At Compass, we define culture as the acceptable behaviors in an organization. Conversely, culture can be deemed as the unacceptable behaviors in an organization. Playing on positive psychology, we prefer to focus on the affirmative behaviors or core values that should guide every decision, interaction, conversation, and work product of a team.
Every organization has a culture whether they planned for it or not. As consultants, we can feel the vibe of the culture from the moment we jump on a Teams call or walk across the threshold leading us into a client’s space.
By defining or redefining your core values, your organization can proactively shape its ideal culture instead of passively inheriting one that falls short of expectations.
In working with a savvy new start up, we were asked to collaborate on their mission statement and core values development. Our team is frequently engaged with our clients to write, refresh, and weave core values into every aspect of the employee experience.
I want to share our work and thought processes that may support your teams’ effort to determine “HOW” work is performed to achieve your mission and strategy.
A Guide to Writing Core Values
1.Be thoughtful on the process you use, who is involved, and at what cadence in the process. We worked with a client who asked for the input of all the current employees to determine their core values. When the survey results returned contrary to what the executive team found desirable, it was let’s just say, “problematic” and the reason Compass was brought in to help. If you are going to ask for feedback from sources, you will need to either incorporate the input or respond to why it will not be used. Don’t be afraid to have the CEO and the executive team take ownership over the core values creation.
2. Words matter and the connotation of words are different from person to person. We produce many different variations on a theme or concept to find the precise words that truly define mission statements and core values.
3. Don’t settle! Your values should distinguish your organization from other organizations and competitors and drive the mission and strategy of your company.
4. Break the mold. You can call core values anything that is customized to your organization such as pillars, guidelines, principles, values, high performing behaviors, etc.
5. We follow the best practice of limiting values to five. They fit on your hand and are easy to remember when applying to all interactions and delivery. Every employee in your organization should be taught the core values in their onboarding process and know the core values if asked. That doesn’t mean we don’t set expectations and keep our team accountable for performance that spans beyond these five values.
6. Interview key members of the team to see if your core values are sufficient or need to be refreshed. Companies, which are just a compilation of humans, evolve and so should core values.
We originally had four core values at Compass – connect, custom, craft, and care. I added the additional value of COURAGE when I recognized my team’s hesitation to engage in hard conversations with our clients in fear of losing work. I wanted to say thank you to my team for their loyalty AND reinforce that I would never fault a team member for doing the difficult right thing. I added the core value of courage to ensure our team developed, practiced and honed this critical core value for our consulting work.
7. Beyond interviews, look for other materials for words, phrases, concepts that define the most important behaviors for your team. With the start-up client, I kept a running tally of key words and phrases spoken in meetings, contemplated their mission and strategy, read their press releases, job descriptions, etc. With an established company, ask for the stories and wins that define the organization. Those can lead to what behaviors are valued and drive the business.
8. Core values can be single words with or without definitions, phrases, and/or sentences. In working with the President of a college, we recognized the value of graphic representation to reinforce the values. Perusing your favorite companies’ websites for inspiration is helpful.
9. Once core values are established, ask yourself these questions to ensure they are woven into every aspect of your culture:
- Have you trained leadership on the core values, and do they exemplify the core values? If not, what coaching and or training are you providing to reduce that gap?
- Do you reference the values when making decisions in your organization?
- Are leaders calibrated on core values? That is, do they possess consistent standards when recognizing and rewarding behaviors?
- Do you use behavioral interview questions to ascertain if a potential team member has the desired behaviors you seek? After all, culture starts with recruiting! Technical skills are much easier to teach than behaviors.
- Whether you call it orientation, onboarding or integration, what are you doing to assimilate new hires in that first week of employment so they understand and live the values?
- Have you trained your employees on the desired behaviors?
- Do you have mechanisms in place to reinforce core values consistently such as huddle or meeting shoutouts?
- Do you advertise your core values – offer letters, website, marketing materials, job descriptions, merchandise, and so on?
- Are core values driving your recognition and rewards programs?
- Are core values (the HOW work is done) included and of equal importance to the goals (the WHAT work is done) in your performance management process?
At Compass, we make it very clear that our core values are nonnegotiable and that makes decision making in my role as CEO straightforward!
Need the right direction to develop your core values? Reach out to Alisa@wearecompass.com
