Want to know what your company values are? Ask your team.
Earlier this month, I was sitting in my company’s San Francisco office, working on my presentation for our annual global meeting. I was scheduled to deliver the kickoff presentation for the 3-day event, and so I wanted to make sure I set exactly the right tone. But I was struggling with writer’s block (because nothing locks me up like performance anxiety).
To make my self-inflicted pressure even worse, this was going to be my last presentation as CEO. After having served in that position since the founding of the company eight years ago, I was now stepping into a Chairman role. So I felt especially pressured to leave the team with something meaningful in my final presentation to them. Something about the core values that I hoped the team would carry forward.
I’m a big believer in the idea that organizational values matter. In my experience, really great companies have a set of core values — a set of guiding principles — that drive the whole operation. For those companies, core values can guide most of the operational decisions in running a company, including hiring and firing decisions.
As Jim Collins wrote in an HBR article, “Companies that enjoy enduring success have core values that remain fixed, while their strategies and practices endlessly adapt to a changing marketplace”.
And so I opened a new document on my computer and titled it “Our Company Values”. And then I sat there and stared at the blank document.
And stared and stared. I wanted to phrase everything so perfectly that had no idea where to begin.
So I sent a Slack message to the whole worldwide team to see if it might break my writer’s block and get some words flowing for me:
Within seconds, employees all over the world began to respond:
Wow. I watched as some more arrived:
Oh, those are all great words!
The responses continued to roll in. Flavio said Driven. Ruby said Teamwork. Nick said Spirited. Francis said Resolute. Max said Excellence. Anaïs said Versatile. Tabatha said Collaborative. Peter said Warmhearted.
Holy shit. I suddenly realized that my presentation on company values was completely unnecessary. I didn’t need to tell the team what our values are.
I didn’t need to tell them our organizational values. I didn’t have to tell them what values bind us together as individuals on one team. I didn’t need to tell them the values that will continue to make our company a success in 2017 and beyond.
I didn’t need them to tell them any of that. Because they told me. My work was already done, and I didn’t even know it.
