Building a company and a brand today is very different than building one 50 years ago.
It used to be that a couple of executives would get together in a boardroom, write some fanciful and aspirational words on a flip chart and Bobs, your uncle, decide on company values and brand positioning.
Today, this strategy works against the creation of a sustainable, profitable and committed company that will survive in the modern world.
Virgin’s Richard Branson and Zappos’ Tony Hsieh agree that one of the most important elements of a high-performance, productive, and aligned company culture is a set of core values that are measurable, tangible, and observable. And with the ‘pen’ in everyone’s hands, so to speak with the wonder of the Internet, companies are becoming more and more transparent, whether they like it and are ready for it or not.
If your company values were the brainchild of you, your leadership team, or a couple of old friends over a glass of red many years ago, then maybe it’s time to revisit them. How will you know if they need a review? Basically, if they aren’t measurable, meaning you can’t touch, see, hear, or feel the values in action, then it’s about time. If you can’t describe what your values look like in action, how can you hold your managers and staff accountable for them?
The best way to build a sustainable brand and create values that are a measurable compass for your actions is to focus on your company culture. As Zappos’ Tony Hsieh says, “Your company culture and your company brand are just two sides of the same coin.” Unless you make the internal culture work well, what is displayed in your external brand will never reach its potential and stay in the market.
In most organizations, values are defined in lofty terms that are difficult to translate into practical, day-to-day application. Therefore, what is needed is the active participation of everyone in the company to determine what the values should look like when fully lived and in action. Without clearly defined behavioral guidelines that describe exactly how an “honest” employee behaves, each leader and staff member can define those values based on her personality, role, and activities. If you don’t behave according to the way I solely define “honesty,” for example, my trust in you erodes. The result over time? Loss of respect, increased stress and anxiety, and inconsistent treatment of employees and customers.
So what steps can you take if you want to make your values more tangible and actionable? Here are a couple of ideas:
Step 1. Define your values in actionable terms. Gather a group of staff and work with them to brainstorm potential behaviors you would be proud to see all staff demonstrate when they are modeling this value. Which means not what they think about that value, but the actual visible tangible behavior that they would be doing that would tell you that they are living that value.
Step 2. Ask your people: does this value relate to observable behavior? How would you rate someone’s display of this behavior? Remember that what gets measured gets done. If it can’t be measured, it won’t happen.
Step 3. Review your hiring procedures. Consider how you can incorporate behavioral questions into your hiring process to ensure you’re hiring people not only with the competence for the role, but also with the right attitude that will best fit with your guiding values and company culture. For example, if one of your values is “Think outside the box,” you might ask recruits, “What was the best mistake you made on the job? Why was it the best?” Make this aspect of cultural fit count as much as your skills and experience count.
Step 4. Consider your orientation or ‘onboarding’ process with new recruits. Do you give them a clear idea of what it means to work in your company? Are you showing them the importance of your culture and values and what is expected of them to fit into the desired behaviors?
Step 5. Review and revisit regularly. Having the values on your wall or on a company coffee mug is not enough to sustain the buzz in the long run. Make sure they are not only integrated into your performance review, planning, and decision-making processes, but also that you review them each year to ensure they continue to be relevant to your business and where you are heading strategically.
Why bother? Because not only does it make good business sense, but the rules of the business game have changed: we are not in the same industrial environment that we were in 50 years ago. Adam Lowry, co-founder of Method, said it well:
“Business, as the largest and most powerful institution on the planet, had the greatest opportunity to create solutions to our health and environmental crises. Since the dawn of the industrial age, business has sacrificed the health of people and the state of the planet for growth. and profit, but it doesn’t have to be that way… I am convinced that business is the most powerful agent for positive change on the planet. But it is not business as we know it today. It is fundamental and profoundly different. It’s a redesigned business.”
