values. Click "Follow" above and you'll get a notification when it's published. As always, feel free to comment if you have questions or feedback.