Company Culture Values and Levers

Culture is hard, or so they say. By using the correct levers instead of acting on values directly it can be made easy.

For example, a common company culture value is “Innovation”. But defining it is not enough as we all know. You have to take action upon this value to spread it through your organization.

You can decide to promote the innovative mindset with banners, copyrighting, and events, to try to pass it along to your employees. Will that work? Will your employees become more innovative? Let’s face it: “Innovation” is not actionable intrinsically.

The good news is you can act upon levers instead of values directly. Levers act as sub-values to your core values as they influence them directly. They are actionable and understandable by most.

So what is a common lever to the value “Innovation”? Trust. Trust is the greatest lever innovation can have. With trust, you can build temples and lift mountains. Here is an example of levers for “Innovation” as a company culture value:

In conclusion, do not act directly on the values you want your company to have (or preferably your employees already share). Act upon levers instead as they are more actionable. To find the levers ask yourself how to converge to the value you want to promote.