The Great Core Values Lie
I was in the room with the CEO, the President and the rest of their management team. They had just finished bringing in a consulting firm from Chicago to help them establish their new core values. They had invested a lot of time and money, including $25,000 to survey employees, interview small groups and compile the data in a nicely packaged report. Then, the company spent another $25,000 for materials, posters, banners and training sessions for their 350 employees.
The CEO said to me,
“It doesn’t sound like you think very highly about the process we went through to find our core values. In fact, you have me thinking I've just wasted $50,000. Be honest. Tell me what you really think about what we did here?”
As I read through the materials, I saw terms like cross functional, brand tenants and paradigms. The report was a bad tasting soup of buzzwords.
I put the report down on the table and asked them one question,
“Can any of you tell me what your core values are? Right now. Without looking at the report or the poster on the wall?”
There were eight people in the room. Over $50,000 was just spent and I heard only two of the six Core Values. You could see it in their faces. They had been sold a bill of goods and I felt bad for them. Sure, $50K is a lot of money, but my bigger concern was the credibility they lost. If the leadership team wasn’t connected to their own core values, I’ll guarantee you the employees had no idea what they meant either.
The CEO came over to me in private after the meeting. He was a big Tom Calahan type of guy that had successfully navigated his family’s business through decades of changes. After growing by hundreds of employees, they made some hires from larger companies in the industry to professionalize the way they operated. The CEO had listened to one of his new Fortune100 and MBA educated staff on how to run the core values process, including which consultants to hire.
He wanted to know how I knew that the core values they developed were bullshit in such a short amount of time. I told him,
“Honestly, they don’t sound anything like you. The words you see in here (the report) and how you defined them are not your words. I can tell that from being with you for an hour. It’s not you and it’s not how you talk. It’s certainly not the employees on the floor.”
The CEO said,
“I can’t believe we fell for that. I wish I would have talked to you 10 months ago before we started this whole process.”
The Great Core Values Lie
Unfortunately, this scenario is common. In the eyes of most employees, core values have become synonymous with bullshit. What happened? How did core values go from being the legitimate cornerstone of any organization to becoming synonymous with bullshit in less than a generation?
I believe the blame rests solely with the Great Core Values Lie.
The Great Core Values Lie is that your employees aren’t experiencing the core values you are advertising.
When employees see and hear you talk about core values, they want to believe it’s true. They hope your words are authentic and that “this place is different.” Then when their personal experience of working day-to-day in your organization conflicts with the core values you are advertising, their belief in your authenticity as a leader turns to a belief in your hypocrisy. Hypocrisy experienced over time evolves into bullshit.
This same process I describe in the paragraph and story above, happened throughout our society over the last 20 years. In the early 2000’s, companies like Zappos and Southwest Airlines became famous for marketing their core values to consumers. This coincided with Google consolidating search, so everyone talking about core values was getting their information from the same place.
Thought leaders, educators, marketers and consultants filled the first 100 pages of your Google search with variations of the exact same information about the hot, new core values business trend. When you searched for information on Core Values, you actually found another company’s marketing materials cleverly disguised as the help you were looking for.
People invited culture consultants in and bought their services hook, line and sinker. Tens of thousands of organizations developed and advertised their organization’s core values to their employees for the first time.
Then… core values were put to the test. When it came time for millions of employees to experience the newly established core values within their organizations, employees found out quickly that what was being advertised didn’t match up with the reality they saw with their own eyes.
In those moments, when leaders needed to personally live and hold people accountable to the core values they were now marketing to their teams, many did not follow through on their promises.
The result was not truth leading to authenticity about core values, but hypocrisy leading to bullshit… at scale.
The 5 Core Values Commandments
The good news for you reading this is that with most organizations floating in the sea of core values B.S., there has never been an easier time in history to stand out as an authentic leader.
But before we take a fresh approach to determining your organization’s core values, we need to correct the false beliefs that may still be supporting the Great Core Values Lie in your own mind.
These 5 core values commandments will keep you on track as you work to get your core values right this time.
#1 Internal, not external
Core values should always be written to communicate with the people inside of your organization. They are meant to face you and your employees.
Core Values should never be created from a mindset of what would look good to outsiders. If you find yourself considering whether a potential core value would look good to customers, society, regulators or anyone else not a part of your organization, stop. Shift your focus back to your team and imagine yourself having to explain the core value to a specific person on your team. Would it feel natural and would it make sense to them? If not, is it true?
#2 Your words, not buzz words
Core Values should always be in your own words, the way you and people on your team actually talk in front of each other.
If you can picture a consultant or politician saying anything you currently have surrounding your core values, toss it out and start over.
#3 Consistency, not hypocrisy
Core values should always be consistently protected on your team at the same standard as the most important performance metric. Even if you have the perfect core values, a lack of accountability will ruin them.
There are most likely some actions and situations that are openly hypocritical to your core values happening right now within your organization. I know why you don’t deal with them. They are hard situations that you justify not having time for right now or it relates to a specific individual that is too valuable to risk losing. I have been guilty of this in the past and so have people on my leadership teams.
Don’t fall into this trap. Regardless of the difficulty, you must consistently hold people accountable to the core values. If not, it’s better to not publish core values at all.
#4 Behaviors, not beliefs
Core values should always be clearly defined with the specific behaviors that a person would be expected to do for one another in the absence of any rules, policies and procedures.
Today’s experts define core values as something you use to virtue signal to the world. They say core values are “aspirational”, “deeply held beliefs” and “what you stand for” as an organization. It’s as if saying or believing words about core values will produce an actual outcome you want.
In reality, core values need to be defined with behavioral action items. Core values are not beliefs, they are something you do.
#5 Experienced, not marketed
Core values should always be experienced by your employees and your customers. People should understand your core values by the way they are treated. Try putting this to the test.
Would you rather have someone tell you they value integrity with a poster on the wall or would you rather they showed you how honest they were when it might cost them something?
Would you rather have a company advertise customer service as a core value on their website or would you rather experience great customer service when you interacted with one of their employees?
Would you rather have a company put a core value of “Family” in your onboarding packet or would you rather be treated like family by your co-workers once you are on the job?
In a world full of fake and phony, real things that are experienced stand out. The core values you feel will make you a believer.
Now It’s Time to Get Your Core Values Right
Let everyone else continue hiring the consultants, marketing their core values, and perpetuating the Great Core Values Lie. While they are pretending all that activity is actually working, you are going to take an afternoon away by yourself or with a few of your best employees to actually get your core values right.
When you are done with the afternoon, you will have:
New core values / definitions,
Core values stories to make them memorable,
Review criteria to keep your team accountable for core values, and
Interview questions to find people that share your core values.
All you need is a pen, paper and a stack of index cards. The Threads core values exercise assumes you, as a leader, already know the answers to your core values and what needs to be done surrounding them. The only thing missing is a process to get the core values out of your head and down on paper in a way that can easily be communicated to everyone on your team.
Let’s go!
